The University’s environmental science department — now in its 40th year of existence — and major program has seen significant growth and diversification in the past several years because of factors including increased participant interest and a growing curiosity among students in the department’s lower-level classes, chair Joseph Zieman said.
“A few years ago, I called it simply the Al Gore effect, but the reality now is anybody with half a brain can’t pick up The New York Times without having to know something about the environment,” department chair Joseph Zieman said, noting that more and more students continue to express interest in the department’s programs. Classes in the department are quickly growing in popularity, he said.
Assoc. Ecology Prof. Tom Smith said he believes that the growing focus on environmental concerns during the past decade is a result of global climate change and the decline in biodiversity of the planet because of human activities. This growing interest in environmental issues naturally increases interest in the University’s department, he added.
“I believe that there is an increased awareness among students because of the focus on these in the popular press and it’s the courses in our department that address the scientific basis of these issues,” Smith said.
Smith also said he believes that when College students need to fulfill science requirements, they may choose the environmental sciences because these fields often can be more easily applied to current events.
“When students are tasked with selecting courses to meet those requirements, I think there’s an increase in students moving toward the environmental science courses that provide them with the foundation for understanding these environmental issues,” Smith said.
The high demand for the department’s introductory-level courses also created increased diversity among the department’s course offerings, Smith said. More University students seeking to obtain knowledge about environmental issues means the department must provide more classes with more variety, he added.
“We’re oversubscribed, so what we’ve tried to do is increase the number of offerings,” Smith said.
Zieman, however, emphasized that — even taking into account the department’s recent growth — he believes the department must become even larger and play a more significant interdisciplinary role on Grounds.
“We made our reputation by being a hard science-based department and we need to partner with other people around the University, to branch out in more policy and more economic issues, while keeping our department centered on what we do well,” he noted.
Zieman said the department’s efforts to expand may explain why it has some of the most uniquely faceted 100- and 200-level courses of any University science department.
“One of our goals of this diversity of lower division courses is to help make the student body more environmentally literate,” Zieman said.
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