Environmental Studies Program, Tufts University

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Environmental Studies Program, Tufts University

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We are the undergraduate environmental studies academic program at Tufts University.

Follow us for updates on our student work, public lectures, and environmental news. The Environmental Studies Program (ENVS) is a multidisciplinary undergraduate program dedicated to: studying our natural surroundings; designs that minimize degradation of those surroundings; and providing the social and political tools to preserve and improve the environment. The program trains students in social sciences, natural sciences, engineering, and humanities. We offer 5 track majors, including Environmental Science; Sustainability, Policy and Equity; Environmental Communications: Food Systems and the Environment; and a Self-Designed major with Advisor. We also offer an Environmental Science and Policy minor specific for Engineering students. In addition to our academic programs, ENVS has a weekly Lunch & Learn Lecture series that is open to students, faculty, staff, and the public; and we periodically have major traveling lecturers, specialized informations sessions for student job seekers, and publish a bi-monthly environmental newsletter. Student videos and artwork can be viewed on our YouTube, Vimeo and Flicker sites. Visit us at as.tufts.edu/environmentalstudies to view the many things going on at Tufts ENVS.

10/28/2026

Happy Halloween! Junior Bo Speirs interned with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute to study bats in the field.

10/27/2026

Looking for a job on campus? Interested in running the ENVS Department's social media, creating graphics or sending the weekly newsletters? Apply for these intern positions with the department for the spring semester!

https://tufts.joinhandshake.com/public/jobs/11780585?utm_source=web&utm_campaign=job_share&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_content=stu-copy_link-job_page

https://tufts.joinhandshake.com/public/jobs/11758902?utm_source=web&utm_campaign=job_share&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_content=stu-copy_link-job_page

10/26/2026

Join us this Thursday, October 29, in Curtis Hall (with free lunch!) or virtually via Zoom for a lecture from Dr. Nick Kawa, Ohio State University.

What happens when the modern toilet goes flush? Where does this waste go and what eventually becomes of it? Who is responsible for its management and who is implicated in its afterlives? And is it all just waste or might it be something more? This talk, based on Kawa’s new book of the same title, draws on long-term ethnographic research in the American Midwest to investigate these questions while also considering more radical alternative approaches to sanitation and ways of relating to bodily excess.

This lecture is sponsored by the Environmental Studies Program and the University Ecologies Project. Three copies of "After the Flush" will be raffled off among in-person attendees.

https://as.tufts.edu/environmentalstudies/news-events/hoch-cunningham-lecture-series

10/22/2026

Looking to hone your skills for a green careers job search? Check out this Green Corps online workshop next week! You will also get the chance to learn more about job and leadership opportunities with Green Corps, the country’s most respected training program for environmental organizing.

10/21/2026

This week’s ENVS Internship Adventure is Evan Kelly, the Justin Packs Memorial Internship Recipient at Mass Clean Energy Center!

10/21/2026

This week's ENVS Internship Adventure is Evan Kelly, the Justin Packs Memorial Internship Recipient at Mass Clean Energy Center!

10/19/2026

Join us this Thursday, October 22, in Curtis Hall (with free lunch!) or virtually via Zoom for a lecture from Dr. Juliette Rooney-Varga.

Society currently faces many, interconnected and accelerating sustainability challenges. We also have many innovative solutions that, if rapidly scaled, could help address these challenges. But most solutions do not scale or, if they do, only do so at rates that cannot keep up with intensifying problems. What if scaling could be accelerated through strategies that work? We’ll use an interactive, dynamic model of community-based scaling approaches to explore when this strategy is needed, how it works, and why it can be far more effective than outreach, advertising, or word-of-mouth scaling approaches. We’ll explore how community-based scaling has been used to innovations in sustainability education, regenerative agriculture, and political movements. The model and its initial application are described by Rooney-Varga et al. (2024).

This lecture is sponsored by the Environmental Studies Program and the Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning.

https://as.tufts.edu/environmentalstudies/news-events/hoch-cunningham-lecture-series

10/15/2026

Check out the The Tufts Daily article on Mary Mattingly, who spoke at Hoch Cunningham lectures earlier this semester! You can find the article linked here and watch her lecture on the Environmental Studies YouTube channel.

https://www.tuftsdaily.com/article/2026/10/vxpwun6ndp1b4bf

10/14/2026

Some students work with a Tufts professor and their as an internship! Senior Shani Dar studied Miyawaki forests with ENVS professor Ben Davies over the summer.

10/12/2026

Join us this Thursday, October 15, in Curtis Hall (with free lunch!) or virtually via Zoom for a lecture from Dr. Davis Shane Lowry. 3 copies of "Lumbee Pipelines" will be raffled off among in-person attendees.

In the United States, non-Indigenous (non-American Indian) peoples articulate this environmental jeopardy within the privileges of stolen American Indian lands and worlds. Their articulations of climate change and various other related phenomena (e.g., data centers) are both out of conversation with American Indian peoples and non-responsible to the sovereignties and complexities of American Indian nations and communities as they (American Indian peoples) remain the preeminent sufferers of environmental poisoning and dismemberment within the United States. Using examples from his research in the Lumbee community, in/around MIT, and (increasingly) in Maine, David will begin to place American Indian peoples up front within communicative and policy processes that address environmental poisoning. This placement, which he labels “pipeline pedagogy”, shines a bright light on American Indian peoples as both the first (and continual) victims of environmental poisoning and key stakeholders in business and political processes that sometimes/often allow (and depend on) that poisoning.

This lecture is sponsored by the Environmental Studies Program and the University Ecologies Project.

https://as.tufts.edu/environmentalstudies/news-events/hoch-cunningham-lecture-series

Address

506 Boston Avenue, Bromfield-Pearson Hall, 2nd Floor
Medford, MA
02155

Website

http://as.tufts.edu/environmentalstudies

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