Founded in 1965, the Middlebury College Environmental Studies Program is the oldest undergraduate ES program in the United States.
Our program brings together a community of scholars and students engaged in the study of the human relationship to the environment from many different directions, across 24 departments on our campus. Our ten core faculty members and forty affiliated faculty colleagues together offer an interdisciplinary major and minor. Both foster in students a shared base of knowledge across the humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences.
Three introductory core courses, Natural Science and the Environment, Conservation and Environmental Policy, and Nature’s Meanings: The American Experience, prepare students to focus their studies in one of fourteen disciplines: Conservation Biology, Environmental Chemistry, Environmental Geology, Conservation Psychology, Environmental Economics, Environmental Policy, Geography, Human Ecology, Architecture and the Environment, Creative Arts, Environmental History, Environmental Nonfiction, Literature, Religion Philosophy and the Environment.
Two-thirds of all environmental studies majors study abroad for one semester at schools and programs across Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Australia. Our senior majors collaborate on a community-connected learning project in partnership with local environmental organizations in the Senior Seminar. ES majors and minors graduate with in-depth knowledge of the American story of human-environmental interaction, but also recognize that there are other stories, often strikingly different, from other parts of the world.
With 900+ graduates, our alums work in environmental fields as entrepreneurs, scientists, policy makers, scholars, consultants, teachers, volunteers, activists, and founders of non-profits.
