Graduate degrees…venturing in another direction?

[Heather Smith]

My husband and I are always thinking about ways to broaden our employment opportunities. This economic situation is really frustrating and makes us wonder if it will ever get better…if we will ever be able to pay off our own student loans let alone help our children through college. We have started looking into possibly an Environmental Engineering grad. degree through our local university…we think it could be a good fit with LA.  He really loves landscape architecture, but from what I have read it seems that being laid off can be a regularly occurring event even in the best of times. I do not relish working two years and then having to move cross country for work with five children.

Right now he works part-time at UI and so can get six credits a semester for the low, low price of $30! Yes,  you read that right. It is very tempting. We aren’t sure if grad. credits would be discounted like that but prereqs for the degree would be.

The things holding us back are:

a) Time…he already has an English degree and now an LA degree of course…he would like to start his career before retirement. 🙂 We don’t know how long the market will take to absorb all of us…and it is driving us crazy. Are we being impatient?

b) School is work…and we still need money to live…damn student loans…can’t handle anymore.

 

So let us know what your thoughts are. We said first we would not get another degree until we had experience…but experience is hard to come by. He does have his license and is getting some experience working for himself…just not a lot. We don’t want Masters in planning, bio regional planning or anything too closely related…if that makes any sense. Any other suggestions?

 

Also wanted to add for anyone else interested that through our school and I think others there is an Engineering Outreach program that is online and once you are accepted and have the prereqs you can actually do graduate work this way.

[ida]

You can also try working oversees.

[Andrew Garulay, RLA]

There is a fine line between patience and urgency. Yours is urgency.

 

Lots of things to weigh. I only have one child, but your plight is one I follow closely as someone who lived where you live, got my degree where you did, landscaped where you do, and want to return to live where you live at some point.

 

You don’t live in an area that supports landscape design as a viable way to make a living on its own. If you remain there, you will have to make your money on the direct installation of the work as the demographic out there will not support you through project management fees. The projects will be limited to residential with an occasional small commercial project. None of that is going to make you a hot commodity that you will be sought to do better projects in other communities, so it is what it is. That does not mean that it is a bad thing, just that you will have to be content that what it is is what it will be no matter what degrees or certifications you have.

 

The great thing is that you are in an area with a very low cost of living and a great place to raise kids.  You are relatively close to growers in Oregon for cheap plants, you have a steady stream of young strong cheap labor that continually turns over because of the two universities. You can make a good living and have a great lifestyle if you are not bent on designing big projects, community planning, … or anything else that does not exist there. Your decisions are more about whether you want to settle where you are and make your decisions based on that, or that you want to wait out the recession, move, and hope to restart in what will be a whole new career(s) yet again.

 

The sooner that you make that decision, the sooner you can start to make specific plans and reduce your stress. JD out at Crossroads came in for an LA degree in ’82 at age 30 or so, dropped out after one year and did pretty darn good as a single parent/landscape contractor. I don’t think he has any regrets.

[Heather Smith]

Thanks for your replies. We both have degrees from UI in Landscape Architecture…but Jon has his license and I take care of the kiddos.

Andrew, You are right…we have a very hard time feeling content because this isn’t how we planned on it working out. But you are right that it is a great community for kids and that is what has kept us here. I joke that Moscow is a black hole…some of my single classmates  have flown the coop to try to land something on the west side but we don’t have that option. We have to have work before we could move…so here we are. I do love the area though! But we worry about how long a person can do the build work…body wise…I don’t know many sixty year olds installing…and feel like we will still need to work at that point. Sometimes, especially in the summer when we have a lot of work we think…ok…we can do this. But in the winter, with a foot of snow, we invariably freak ourselves out wondering how much summer work we will have. Add on to that no one else can find work, and the supply of recently graduated LAs in town are multiplying.

[Tanya Olson]

My opinion – the economy will get better. It might be a while, but it eventually will. Not only that, but contrary to some of the complaints on this board, its not just landscape architecture that is suffering right now – workers in every field are suffering. Even the health care industry, despite its growth, is using the recession as an excuse to cut salaries, benefits, positions. My point is that there really is no magic combination of degrees and/or experience that will get you ahead right now. Might as well do something that will have you well situated to take advantage of the growth that is yet to come whether its personal or professional.

