Environmental Programs: Liberal Arts Colleges and Interdisciplinary Education Training students to tackle complex problems
R ALPH MOR ANG
transcends traditional academic fields.
Jill Bubier, an associate professor at Mount Holyoke College, conducts field research with students at a site in New Hampshire.
STEPH A NIE PFIRM A N BARNARD COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIV ERSIT Y SH ARON J. H ALL COLOR ADO COLLEGE TOM TIETENBERG COLBY COLLEGE
© 2005 American Chemical Society
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cross the United States, faculty members and students at liberal arts colleges are experimenting with different approaches to educating interdisciplinary scholars and environmentally literate citizens of the future. This movement is driven by external factors, for example, the increasing demands for interdisciplinary research to support policy decisions, such as how to respond to climate change, as well as by internal factors, such as the need for educators to analyze complex problems whose solutions transcend traditional departmental boundaries. MAY 15, 2005 / ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY ■ 221A
DIANE DIT TRICK
These environmental research and education programs come in all shapes and sizes: new and established, large and small, interdepartmental and single-department, science-based and policybased, with and without strong administration support, and under one roof and dispersed. What can we learn from this variety?
A student records measurements along the Hudson River.
To try to answer this, we visited 11 liberal arts colleges that had received funding from the nonprofit Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (AWMF) for their environmental programs. We were joined by Ken Johnson, professor emeritus at Skidmore College. Between October 2003 and January 2004, our team trekked to the following colleges: Barnard (N.Y.), Bates (Maine), Bowdoin (Maine), Colby (Maine), Colgate (N.Y.), Colorado College (Colo.), Hobart and William Smith (N.Y.), Lewis and Clark (Ore.), Middlebury (Vt.), Mount Holyoke (Mass.), and Whitman (Wash.). We interviewed faculty and students at the schools to learn what worked well and what didn’t, and what opportunities are available for further development. Here, we present a qualitative assessment of the successes and challenges at these schools. Although we did not investigate universities, many of these findings are probably relevant to them as well.
Key findings Environmental programs are filled with vibrant, committed, stretched-to-the-limit faculty. Most faculty members—and their numbers are increasing—believe that undergraduate interdisciplinary education benefits students and society (1). We found that students are remarkably enthusiastic about their programs and are fully engaged on many levels. These programs face many of the same challenges (2) and are moving in similar directions. Our findings highlight innovative approaches but raise some concerns. Local environmental engagement. At most of the schools we visited, a component of their program fo222A ■ ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY / MAY 15, 2005
cuses on the local environment. Examples include students and faculty who are involved in and influence campus and community decisions about new “green” buildings, recycling, and energy use. This local focus creates for students and faculty an interdisciplinary sense of place drawn from the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. It is also a source of inspiration for creating courses and conceiving student research. In a broader sense, bringing academic resources to bear on community decision making creates a more mutually beneficial engagement with local communities and helps institutions redefine their relationships with local residents. However, community work can distract faculty from advancing their scholarship when their research interests do not coincide with local issues. Service learning. Another key trend was that all of the programs are moving into hands-on activities, including service learning, which takes students out of the classroom. Service learning engages students intellectually and socially in tangible issues and allows them to experience the complexity of challenges as well as pride in making a difference (3). It is also at the forefront of pedagogy: Cognitive research shows that meaningful learning, as well as intellectual and social maturity, is stimulated when students learn in groups; actively build, apply, and share their own knowledge; encounter diverse perspectives that challenge their assumptions; negotiate and build consensus; and reflect on implications (4). Indeed, our interviews with students revealed that “practical” and problem-solving activities are among the most empowering experiences in college. Incorporating a service-learning component into courses is one way to create synergy between community issues and traditional faculty roles. At every college we visited, we saw interest in this pedagogical technique. Where this approach had been implemented, students and residents in the surrounding communities rated the experience as spectacularly successful. Colby’s lakes investigations are only one example. Each year, the students in this course combine their analysis of water quality, land-use patterns, and regulations affecting a particular lake in the region to brief the town and lake associations interested in that lake about their findings and recommendations. A detailed written report follows this presentation (5). Initiating, implementing, and maintaining these programs require faculty to spend a lot of time to prepare, mentor, and follow up. Hence, environmental programs are trying to find ways to meet objectives without sacrificing other educational priorities or overloading faculty. Some programs are bringing local experts to the campus as adjunct or visiting faculty. Practitioners advising students and teaching courses such as sustainable agriculture or city planning are innovative ways to expand student experience and strengthen community relationships (3). Interdisciplinary student research. Environmental programs also provide nontraditional ways to advance student research in applied areas (1). Traditionally, guided student research is a required, or at least encouraged, component of the “liberal arts
