The specialty of Environmental Science in Department of Environmental Science (DES) was established in 1979, and it is one of the first issued specialties related to environmental study in China. Now, this environmental science specialty is a provincial key specialty, it has the authority to grant doctoral and master’s degrees of Environmental Science, doctoral degree of Environmental Management and Environmental Economy, and it is the First Level Discipline degrees of Environmental Sciences and Engineering. In addition, the specialty has the postdoctoral research station of Environmental Science and Engineering.

DES has 34 staffs, including 29 full-time teachers. There are 14 full Professors (6 of them are PhD supervisors), 9 Associate Professors and 6 Lectures. 95% of the teachers hold PhD degrees. DES has an excellent teaching and academic research team with a good structure operating at a high level, and also includes one Master Teacher of Jilin Province, two experts who obtain the special government allowance, one state-level candidate of the New Century Talents Project, and two top class talents of Jilin Province.

After 30 years of development, the specialty has achieved a high academic status and has an important influence in China. The specialty has three remarkable characteristics in environmental chemistry, environmental management and economy, environmental remediation and digital management of ecological system.

The advantage research areas of Environmental Chemistry include the source, environmental effects, speciation and distribution, migration and transformation mechanism, pollution control technology and method of the important pollutants in environment.

The advantage research areas of Environmental Management and Economic include environmental resources value accounting, emission trading, ecological compensation, environmental planning and assessment, circular economy and low carbon economy theory and technology etc.

The advantage research areas of Environmental Remediation and Digital Management of Ecological System include global change and regional environmental response mechanism, ecological system evolution and prediction, environmental pollution and disease prevention, the remediation theory and technology of damaged ecological system, the ecological environment of information technology etc.

Every year there are 80 undergraduate students, 35 master students and 6 doctoral students enrolled by environmental science specialty in DES. There are two directions for undergraduate student to choose in this specialty when they are by the end of sophomore, namely Environmental Chemistry and Environmental Planning and Management. The main courses of this specialty include introduction to environmental science, environmental chemistry and experiment, environmental biology, the principle and technology of environmental pollution control, environmental monitoring and experiment, environmental impact assessment, environmental management, environmental law, environmental economics, environmental planning etc.