Four students pose with professor Elly Engle in front of a vegetable garden at the McDaniel Environmental Center.

Environmental Studies Department

McDaniel Environmental Studies prepares students to become leaders, entrepreneurs, and environmental professionals with the knowledge and skills needed to solve environmental challenges and create a better world.

Environmental Studies – Policy and Management Specialization: For students who want to support the sustainable use and conservation of the environment through policy and management.
Environmental Studies – Environmental Biology Specialization: For students who want to investigate the inner workings and biological science of the environment.
Environmental Studies – Earth System Science Specialization: For students eager to explore how complex systems interact to affect various aspects of life on our planet.
Environmental Studies Major/Minor: A thoughtful overview of environmental problem solving and management, sustainability, and biological principles.

Faculty Q&A Elly Engle, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Environmental Studies

Elly Engle, assistant professor of Environmental Studies, was recently recognized with the Early Career Award from the Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences. Engle discussed her down-to-earth approach to hands-on learning in the campus gardens, the Agrifood Program, Food Fellows, and plans for a local seed library.

How McDaniel expert Elly Engle teaches equity and sustainability through garden…

Photo of professor Margaret Christie sitting on the bank of a lake.

Faculty Q&A Margaret Christie, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies

As a micropaleontologist, Margaret Christie looks at small organisms and parts of organisms to determine what the environment was like in the past. As a professor of Environmental Studies, Christie primarily studies wetland and coastal environments, but she has worked on projects reconstructing sea level, earthquake recurrence intervals, and pollution histories. She is currently working to restore wetlands at the McDaniel Environmental Center. She teaches Climatology, Environmental Geology, and Science of Soil, Water, and Air as well as courses on Wetland Ecology and Environmental Problem Solving.

Margaret Christie, Ph.D Q&A

McDaniel College alumna Ashley Pritchard '16 with dolphin

Environmental Studies alum sparks action to preserve the planet through education

The best part of Ashley Pritchard’s job as education coordinator at Marineland in St. Augustine, Florida — a job that often finds her swimming in crystal clear water with playful dolphins and other marine life — is motivating young people to make a difference, however small, in the health of the planet.

Read more about an Environmental Studies alum

Meet Graduates of the Environmental Studies Department

We're proud to call these recent graduates alumni, and prouder still to share a selection of their stories here – told as only they can tell them, in their own words.

Bethany Rippon
Class of 2022 / Environmental Studies

Jackie Fahrenholz
Class of 2020 / Environmental Studies - Environmental Policy and Management, Environmental Studies

Lauren Portis
Class of 2024 / Environmental Studies - Environmental Policy and Management, Environmental Studies, Biology

Kylie Baker
Class of 2023 / Environmental Studies, Political Science

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Benjamin Steinhurst

Associate Professor and Department Chair