The Groundwater Scientist/Engineer Professional: Growth History, Student Trends, and Concerns for the Future

This paper analyzes the professional history of groundwater scientists and engineers and identifies the factors which led to a surge in interest through the mid-1990s, as well as the subsequent decline, including the effect of hard times in the energy and mining sectors in the 1980s as well as regulatory drivers and the remediation bubble. An analysis of changes in student enrollment in undergraduate and graduate programs is presented, along with a discussion of the influence of a growing number of environmental science curricula. In the future, negative effects on the pool of students entering our work force will come from continued budget cutbacks at the K-12 level, declining state funding for colleges and universities, as well as changes in research funding emphasis toward climate change and reductions in federal research funding which leads to fewer assistantships, all superimposed on an aging work force.