A Joe Beck story to tell.

Eastern Kentucky University’s (EKU’s) Environmental Health Science (EHS) program and the entire EHS profession suffered a great loss on August 9, 2014, when our colleague and my good friend Professor Joe Beck passed away. I have decided to do my column on one of Joe’s last papers he sent me. Joe was always writing, since that was his second favorite thing to do. His fi rst love was teaching. Joe used very frequently the quote, “We have got to get our story out” from Nelson Fabian, the former executive director of NEHA, who used it in numerous articles. It is time for all of us in the profession to join in this refrain and realize that we have a story of incredible achievements and successes. Ours is a truly fantastic story that we all need to tell. Over the last 60 years our success has been obscured by the constant change brought about by new agencies with new missions, such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Energy, Department of Labor, and the numerous agencies that have arisen at the state and local levels that deal with mirror issues. The importance of our profession can be observed daily from news reports of emerging diseases transmitted from the environment along with the constant demand by the public that we grow to meet our mission. When we leave our jobs we feel that we have helped solve problems using scientifi c and engineering principles. In the early years of the EHS profession, neither the pay nor the visibility was high, but the EHS professional left the offi ce each day feeling pride for having made the world a little healthier and safer. In the last 20 years, our society has slowly discovered environmental health’s value. It is increasingly recognized that EHS saves more money than it costs. Some people even realize that EHS, through sanitation, makes the difference between a nation being considered developed or undeveloped. Compensation is now very competitive, and good working conditions and recognition are increasing. EHS, however, is not on the mind of a majority of high school graduates looking for a college major. Previously, many people got into environmental health for a short time and would leave because of unhappiness with pay; now statistics show most remain in the profession until retirement. Salary scales have gradually moved up until they refl ect the complexity of the job and the hours of study necessary to be counted among our profession. It is interesting to realize that the number of credit hours of university science required by our degree is close in number and intensity to a degree in forensic science or one of the premed majors. I recently googled “environmental health safety entry level jobs” and found 2,985 entry-level environmental health jobs, which did not even include government jobs. A popular Web site provides current salaries for environmental health graduates with a BS degree. The 2011 median pay was $81,500 with 10+ years of experience and an entrylevel education bachelor’s degree in environmental health and safety. Qualifi ed replacements with an EHS degree entering the workforce number less than 1,000 graduates per year from accredited programs. How come we do not have hundreds of students at the fi rst-year level waiting to get into environmental health? Well, the answer is our failure to tell the story, especially to people who infl uence young people. It is essential that we solve this problem if our profession is ever going to function at its true potential. The reality is that literally hundreds of jobs are available currently for a graduate with a BS degree in environmental health. The reality is that many of these jobs are going to be fi lled by people with often no or very poor preparation. These people then become supervisors who are often afraid to hire people with optimal preparation. We must get our story out and follow through with students letting them know of the career satisfaction of working in this fi eld. We should be evoking pride in the current working environmental health professionals about the environment that they have helped create. Many of us have entered the field without a BS in environmental health, but it’s time for us to promote what we have had a role in creating—an individual with a BS in environmental health. Those of us who have entered the profession of environmental health without a BS degree in the fi eld should be proud of the fact that we have recognized our educational shortcomings and have reeducated and retrained ourselves on the job. We should be equally proud that we have been a part of the creation of these undergraduate degrees in our We have got to get our story out!