As commencements get underway at colleges and universities across Massachusetts, many graduate students in environmental science face uncertain futures.
In recent months, the Trump administration has clawed back funding for research, slashed scientific agencies and reshaped climate policy. Federal officials said their aim is to reduce spending, increase efficiency and focus the government around President Trump’s priorities, such immigration and the economy.
The moves are complicating opportunities for these students at a critical moment when they’re entering the workforce.
The industry changes shadowed Kathryn Atherton as she went out to gather data for her doctoral dissertation. She walked up to a row of trees lining a busy street in Boston’s South End, tape measure in hand. The trees ranged from newly-planted and skinny, to weathered and heftier.
“Let’s see what this one looks like,” Atherton said as she approached an oak tree.
Atherton, a Ph.D. student in bioinformatics at Boston University, wrapped the tape measure around its trunk and logged the tree’s diameter in her phone: “52.4 centimeters,” she said as she typed. “Awesome.”
Atherton is researching how trees grow in cities and how this affects planting efforts in urban areas.
She has dreamed of working for the government for years, and planned to apply for scientific fellowships with federal agencies after completing her degree this fall.
“ I really want to make sure that our science, our basic science especially, is applied to our society,” Atherton said.
But a temporary federal hiring freeze and future limits on recruitment put in place by the Trump administration have all but eliminated many of the pathways Atherton was hoping to follow. Now, she’s looking at positions in the private sector or continuing research.
“ I’ve trained for 10 years to get to this point, and all of a sudden this election has entirely derailed everything that I’ve ever wanted to do,” Atherton said. “Changing the field, the whole field that I want to work in, could be the proverbial flap of a butterfly’s wing that could entirely change the rest of my career.”
‘The void’
James Garner will graduate with a Ph.D. in environmental conservation at the University of Massachusetts Amherst next week. He spent six years studying how to make the tools used to protect migratory fish more accessible to conservationists and local officials.
Garner successfully defended his dissertation in April. But he lost an offer for a research position with the U.S. Geological Survey when the new administration came in.
“ It’s been bittersweet — like peak achievement in my life, tainted with the job market for my field collapsing in front of me,” he said.
Now, he’s waiting for other potential employers to call him back.
“ The future is more bleak than I’ve ever experienced, and it’s a super depressing time to be a scientist,” Garner said. “It was a point of pride as an American, like we have strong science programs. This is something that is a core tenet of our values. And now that seems to have gone away.”
Sophia Darsch, a master’s student in sustainability science at UMass Amherst, also graduates next week and is unsure about her future employment.
“It’s just been a lot of putting applications into the void and hoping that you get an email back from somebody,” Darsch said.
As a student of environmental and climate policies, Darsch said she worked to understand the problem of climate change and its potential solutions. “And then to see the federal government doing the exact opposite of that is really tough,” she said.
Darsch said she went to graduate school because she wanted to work in local government or the nonprofit sector.
“I think it’s one of those career fields that you go into because you’re passionate about it and because you’re hopeful that you can make a change,” she said.
Market changes
Many of the nonprofit groups, local governments and federal agencies, that usually hire recent graduates are facing an uncertain future themselves.
The Trump administration has frozen or canceled millions of dollars in federal grants awarded to state climate and environmental nonprofits. Some of the cuts have been challenged in court. There are also fewer positions for scientists in the federal government after rounds of resignations, layoffs and proposed budget reductions.
Max Holmes, president and CEO of the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Falmouth, said because the center receives a range of funding, it can support some scientific positions even with federal cuts. But he said there are still many unknowns.
“I understand the concern of graduate students who are thinking about entering the workforce,” Holmes said. “There’s a lot of uncertainty in my world, and that means there’s a lot of uncertainty about what the job prospects will look like for them.”
One of his biggest worries is losing the pipeline of environmental scientists who can address pressing problems — especially climate change.
“That’s a terrible shame because, in my view, there is no more important issue than climate change,” Holmes said.
When asked about open positions for internships or research roles, the Environmental Protection Agency’s New England office pointed to the federal government’s hiring freeze.
The education office at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees many positions for students and recent graduates, did not respond to requests for comment about their open roles.
Trump administration officials have said the budget and personnel cuts at federal agencies are intended to reduce the reach of the federal government. They’ve also said they’re focused on boosting business, in part by easing environmental regulations and encouraging increased production of fuels like coal, oil and gas.
The strategy is troubling to Suriya Selvakumar, a UMass Amherst master’s student in sustainability, who wants to work in the offshore wind industry. He pursued a graduate degree to learn how to help with the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
“I’ve always wanted to be part of the solution,” he said.
But many developers have now paused projects because the Trump administration halted offshore wind permitting and issued stop-work orders. Selvakumar said one wind company cut an internship that he was interviewing for.
“It’s a little scary to see after spending all these years learning about what we can do, just as you enter the job market to see a lot of these markets and industries being attacked,” Selvakumar said.
He found a job for this summer at a company that works with entertainment venues to measure their climate pollution. Selvakumar said he’s still interested in working in offshore wind one day.
Some early career scientists said the administration’s positions on issues like energy and climate change have made them hesitant to work for the federal government.
Alicia Zhang said she turned down a job offer at the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center, a research arm of the federal government, following her successful Ph.D. dissertation defense at Boston University last month.
Zhang said she was unsure whether the work she’d do under this administration would align with her research interests in clean energy and equitable access to climate solutions. And she said she encountered challenges in publishing some of her research on renewable energy and the economy, which could signal future uncertainty in her field.
“ It’s disheartening because, you know, I spent like the last five years kind of doing this Ph.D. in order to have a career,” Zhang said.
Staying hopeful
Most students said they aren’t ready to give up, yet.
Katie Field, a master’s student in climate science and engineering at Northeastern University, said she sees reasons to remain hopeful.
“ The science is still going on, the research is still going on. Trump or this administration might be trying to stop it, but it’s still continuing,” she said. “And seeing people still fight to make the world a better place is also a comforting fact.”
Field will spend the next few months at a Wisconsin summer camp teaching kids and teenagers about nature. She’s looking forward to diving into the role.
“I just am excited to help kids find their love of nature and see why it needs to be protected,” she said, adding that she’ll worry about job hunting when she graduates next spring.
Garner, the Ph.D. candidate at UMass Amherst, compares the uncertainty in environmental fields at this moment to an ecological concept called a disturbance event. It’s a temporary shift in an ecosystem that results in drastic changes.
“One of the things that happens after every disturbance event is things become more stable through time. And I think that will happen again,” he said. “I don’t know the rate, I don’t know any of the details, but I do know that people being interested, having hope, is critical and important.”
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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