How Do I Become an Environmental Engineer?

Answer 1

Unfortunately, the environment we live in is constantly under assault from problems such as global warming, oil spills, and acid rain. It is the job of an environmental engineer to look at problems such as these and approach them from a scientific point of view to find solutions.

An environmental engineer is an engineer who focuses his or her efforts on using engineering to solve problems related to the protection of the environment. This field is large and diverse. An environmental engineer, for example, may work for a non-profit organization that has the goal of protecting wildlife. The environmental engineer may then be tasked with using his or her engineer skills to develop a plan for protecting the wildlife in a certain area from the interference of human beings. He or she may even be tasked with finding a way to help rebuild the population of an endangered species.

Alternatively, an environmental engineer can also be hired by a for profit business. For example, if an oil company is involved in an oil spill in some body of water, the environmental engineer may be hired to help troubleshoot ways to safely remove that oil from the water or any surrounding pieces of land that the oil may have flowed into.

An environmental engineer may even work for government agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency. He or she may also work in a consulting position and advise companies on how to best approach environmental issues before they being operations in certain areas.

Environmental engineers tend to make somewhere between $50,000 and $70,000 a year. However, becoming an environmental engineer is a long path to take. First, an individual must obtain a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering. Upon receiving this degree, the student should then enter an environmental engineering master’s degree program that will take three to four years to complete.

Finally, to receive certification as an environmental engineer, that engineer must take a two part exam. Both parts of this exam must be passed. The engineer will also have to spend at least four years in the field training under another environmental engineer to receive certification.

After all this has been accomplished, that certified environmental engineer can begin working independently for different organizations to solve environmental problems.