Career Preparation
We’ll help you find the path to your perfect career
Finding a career that brings meaning to your life and can help impact the lives of others is often a process. Our goal in CNRE is to provide you with the experiences that will become the defining moments of your career journey, like the chance to get on-the-job experience with a summer internship.
Meteorology major Akye Johnson spent a summer at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. He was charged with increasing user access to earth science data products by developing geospatial web services, subsetting tools, browse imagery generation; evaluating data products against existing data standards; and developing guides/tutorials — work that could impact millions of end users.
You can take advantage of the same opportunities. In CNRE, you’ll receive guidance from professors and advisors, find opportunities for building success skills, and start building career networks for success.
Start your career planning
It’s never too early to get started on preparing for your career, whether it’s thinking about a summer internship or starting to investigate full-time job opportunities for after graduation.
Get started by learning what’s available in CNRE and through Virginia Tech Career and Professional Development. Next, reach out to John Freeborn, director of employer relations, at freeborn@vt.edu to learn more about opportunities with our partner employers and how to best navigate your internship and career searches.
CNRE "unboxes" first Packaging Career Expo
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From Amazon to The Weather Channel, CNRE graduates are making an impact
Students entering the College of Natural Resources and Environment have big dreams, and we are here to help you find the company, agency, or nonprofit that will be a springboard for your career in conservation, sustainability, industry, or more.
- 3M
- Amazon
- American Biofuels
- Bartlett Tree Services
- Dominion Energy
- E & J Gallo Winery
- Environmental Protection Agency
- Esri
- Georgia Pacific
- Geospatial Intelligence Service
- IKEA
- International Paper
- NASA
- National Park Service
- National Weather Service
- The Nature Conservancy
- Newell Brands
- NOAA
- PepsiCo
- Proctor & Gamble
- Smithsonian
- U.S. Air Force
- U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
- U.S. Forest Service
- U.S. Geological Survey
- U.S. State Department
- Virginia Department of Forestry
- Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources
- Virginia Department of Recreation and Conservation
- The Weather Channel
- WestRock
- Weyerhaeuser
Are you an employer? We want to partner with you!
The college is committed to building strong relationships with our forest industry and natural resources partners. As a central point of contact, John Freeborn, director of employer relations, assists employers with recruiting students for internships and other career opportunities, arranges campus visits, and provides information about campus resources. John also coordinates the CNRE Career Fairs.
Contact John at at 540-231-1138 or freeborn@vt.edu.
Take a job on a test run with an internship
Internships are great ways to see if a career is the right fit, learn real-world job skills, and connect with a potential future employer. In fact, a Michigan State University study found that employers tend to hire about 50 percent of interns as full-time employees.
CNRE students have helped set themselves up for career success by interning at locations ranging from the Baltimore/Washington Office of the National Weather Service to the Harvard Forest in Pelham, Massachusetts.
Want to learn more? Find out why you should consider an internship, review our three-step guide to get started, and check our list of past internship sites.