 

I think Environmental Engineering is a great fit with Landscape Architecture and even has some overlap in coursework depending on the program. Seems like the type of EE jobs available NOW are mostly in waste management and water treatment facilities (I have a friend who just graduated from SDSMT in EE and was one of two people who found a job)….but I can easily see it developing into a niche for your private practice particularly as we move into more sustainable development. I think you would have an advantage to be able to offer LA and EE services under one roof without adding employees (ie. overhead) at least in the beginning. You would be in the same boat with licensing, however – you still have to be a PE to offer engineering services and still have to have your internship under your belt.

 

Financially, if he were to enroll I’m pretty sure you would be able to defer your student loans (not sure if you could do this if you have consilidated your loans) easing the immediate financial pressure a bit. Of course you have read about the kind of loans people are coming out of school with right now, so the price is fantastic. I’m sure you can deduct the cost of the tuition from your company’s taxes as well if you arrange it like that.

 

This next is quite personal – maybe others are in the same boat – so I’ll just go ahead and hang it all out on the line. Candidly speaking, you and I are in pretty much the same situation both in a double-landscape architect family so I can speak from my experience at least….

 

I would recommend that you look thoughtfully at your goals as professionals and as a couple AND the relationship between the two. We had always hoped to own a LA firm together but the path set before us has us owning separate companies, so all his years of experience while I raised children didn’t end up benefitting our joint design firm as we had hoped, rather another firm entirely. It has turned out to be the logical choice as we balance our personal and professional development goals with our family’s needs, but I admit that the whole arrangement blew a good size hole in my career. Thankfully, his gainful employment enabled me to start up my own business which better fits our family arrangements, my interests and temprament and provides an excellent education in business that I would not get as an employee. But just a word of caution -another degree, unless you are getting an EE degree as well, is not necessarily “ours”.

[Tanya Olson]

I was thinking that being in the west with an EE degree they could successfully turn their eye toward the mining industry and mitigation / compliance. Both degrees would be essential for this type of work….

[Heather Smith]

Thanks Tanya,

 

I totally get you with the “ours”  degree. I woke up this morning and thought…EE sounds interesting…for me. haha. That said, math is really challenging for me…but I am tempted to enroll for a calculus class just to see if I have the chops for it. 🙂 I too wonder about my own gap…ahhhhh!!!! We will definitely look into the tuition idea…that would be great…although you have to make enough to write it off in the first place…haha.

Also, logically I know that  it is hard across the board and country for so many professionals, that is why I mentioned our impatience. We don’t want to come out in a few years with MORE student loans and not much more in money to make a difference.

[Anonymous]

An EE, I was looking into that but it will take a good bit of time. I assume the perquisites for that are Cal 1, Cal 2, physics, a couple engineering classes and some environmental engineering classes. Well thats what they asked for at GA Tech. It was a whole year worth of undergrad classes and then you have to apply to the Masters. Unless you had a lot of math undergrad and other required work. It truly is a different beast. I am planning on getting an environmental economics masters. They have rolling applications, and its really interesting. Calculus isn’t hard, but if you are doing it for an engineering degree I hear it can be quite tough from rectilinear motion, intergration and other not tough concepts. If you want to get some groundwork in Calc go to Khan Academy http://www.khanacademy.org/ . Its a free website with tutorials. It helped me get back in the math game after a 4 year hiatus. But LA has actually very little math, and what math it did have were just algebra problems and a lot of plugging and chugging. Calc and higher maths get a little more abstract. But I encourage you to do go to school now or you never will.

[Andrew Garulay, RLA]

The many environmental consultants who I work with (who are all quite busy all of the time) have biology degrees. Here, the work is in wetlands delineation, wetland permits applications (Notice of Intent), representing clients in front of conservation boards, and designing mitigation plans. It is mostly done as a package deal. Sometimes they are directly hired by the homeowner/developer and sometimes as a sub by engineers/surveyors. It is a nice gig with low overhead and high returns. The work is like being a hybrid lawyer/biologist/negotiator/designer, so it is not for everyone.

[Author]

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