You teach future engineers to clean water, manage waste, and protect the environment — in the lecture hall and the lab — while pursuing research that pushes the field. Teaching and discovery aimed at a livable planet.
The role blends lecturing, running a research lab, advising students, and chasing grants and publications. You move between classroom, lab, and writing, on the academic calendar. Teaching and research compete for your time — and much of the reward is watching a student grasp a hard concept, or a result that might actually help.
What surprises people is how much is grant-writing and politics — funding shapes everything, and the path to tenure is long and pressured. Publish-or-perish is real, student demands are constant, and the field's urgency can clash with academia's pace. Industry often pays far more, which tugs at retention.
It fits someone knowledgeable, self-driven, and energized by mentoring. If you want a steady schedule or hate the funding grind, academia can frustrate. But if you care about environmental problems — and shaping the engineers who'll tackle them — the combination tends to be genuinely rewarding, year after year.
Don't do Truest if you aren't ready
to invest in yourself and your career.
Where this role sits in the broader career landscape — and where it can take you.
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Roles like this one sit within a broader occupational category. The numbers below reflect that full landscape — helpful for context, but your specific experience will depend on level, specialty, and where you work.
Roles with similar work and overlapping career paths
View all Engineering roles →You teach future engineers to clean water, manage waste, and protect the environment — in the lecture hall and the lab — while pursuing research that pushes the field. Teaching and discovery aimed at a livable planet.
Median pay for an Environmental Engineering Professor is about $97K nationally, with the field ranging roughly from $51K to $201K depending on experience, employer, and metro (BLS).
Core skills for this role include Reading Comprehension, Instructing, Learning Strategies, Speaking, and Speaking.
Most people in this role hold a professional degree.
Employment in this field is projected to grow about 5.5% through 2034, with roughly 47,040 people working in it today (BLS).
Closely related roles include Engineering Director, Cosmetology Professor, and Science Professor.
Don't do Truest if you aren't ready
to invest in yourself and your career.