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New Opportunities Can Help You Recycle Your Job Into an ‘Eco-Career’ : A seminar at UCSB will offer a guide to preparing for environmental trades of the future.

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SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

The rest and recreation of the Labor Day holiday have faded to a mere memory. We’re back at work--if we have work. If not, it’s time to get work. Or, if we’ve got a job we don’t like, it may be time to think about a change.

Earthwatch has been keeping an eye on the environmental job market on behalf of readers who might be interested in a related career. The conventional wisdom now is that we’ll have five or six careers in our lifetime, whether we want to or not.

As for environmental work, the U.S. Department of Labor reports in the latest edition of its annual Occupational Outlook Handbook: “. . . these jobs are expected to increase faster than the average for all occupations in the U.S. until the year 2005.”

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This Saturday, well in time to beat the millennial rush, Ventura career counselor Margi Mainquist is moderating an all-day UC Santa Barbara Extension seminar on the theme, “Changing Workplaces, Jobs and Lives.” This annual, free public-service event is held at the university’s Campbell Hall. It is one of several extension programs that should interest folks who are thinking about “eco-careers.”

The focus of Saturday’s gathering is the nuts and bolts of recycling yourself. Mainquist characterizes the seminar as “charting a career path change.” She will urge attendees to “stop watching TV and start reading books which are future oriented.”

They’ll discover, among other things she plans to point out, that “biology is where the breakthroughs are coming.” That covers a multitude of trades--from health services to space science to environmental remediation. For instance, one of Saturday’s speakers will be the environmental and health safety officer for Raytheon, Barry Pabst Sr.

For specific, locally based, environmental career training, the UCSB Ventura Center is offering a certification program this fall in hazardous materials management, conducted by Ventura attorney Janet Dillon. The extension also offers certificate programs in air quality management as well as land-use and environmental planning.

“These are jobs that are not going to disappear,” says Dillon, adding with a touch of diligence, “although some hiring is in a holding pattern because of the economy.”

On the other hand, according to the current issue of the Ventura-based California Planning & Development Report: “ . . . waste management facilities (may be) the state’s only growth industry.”

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The “eco-professions” have reached sufficient status in the eyes of the regents of the University of California that they have authorized the establishment of a whole new School of Environmental Science and Management--to be located on the UCSB campus.

With the avowed purpose of training folks for the new jobs opening up, the university has created at least one such new job itself by hiring a dean, Jeff Dozier, a distinguished geographer.

Earthwatch will keep readers abreast of this evolving training project, but in the meantime, there are some useful, already available guides to “eco-jobs.” “The New Complete Guide to Environmental Careers,” compiled by Bill Sharp of the Environmental Careers Organization, is a valuable reference.

“Green At Work” by Susan Cohn shows how to find jobs at companies where environmental business may not be done but there are, nevertheless, individual departments of an environmentally friendly sort.

In the guidebook “Adventure Careers” by Alex Hiam and Susan Angle, there’s advice on how to save the planet. The emphasis is more on the former word in the book’s title than the latter, but hey, let’s consider at least one fun episode in our five- or six-job lifetime. The magazine Earth Work contains a monthly survey of eco-jobs.

FYI: Learn how to recycle your career this Saturday at the free UCSB Extension seminar, “Changing Workplaces, Jobs and Lives,” 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. at UCSB’s Campbell Hall. Call 893-8401.

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Recommended environmental career guides available at local bookstores or by phone: “Green At Work” by Susan Cohn and “New Complete Guide to Environmental Careers,” Bill Sharp, principal author. Both are available by calling (800) 828-1302. “Adventure Careers” is available at (800) CAREER-1.

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