Job Highlight - Environmental Educator

Carrie Mesrobian

The Journey

Growing up, Angie Timmons ‘grandmother’s stories about life in the Great Depression made a big impact on her.

“I got my ethic from my grandmother,” Timmons recalls. “Learning from her about life in the Depression, conserving resources. Our grandmothers weren’t doing this to be green. It was about being responsible to the resources that you have, managing them well, and the culture of thrift. There was a time where being wasteful was not seen as a good thing.”

Timmons attended the University of Minnesota and pursued environmental studies. Each class was interesting to her, and also a process of elimination.

“To be honest, while I liked what I learned in those classes, after them, I would realize, ‘okay, I don’t what to be a geologist, or a hydrologist, or a botanist.’ I seemed to be gravitating toward the policy side of things, the human behavior side of things.”

Consumer waste was an interest early on, though she reports not thinking she would want to work in garbage or government.

“I took a class about raw materials and their use in our society,” she remembers, “ which opened my eyes to how much we consumers can have environmental impacts.”

Two internship experiences were instrumental in shaping her career. First, Timmons interned with Scott County, working on their environmental services website, which opened her to the possibilities of a career advocating for the environment. Following that experience, she went on to intern with Dakota County Waste Abatement and Recycling department, where she worked on waste reduction programs.

In the last three years, Hennepin County created an environmental education and outreach unit, where Timmons is currently involved in developing communication plans for many different partners in the community.

The Work

As a senior planning analyst for the county, Timmons is responsible for an array of environmental education tasks.

“I coordinate environmental education for Hennepin County,” she says. “I make budgets and work plans, do overall measurement and evaluation, provide program support. For example, one of our units sells home composting bins. We develop a communication plan to supplement that and to get residents the information they need to use them.”

A typical day for Timmons?

“Lots of meetings,” she reports. “We talk about the process, what do we want to achieve, what are the time frames. We come up with communication plans, coordinate with graphic designers, the public affairs department. It’s a lot of project management. On any given day, I’ve got 15 different projects I’m trying to keep moving forward.”

What do these meetings translate to?

“The audience for our work can be general residents or businesses or outreaching to our cities and city staff,” Timmons says. “Sometimes we have initiatives that are internal to the county, such as a project to help county employees recycle better.”

Timmons enjoys working with the public and is always hoping that her effort is translating into changes in behavior.

“Are residents taking action, are they becoming more environmentally friendly?” Timmons wonders. “If we see an increase in recycling rates, in website visits, in people donating items for reuse, these are ways I feel connected to overall goals of department.”

Though Timmons believes her work is vitally important for the future, she is always concerned about the way information is communicated and does not want to overwhelm or exhaust people about efforts to make green changes.

“Everyone is at a different place on a continuum,” Timmons asserts. “I like to craft things around individuals; I don’t want to write a prescription for every Hennepin county resident. We want to provide information that people need to help make the decision to motivate environmentally sound behaviors. I don’t like shaming or guilt tactics. Instead, I like to say, ‘here’s a range of things where you could consider taking action.”

Yet the idea that the green label is being used to cash in on a trend isn’t worrisome to Timmons. In fact, she sees it as another opportunity to spread the message about protecting the environment for future generations.

“If somebody is aware of environmental issues and they see something labeled as a “green product’ and that’s one step they take, which opens their mind to something else, then it’s good,” Timmons says. “Each person’s responsibility is to model green behavior and talk to others about why they do it.”

Please visit Hennepin County’s Environmental Services Department for more information.

The Rewards

As an employee of the county in her job grade, Timmons is salaried and receives health, dental and retirement benefits as well as paid time off. Hennepin County also offers a tuition reimbursement program and last year Timmons received her Master’s in Business Administration from the University of St. Thomas.

Hennepin County employees also get incentives for healthy living and short and long term disability benefits.

Nonmonetary rewards for Timmons go beyond the gratifying feeling she gets from working on behalf of our natural environment. She is especially impressed by and excited to work alongside her colleagues in Environmental Services.

“I think people who work in the environmental field in local government are extremely professional and committed and really go above and beyond,” Timmons says. “I’m really proud of the work that we do, and am impressed with my co-workers.”

Timmons says that there sometimes is a negative perception of government workers with regards to their productivity and finds it to be untrue in her field.

“Government workers get a bum rap,” she says. “That perception is not what I see here at Hennepin County and my colleagues at other counties. I work with a lot of great people, who are so professionally committed. A wide range, a diverse work force. It’s really fun to come to work.”

Translating technical information into an engaging format is also a great reward for Timmons.

“It’s fun to take information from someone and make it understandable to the average person,” she says. “And watching residents take action based on our information is great!”

Your Decision

Working as environmental educator requires patience and attention to detail.

“It takes time to go through the process and do it well,” Timmons advises. “It’s hard being patient and not getting lost in so many layers of the process.”

Working with people to collaborate and provide information about sustainable living that is positive and upbeat is also a constant challenge for Timmons.

“You have to work with people, one on one, and determine what’s stopping them from making that behavior change,” she says. “It’s not like one day I’m going to wake up and be completely green! Time, cost, all these pressures are working in our lives.”

Timmons advises would-be environmental educators to make the most of any opportunities to gain real world experience, whether by volunteering or interning for environmental agencies and causes. Because of the recent attention to climate change and the rising costs of energy and natural resources, she expects the field to continue and grow.

“Financial shrinking is always a problem,” Timmons says. “But on the government side, we’ve really seen an increase in businesses coming to us and saying ‘we want to come up with a sustainability plan’.”

Future areas of concern for Timmons include water quality, renewable energy sources and addressing climate change. Initiatives to reduce kitchen and food waste are currently be implemented in an effort to help residents, schools and other institutions reduce their organic waste.

“In terms of sustainability,” Timmons says, “it’s not really about deciding what our children’s future is going to be but more making sure that the decisions we make today are not going compromise their legacy.”

To learn more about the environmental stewardship programs around Minnesota, visit the Minnesota Sustainable Communities Next Step website.

Interested in working to protect Mother Earth? A combination of coursework, real-world experience as a volunteer or intern and a passion to share your knowledge are first steps to a job that will help save our planet.