Experiential learning in Environment

We asked six Environment students to share the memorable moments from their field experiences, and how these once-in-a-lifetime experiences have helped to shape their aspirations for the future.

Matthew (he/him), Geography and Environmental Management student

In the summers of 2022, 2023, and 2025, I worked as a severe storm damage surveyor with an organization called the Canadian Severe Storms Lab (CSSL). This position involved travelling to towns and cities that had been impacted by tornadoes and hail swaths that occurred across Canada. The first year that I worked there, I had one experience on a tornado damage survey that completely changed the way I looked at geography.  

On July 23, 2022, a series of tornadoes, including one of EF-2 intensity, ripped through the community of St-Adolphe-d'Howard, Quebec. I, along with a few of my co-workers, was sent to survey the damage that this tornado had caused. Due to the relatively quiet nature of the tornado season in July of that year, it was the first time that I had ever been sent to survey. Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw when I got there. Entire sections of forest were levelled by powerful winds. Powerlines were snapped like twigs. Roofs were ripped off houses and pieces of them were thrown many metres away into valleys below the rolling Laurentides. It was pandemonium! The only tree left standing in the worst-damaged area was wrapped in a white tarp that gently waved back and forth in the now calm wind. Like a white flag, it indicated the town's surrender to the tornadoes that hit that day. 

While surveying the significant damage that these tornadoes had caused, I learned a valuable lesson. In high school and early on in university, I looked at physical geography as a largely process-based study. I enjoyed learning about how landscapes and weather phenomena formed, as well as their impacts on things like ecosystems and water quality. The tornadoes in St-Adolphe-d'Howard showed me that my field of study was more than just landforms, landscapes, and weather. It was about how those phenomena impacted people and how they could change people's lives in a matter of minutes. This experience inspired me to take a more active role in the field of natural disaster research and learn how we can better adapt to natural disasters like tornadoes, hail, and hurricanes. 

Kirsty (she/her), Climate and Environmental Change student

During my two-month field course in Ghana, my perspective on my field and future career changed completely. The three main topics of the course were plastic pollution, climate change, and water security. Going in, I felt confident about the first two, but I quickly realized how little I truly understood about the third. I expected discussions about droughts and access to clean drinking water, but my outlook on environmental challenges completely shifted when I learned that water security is also a gender issue. Women disproportionately suffer from a lack of water access and sanitation infrastructure. They are often responsible for collecting water for their families — sometimes walking for hours to unsafe or unreliable sources — and face the physical and emotional burden when that water is insufficient. Many women give up their own drinking water for their families’ hygiene needs and are often blamed or even abused for not “fulfilling their duty.” I also came to understand how something as simple as access to a safe bathroom is a daily concern for many women in northern Ghana.

Organizations often try to address this issue by building wells closer to communities, but I learned that the situation is far more complex. Those long walks for water are also moments of connection — women talk, share, and support one another during them. Their social bonds are woven into the very structure of this hardship. This experience taught me that environmental challenges can never be separated from the social dynamics of the people they affect. That realization has reshaped my academic and career goals: I now hope to continue exploring how environmental issues intersect with gender studies, and to contribute to solutions that truly improve the lives of women globally. I am deeply grateful for this field course and the eye-opening lessons it offered.

Liz (she/her), Environment, Resources and Sustainability student

In the spring of 2024, I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to travel to Cape Town, South Africa with other students from the Faculty of Environment. The entire trip was an unforgettable experience, but the part that resonated the most with me was when we got to snorkel at Cape Point Nature Reserve. We had a crew of marine biologists guiding us through the experience and teaching us about all the different plants and animals we were seeing. We got to swim through a beautiful kelp forest and observe fish, sea urchins, and starfish, and even saw some Gully sharks, which are quite uncommon! Getting to experience the incredible marine biodiversity of South Africa reignited my passion for the ocean; I can’t even begin to describe how exhilarating it was to see the sharks up so close. After that moment, I knew that I wanted to continue learning about marine ecosystems and how to protect them. I started by taking ERS 221 - Oceans Sustainability, in the fall term of that year. It quickly became one of my favourite courses ever! Now, in my fourth and final year here at Waterloo, I am looking into continuing my studies in the ocean by pursuing graduate studies in marine ecology out in British Columbia. I owe it all to the marine biologists in South Africa who showed us the beautiful ecosystem at Cape Point!

Mariam (she/her), Environment and Business student

In Environment and Business (ENBUS), we are always taking a wide variety of courses and have many opportunities to take electives, or work towards diplomas and minors. One elective I took aligned with a third-year theme for ENBUS and was called ENBUS 304 - Circular Economy. This course was a step up from a mandatory second year course called ENBUS 204 - Industrial Ecology. In this course we looked at how to make our society go from "Take-Make-Break (Dispose)" model to a society that uses the "Make-Consume-Enrich" model for biological materials, and the "Make-Use-Return" model for technical materials.

