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Career opportunities in sustainability are growing exponentially, but the path into them isn’t clear cut. It’s a field of study that’s a more recent offering as a major at UB and at universities around the country, and one that continues to evolve and grow almost daily as experts understand more about the needs of the planet and its people. To help students find their place in this essential and emerging calling, the Career Design Center partners with UB Sustainability, an on-campus team of pros with a passion for sharing their profession. 

A complex career path challenges tomorrow’s experts today.

While a student might study accounting to be an accountant or law to be a lawyer, people who want to work in sustainability need to customize their own blend of coursework, experience, and passion to land a job in this space. The field encompasses three primary focus areas: social equity, economic prosperity, and environmental stewardship—each with their own special competencies and skillsets that, taken together, help us make smart, balanced and effective long term decision making. Often, professionals who focus on sustainability measures do so through employment in another primary discipline, which can include a range of professions like business, policy, and journalism. To complicate matters even further, the word “sustainability” is rarely mentioned in job titles within the field, so knowing what to look for instead is paramount.

So how do students with a passion for protecting resources figure out how to prepare for and identify their dream jobs? They turn to professionals working in the field for guidance right here on campus.

Mentorships, meet-ups, and inspired outfits equip UB’s future change-makers.

UB Sustainability is a university department that works with a broad range of campus and community groups to facilitate the university’s Climate Action Plan, which calls for UB to achieve climate neutrality by 2030. The office also works with campus partners to promote programs and events around issues like diversity and inclusion, waste reduction, and sustainable food systems throughout the year.

The office is led by a core group of sustainability professionals, all of whom took very different pathways to their current career—and all of whom know first-hand how challenging it can be for students on a similar road. That’s why UB Sustainability partners with the Career Design Center on a series of events and opportunities to put students in direct contact with professionals working in sustainability roles to provide guidance, mentorship, and real-world experience. 

Partnership positions UB Sustainability to increase its impact.

Students aren’t the only ones to find immeasurable value in working with UB Sustainability—the office gains valuable insights that inform their work by interacting with tomorrow’s thought leaders, too. In-depth conversations with students help UB Sustainability keep an accurate pulse on what students think about certain topics on campus, like food waste or diversity and inclusion. Those talks help UB Sustainability fulfill its mission and focus efforts on what’s important to the UB campus community as a whole. 

Careers in public health call for professionals who can apply their knowledge and skill quickly and accurately to address the needs in front of them. It’s a big reason why Jessica Kruger, PhD, MCHES, embeds career readiness directly into her curriculum—to help prepare her students to apply classroom theory into career search practice. In a field that encompasses such a wide variety of job roles that can include research, health education, insurance, or emerging roles in the cannabis industry, it’s essential that students feel prepared to follow their own right career direction.

Dr. Kruger teaches primarily undergraduate 200-level public health courses and has partnered with the Career Design Center to connect students with career resources for the past five years. She invites Career Design Center staff to talk to her students about career resources, incorporates career readiness activities like writing cover letters into course work, assigns Career Design Center tool homework like using the 24/7 instant resume review, and welcomes alumni from previous years to answer current students’ career questions in class.

“Career core competencies fit really naturally into my courses,” she says. “Students learn how to apply course theories to their future work, and how to talk about that knowledge in an interview. In teaching we care about transparency—and these resources underscore why we’re learning what we’re learning.”

Students love the extra boost. They’ve told Dr. Kruger that integrated career readiness shows how much faculty care about their overall success and what they do next in life—and that they wished there was more career prep offered earlier and in more classes. To that end, Dr. Kruger works with new faculty colleagues to incorporate Career Design Center resources into their syllabi, too, and helps identify practical areas to pair career learning modules or tools with material faculty members are already teaching.

Once students have begun the work on things like writing a resume or searching for internships, Dr. Kruger will refer them to the Career Design Center for more focused one-on-one guidance to fine-tune each student’s specific job goals and activities to get there.

“I can tell them to go get internships, but not when or what’s in the rest of their career trajectory,” she explains. “I like to be the initial connector and tell them about the resources that are available, but the Career Design Center staff has the expertise and time to bring them closer to the finish line.”

Dr. Kruger believes that partnerships between university faculty, staff, and the Career Design Center are essential to reach as many of UB’s 30,000 students as possible in a collective effort to bolster success after graduation.