Professor of Environmental Engineering

A Professor of Environmental Engineering occupies one of the more genuinely varied positions in professional life: part researcher, part instructor, part grant writer, part mentor, and part institutional citizen. The proportion of time devoted to each depends on where a professor works, what rank they hold, and how actively they pursue external funding.

At a research university, the week rarely follows a predictable pattern. A Tuesday might start with a graduate seminar on membrane bioreactors, move to a two-hour meeting with PhD students reviewing field data from a contaminated groundwater site, and end with revising the specific aims section of an NSF CAREER proposal due in three weeks. A Thursday involves undergraduate office hours, a departmental faculty meeting on curriculum revision for ABET review, and an hour of manuscript edits on a journal submission. Summer looks different again — no teaching, but often more intensive research and grant writing, with field campaigns, conference travel, and the self-funded summer salary that active PIs depend on.

The teaching side encompasses designing courses that connect environmental engineering fundamentals — mass balances, reaction kinetics, transport phenomena — to real regulatory and infrastructure contexts. Students at the undergraduate level need to leave with enough practical grounding to sit for the PE exam and contribute to consulting or agency work. Graduate students need deeper modeling and experimental skills. Keeping coursework current with evolving EPA regulations, emerging contaminants like PFAS and microplastics, and new computational tools is an ongoing requirement.

The research side is where most faculty spend their intellectual energy and where tenure decisions are made. Environmental engineering faculty typically maintain a working laboratory — water chemistry benches, pilot-scale treatment systems, sensor arrays, or computational clusters — and a group of two to six graduate students pursuing thesis or dissertation research. Funding that laboratory, supporting those students, and publishing the resulting work is the economic and reputational engine of a research career.

Service obligations are real but often underestimated by new faculty. Departmental committees, accreditation reviews, journal editorial boards, proposal review panels for NSF or EPA, and professional society leadership all pull on faculty time. Senior faculty carry more of this load, but assistant professors who want tenure recommendations from influential senior colleagues find it necessary to contribute visibly from early on.

Education:

• PhD in environmental engineering, civil engineering (environmental specialty), chemical engineering, or environmental science required
• MS in the same or adjacent field is standard as an intermediate degree, though some PhD programs accept students directly from BS
• Postdoctoral fellowship of 1–3 years strongly preferred at R1 institutions; often essential for competitive applications at top-20 programs

Licensure:

• Professional Engineer (PE) license is not universally required but is valued for programs with strong ABET focus and for faculty teaching design courses
• Some states require PE licensure to sign off on student projects in regulatory contexts

Research profile expectations at hire:

• For assistant professor positions at R1 universities: 4–10 peer-reviewed publications, at least one first-author paper in a high-impact journal, a clearly articulated independent research agenda, and evidence of competitive grant potential
• For positions at teaching-focused institutions: fewer publications required; evidence of effective teaching and student mentorship weighted more heavily
• Demonstrated expertise in one or more active subfields: PFAS remediation, potable water reuse, stormwater management, air quality modeling, environmental fate of emerging contaminants, or climate-resilient infrastructure

Technical skills:

• Analytical chemistry methods: ICP-MS, GC/MS, LC-MS/MS, ion chromatography for water and soil sample analysis
• Process modeling: EPANET, SWMM, MODFLOW, AERMOD depending on specialization
• Computational methods: Python, MATLAB, or R for data analysis and contaminant transport modeling
• Laboratory management: QA/QC protocols, hazardous materials handling (EPA and OSHA standards), instrument calibration and maintenance

Teaching and mentoring:

• Prior teaching experience as a graduate TA, postdoctoral instructor, or visiting lecturer
• Familiarity with ABET criterion 5 student outcomes for environmental engineering programs
• Experience co-advising or advising graduate students through thesis milestones

Professional standing:

• Active membership in ASCE, AWWA, WEF, SETAC, or ACS Environmental Chemistry Division
• Track record of conference presentations and peer review contributions

The academic job market in environmental engineering is competitive but meaningfully better than in many humanities and social science fields. Environmental engineering sits at the intersection of genuine societal urgency — PFAS contamination, aging water infrastructure, stormwater management under intensifying rainfall events — and consistent federal research funding. That combination has kept faculty hiring modestly positive even through periods when university hiring overall was contracting.

Federal policy has amplified demand in recent years. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 directed roughly $55 billion to water infrastructure, creating downstream research and workforce needs that universities are responding to. EPA's designation of PFOA and PFOS as hazardous substances under CERCLA has generated an enormous demand for remediation expertise that is flowing into academic research programs. Climate adaptation — particularly around stormwater, combined sewer overflows, and drinking water supply under drought conditions — has become a fundable priority at NSF and EPA simultaneously.

The faculty hiring pipeline depends on retirement rates and new position creation. Retirements of faculty hired during the infrastructure-investment era of the 1970s and 1980s continue to open positions, particularly at large land-grant universities with established civil and environmental engineering programs. New position creation is slower, constrained by state budget pressures at public universities and endowment performance at private institutions.

For candidates entering the market, specialization matters. Faculty searches increasingly target specific expertise: computational environmental modeling, electrochemical treatment technologies, environmental health and equity, or one-health approaches to waterborne disease. A candidate whose research agenda maps clearly onto an identified departmental gap has a substantially better chance than someone with generic environmental engineering credentials.

Career progression follows a clear path: assistant professor, then associate professor with tenure (typically at year six), then full professor. At research universities, associate professor is not a resting point — continued funding, publication, and graduate student production are expected through the full professor promotion. Named chairs and endowed professorships represent the senior career ceiling, accompanied by significant salary premiums above the base ranges.

Outside of tenure-track academia, environmental engineering faculty credentials open doors to senior consulting roles, EPA or state environmental agency science positions, national laboratory appointments, and executive roles at water utilities. The PhD plus research record is transferable in ways that are relatively rare across academic fields.

Dear Search Committee,

I am writing to apply for the Assistant Professor position in Environmental Engineering at [University]. My research focuses on advanced oxidation processes for PFAS destruction in drinking water matrices, and I am completing a postdoctoral fellowship at [Institution] where I have been the lead investigator on an EPA STAR-funded study examining electrochemical treatment of PFAS-contaminated groundwater at industrial sites.

During my postdoc I submitted two first-author manuscripts — one currently in revision at Environmental Science & Technology and one under review at Water Research — and contributed to a successful NSF CBET proposal as a named co-investigator. I have developed what I believe is a fundable independent research program centered on electrochemical oxidation kinetics and byproduct formation during PFAS treatment, and I have a near-complete CAREER proposal targeting the next February deadline.

On the teaching side, I designed and delivered a graduate module on advanced treatment technologies for [Professor]'s Water Quality Engineering course last spring — twelve sessions covering membrane filtration, UV/AOP, and ion exchange. Student feedback emphasized the connection between bench-scale fundamentals and full-scale regulatory context, which is the balance I try to maintain. I am prepared to teach your existing Water Treatment and Environmental Chemistry courses at the undergraduate level and to develop a graduate elective on emerging contaminant remediation that does not currently exist in your curriculum.

I would welcome the opportunity to visit [University] and discuss how my research program could complement the department's existing strengths in water infrastructure and environmental modeling.

Thank you for your consideration.

[Your Name]