One thing that really stood out to me during this class was a trip to the Waterloo Landfill to get an up-close look behind the scenes at where your garbage goes once it's been collected at the curb. We got a tour from the Supervisor of Waste Collection and Diversion and spent two hours learning about the landfill and its full operations. From the landfill cell to the compost bunkers, and the hawks that keep pests under control, we got a complete view of what it takes to make sure our waste is contained. This then started a full circle moment for me, as I ended up doing a four-month Waste Collection and Diversion co-op with the Region of Waterloo from May to August 2025, where I educated residents on waste collection in the Region and informed them about the upcoming automatic waste collection system as well! This experience showed me about the future careers I could have, and how quickly I could use the concepts I learned in the classroom.

Alexis (she/her), Climate and Environmental Change student

My recent co-op experience was in the Canadian Rockies, and it was unique because I was not only a research assistant for graduate students, but I became a researcher myself. My name is Alexis, and I'm in my fourth year of Climate and Environmental Change. I've read so many papers that involve experimental design, statistical analyses and data collection. Sometimes they're hard to digest, and you don't fully understand the amount of effort and research that went into them. This summer, being part of a research team was truly inspiring. Seeing all their planning and initial research coming to life through their fieldwork and data collection made the moment feel raw and real. The grad students were not (yet!) experts, they're students just like me who had questions they wanted answers to, and they dedicated themselves to answering them. It felt special to be able to contribute to their projects. It made me feel like I should be more curious and ask more questions — it made me feel like I could be a researcher too. I think that during our degrees, it can be easy to lose our sense of hope a little bit. It's so easy to get caught up in the academics and forget about the real world outside, especially for me. As we're studying the implications of climate change on not only the natural environment, but the human environment and evaluating the socio-political, socio-economic, and socio-ecological impacts, it can be exhausting. But being in the field, contributing to a research project that someone not too much older than me has put together to answer questions about how upland forest harvesting is impacting carbon flux in a downhill wetland, or collecting data to model alpine forests, it felt like I was contributing to something real. I was in the real world!

Over the course of my co-op in the Canadian Rockies, I developed my undergrad thesis project. I became a researcher. I proposed the idea to my supervisor, collected my own data, and I took it back to Waterloo. The fieldwork was not sunshine and rainbows, but I learned so, so much about research, academia, teamwork, and perseverance. If you want to pursue a degree in environmental studies but are afraid, or your parents don’t understand the job opportunities, just know that there is so much more than you think. I can tell you that you may not find your passion right away. But you must not be afraid to try new things, get out of your comfort zone, or apply to jobs that you don't think you're qualified for. Because truly, the most rewarding experiences come from hard work. And this co-op showed me that my love of the outdoors can be made into a career. That made me feel like all my hard work in academia will pay off, and I can make my career into something that I love.

Francesca (she/her), Environment and Business student

In August 2023, I embarked on a two-week trip to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia for a field course entitled The Ocean, Human Impacts, and Sustainability. As an Environment and Business student, I enrolled in the course to fill in knowledge gaps I had surrounding ocean ecology. Little did I know that I would return with new career aspirations and a philosophy that would shape the rest of my undergraduate experience.

During the field course, we received behind-the-scenes access to key organizations that are shaping the future of our oceans. We spoke with researchers from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the Bedford Institute of Oceanography who dedicate their careers to collecting the data that informs national sustainability policies. At the same time, we toured industrial facilities, such as the Irving Shipyard and Cooke Seafood, who both depend on and impact the ocean ecosystem. In between these lectures and site-visits, we had the opportunity to visit iconic tourist destinations such as Peggy’s Cove, Lunenburg, and the Bay of Fundy. Here, I had the opportunity to meet and speak with local community members who shared the bittersweet realities of living in destinations shaped by tourism and industries that depend on the ocean. In the Environment and Business program, students are considered “translators”, taking scientific sustainability information and making it meaningful to industry practitioners. This field course experience piqued my interest in applying these skills in the tourism industry, where sustainability will be essential to support the local environments and communities that make these travel experiences possible.

In addition to providing my class with ecological knowledge about the oceans, our professors shared invaluable career advice. In our very first class, we learned that the Canadian oceanographer A.G. Huntsman first earned a medical degree, but never used it, instead pursuing a career as a fisheries biologist. Two days later, we heard from Marc Trudel from St. Andrews Biological Station, who emphasized that all knowledge is useful: information that may seem irrelevant to our path often strengthens our work. These lessons taught me to embrace the winding path of a life-long learner. Since this field course, I have pursued a diversity of opportunities, from building tiny homes in Ontario to researching carbon removal in Austria. These experiences have led me to pursue graduate opportunities in the sustainable tourism sector. I would encourage every student to take part in a field course, as it offers an unmatched opportunity to connect classroom theory to real-world scenarios and learn more about yourself during the process.