Environmental Geography and Outdoor Education

Care about the planet? Love being outdoors? Turn your passion into your profession.

Our Environmental Geography and Outdoor Education degree blends cutting-edge geographical science with hands-on training in leading outdoor adventures.

Gain the green skills employers are searching for. Green jobs are growing fast. Demand increased 8% in one year. That’s compared to just 0.5% growth across the wider UK job market (Deloitte, 2022).

Learn important Environmental Geography skills

On our Environmental Geography and Outdoor Education course you’ll:

• explore core issues in geography, human impacts on our planet and biogeography;

• develop skills such as Geographical Information Systems (GIS), statistical techniques and remote sensing;

• get hands-on field experience in mapping, surveying, monitoring, sampling, data collection, recording and interpreting field data;

• conduct scientific research covering contemporary biological and environmental sciences.

You'll benefit from our stunning biodiverse campus environment. It has diverse habitats that are used for learning, data collection and sampling.

Gain practical outdoor education training

Your outdoor education and learning is hands-on. You’ll:

• learn how to design, lead and deliver outdoor programmes with environmental and ecological learning outcomes,

• go on field trips to schools and other outdoor/ environmental education centres,

• plan and design outdoor activities to a range of learners from primary age children to adults.

Mountain or lowland outdoor leader training is a key part of the course. Our expert mountaineering instructors and outdoor specialists will teach you:

• outdoor leadership,

• mountain skills,

• environmental education.

There’s also the option to gain the Mountain or Lowland Leader Award, endorsed by the Mountain Training Association.

This is a physically demanding degree. You need to have a good level of health, fitness and mobility.

We ensure the Environmental Science and Outdoor Education course is industry relevant by working with closely with:

• Ardroy Outdoor Education Centre

• Active Stirling

• Glenmore Lodge Outdoor Adventure Centre

Practical fieldwork training

You’ll carry out lots of practical work on this degree in Environmental Geography and Outdoor Education. Fieldwork skills you'll gain include:

• environmental monitoring,

• fauna and flora identification,

• experimental design for environmental surveys,

• landscape history and management.

The course also offers the choice of two residential field trips:

• South Africa (10 days). Explore different physical and environmental processes and ecosystem functioning. You’ll also learn about managing international landscapes.

• Scottish Highlands (7 days). A residential experience to study geological, geomorphological and environmental processes at work.

Travel, accommodation, and subsistence on residential field courses are not included in the course fees.

We know that residential field courses can be difficult for some students to attend. They can also have an environmental impact. To widen participation and reduce this impact, we offer a non-residential field course. This focuses on day trips around the University.

Get industry experience

You can get hands-on experience by taking our placement module. Past students have had placements with environmental charities, government agencies and industry partners including:

• Larch Green Alpaca Trekking

• Red Squirrel Nursery

• South Skye Sea Kayaks

• Abacus Mountaineering

• Skye Adventure

• Active Stirling

• Pentland Activity Camp

• Spirit of Adventure

• Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI)