Alumni and Career Prospects

Alumni

To date, thirteen MESPOM classes have graduated and two more batches are currently working diligently while enrolled at the partner institutions. MESPOM graduates have found jobs in Europe and their home countries around the world. MESPOM graduates are employed in private companies, academic institutions, think tanks, consultancy organisations, the United Nations and other public international organizations and within the NGO sector. Several alumni are enrolled in PhD programs.

More than one-half (55%) of 214 MESPOM alumni, whose careers we analysed work with cross-cutting environmental issues, which require broad environmental competencies. The remaining 45% of MESPOM graduates work in areas almost equally split between energy and climate change and biodiversity conservation and ecosystems management, the two areas currently emphasised in MESPOM curriculum.

Career prospects

Supporting MESPOM students in their individual career decisions is fundamental part of MESPOM education based on the recognition that very few of our students have linear career paths.

"In my classes and pastoral mentoring groups students are challenged not only intellectually, but  at a deeper level of their own identities to figure out, "what kind of environmentalist am I?" Thus, they are plunged into fundamental questions about their own world views and the implications for what they want to do with their lives. It is not uncommon for people to change their value system over the course of the class and determine, for instance, to stop looking for jobs at international organizations and to go to work for a local NGO instead. Or the reverse. This combination of intellectual and emotional engagement has always made this a very lively class." 
/Assoc.Prof.Alexios Antypas, CEU/

"In 'Applied Research in Preventative Environmental Management', we create conversations  between senior researchers and practitioners in the field and students to explore state-of-the art, which makes it easier for students to both clarify and navigate their career and intellectual interests into feasible and practical research projects during their studies."
/Dr. Tareq Emtairah, IIIEE at LU/

 A typical MESPOM class is a mix of (a) engineers and natural scientists seeking to work in policy or management positions (about 30-40% of students), (b) students with backgrounds in social sciences and humanities (about 30-40% of students) seeking to learn about scientific and technical aspects of environmental protection and (c) environmental practitionerswho seek to supplement their practical experience with formal knowledge about the environment. By consciously mixing these different categories in one classroom, encouraging their learning from each other and structuring the curriculum in such a way that it enables planning individually tailored careers, MESPOM has contributed to hundreds of successful environmental careers.

Updated: October 28, 2019