The environment is everywhere. So is the work.
The work is everywhere: the water we drink, the food we grow, the climate that decides where we can live. At the Faculty of Environment, we study the systems everyone depends on, and graduate ready to shape them.
Not sure where to start? Browse all 8 programs below.
Archaeology, Environmental Science, Geographic Information Science, Global Environmental Systems, Human Geography, Physical Geography, Resource and Environmental Management, Urban Worlds.
Want to see the work in action? Come see us in person at our Discovery Day.
Ask yourself
Where do you want to work?
Jump straight to where you want to work?
Read the land before it changes.
This is getting your hands dirty, out monitoring rivers, forests and coastlines. These are the careers that get called when something needs to be measured, protected or brought back.
Careers
Work as a fisheries biologist, hydrologist, water quality specialist, restoration ecologist, hydrogeologist, parks manager and more.
Impact
Predict how much water is coming, and warn the people in its path. Test the water and decide if it is safe to drink, swim, or fish. Manage the trails, the wildlife and the fire risk, so a wild place stays wild, no matter how many people fall in love with it.
Programs
Explore how programs like Environmental Science, Global Environmental Systems, Resource and Environmental Management and Physical Geography can lead you to this work.
Turn data into decisions that matter.
This is where raw data, satellite images, field samples, location data, becomes a map or model someone else can act on: a city siting a new hospital, a crew responding to a wildfire, a scientist tracking a fish population before it disappears.
Careers
Work as a GIS analyst, geospatial software developer, impact assessment coordinator, environmental data analyst, remote sensing analyst and more.
Impact
Turn raw location data into the map that tells a city where to put the next hospital, road, or park. Map where a disease is moving through a city, and how many days you have to get ahead of it. Write the software behind the tools that track a wildfire in real time, so crews know where to send help before it reaches someone's home.
Programs
Explore how programs like Geographic Information Science, Environmental Science, Global Environmental Systems, Resource and Environmental Management, Human Geography, Urban Worlds and Physical Geography can lead you to this work.
Steer decisions before the damage is done.
This is getting ahead of the damage instead of cleaning up after it: reading hazards, and building the plans, policy and response that keep a community standing when the climate stops cooperating.
Careers
Work as a geoscientist, climate policy manager, emergency planning coordinator, risk analyst, climatologist/meteorologist and more.
Impact
Read a slope before it slides onto a highway, or a river before it floods a town. Plan the first 48 hours after a earthquake hits, the difference between chaos and people knowing where to go. Turn a city's climate promise into real bike lanes and buildings that use less energy, not just another press release.
Programs
Explore how programs like Archaeology, Environmental Science, Global Environmental Systems, Resource and Environmental Management, Human Geography, Urban Worlds and Physical Geography can lead you to this work.
Read the past to shape the present.
This is where the past gets read for what it can still tell us, from a dig site to a lab to a courtroom, so a community gets to know its own history, not someone else's version of it.
Careers
Work as an archaeologist, forensic scientist, heritage consultant, museum curator, scientific journalist and more.
Impact
Stand between a community's buried history and a project that has no idea it is there. Build the exhibit that helps a museum visitor care about a community they previously knew nothing about. Examine human remains, and get the answer right, the kind that decides whether the right person is charged, or the wrong one walks free.
Programs
Explore how programs like Archaeology, Human Geography and Resource and Environmental Management can lead you to this work.
Shape the systems people live inside every day.
This is the everyday stuff: buses, housing, neighbourhoods, the systems that either get people to work, to school, to a doctor, or leave them stuck. If you've ever asked why something in your city works, or doesn't, this is that career.
Careers
Work as an urban planner, transportation planner, contaminated sites officer, housing policy analyst, health services planner and more.
Impact
Turn a housing plan into homes that actually get built, in a city that does not have enough of them. Figure out where the bus needs to go, to help as many people get where they need to go, with little emissions possible. Turn contaminated industrial land back into somewhere people can actually live. Map where clinics and care need to be, so no one has to drive hours to see a doctor.
Programs
Explore how programs like Resource and Environmental Management, Human Geography, Urban Worlds and Global Environmental Systems can lead you to this work.
Power the world without setting it on fire.
This is where BC designs the energy system it will run on for the next hundred years: clean, accountable, and built to last. The careers below are the ones building it, and making sure it stays that way.
Careers
Work as a corporate sustainability analyst, food systems planner, government affairs and partnerships lead, environmental consultant, renewable energy designer, natural resource specialist and more.
Impact
Make sure a company's climate promises add up to a future people can actually live in. Work on how a region actually feeds itself, so a shock in the supply chain does not mean empty shelves. Design the wind, solar or hydrogen system that replaces the one still burning diesel or coal. Get an energy company and a government to actually agree on the deal that gets a clean-fuel plant built.
Programs
Explore how programs like Environmental Science, Global Environmental Systems, Resource and Environmental Management, Human Geography, Urban Worlds and Physical Geography can lead you to this work.
Study at SFU's Faculty of Environment. Work anywhere.
Archaeology
Human Geography
Environmental Science
Physical Geography
Geographic Information Science
Resource & Environmental Management
Global Environmental Systems
Urban Worlds