The Connecticut College environmental studies major ranks as one of the oldest in the country, founded as the "human ecology" major in 1968 by two long-time faculty members and nationally renowned ecologists, Richard H. Goodwin and William A. Niering. The College honors both with its Goodwin-Niering Center for the Environment.

The environmental studies program is strongly interdisciplinary and includes over 20 participating faculty from 10 academic departments. There are two tracks: one natural science-based, the other with a strong social science perspective.