experience”. Environmental students usually place high value on their experience, but maintaining enough mentors for them can be difficult. Mentoring students in areas outside of one’s expertise may be necessary to satisfy student interest, but it does not enhance one’s research portfolio—an issue especially important for junior faculty. Some programs set up student internships with organizations in the community to accommodate the interests of students and the time and expertise limits of the college’s faculty. Providing external mentors small stipends in recognition of their contributions increases the likelihood that they will take students again in the future. Many institutions used AWMF funding to cover summer student research, including stipends, supplies, and travel to facilitate student presentations at meetings. Even when faculty members mentor students conducting research within their own area, faculty often need extensive time to train students. To maximize faculty efficiency with mentoring undergraduates, associate professor Jill Bubier at Mount Holyoke College recommends a strategy analogous to that of graduate research groups: Get the students into the lab early—between first and second, or second and third years—and then create a “cascade” mentoring system of apprentices so that the students continuously learn from each other. We found that faculty who seek out the undergraduate students with whom they want to work seem more satisfied with their experience than those who post openings and take whoever applies. Support for faculty who mentored interdisciplinary student research also seemed to be effective. We found that most faculty preferred course reduction versus a stipend, because time is generally the limiting factor. Such support encourages social science and humanities faculty to become involved in environmental research and lightens the load of the young, junior faculty who mentor students interested in research outside the professor’s own projects. Strategies for building community. Environmental students feel that they are part of a strong, inclusive community when their programs include elements such as a common physical location; a seminar series; field trips; involvement in campus sustainability issues; and first-year and/or senior-year, or “capstone”, courses. On all of the campuses that we visited, physical spaces—existing or planned—dedicated to environmental programs are providing a place to literally come together. Programs that lacked common space or had only cramped quarters found that they had to fight hard to create a sense of community among faculty residing in different departments and among students taking courses all over campus. Most environmental programs plan and implement campus events not only to bring environmental faculty and students together but also to involve the broader student body. To promote a stronger sense of the content and career tracks for environmental majors, some programs run field- or servicelearning programs during new-student orientation or during their first year. First- or second-year student research stipends have been used as recruiting tools at some schools.
Other possibilities are holding open houses that inform students about career and financial options and facilitating student visits to potential employers to explore various career paths. These extra efforts resulted in students reporting to us that environmental faculty are more “accessible”, “involved”, and “engaged” than faculty in other departments. These perceptions are good, but also raise some concerns. Staffing shortages for interdisciplinary courses. Not surprisingly, given the time-consuming nature of the previously described activities, staffing is the chief concern of environmental programs we visited—even where administrations are generally supportive of interdisciplinary endeavors. Core environmental faculty (either joint appointments or those solely within the environment program or department) are central to the sustainability of environmental programs. But the cooperation of other departments is necessary to staff the full suite of classes—including classes with one or more instructors—ranging from introductory through electives to the senior capstone experience (1). Students and environmental directors need assurance that courses will be offered regularly, even in the face of sabbaticals and retirements. Some schools have found that flexibility can make these arrangements easier to sustain. For example, a department could commit to teaching four courses over the next three years without specifying which instructor and which semester in advance. Many colleges have recognized the value of co-teaching and extensive faculty involvement by awarding full “class credit” for all faculty participants in key courses. Some environmental programs that originally grew from the natural sciences have hired or are planning to hire tenure-track faculty in the social sciences, public health/toxicology, environmental justice, or the humanities. These new faculty will bring nontraditional, social, and aesthetic points of view and economic and policy components to the curricula. Furthermore, the public health and toxicology positions will attract premed students and establish links with biology departments. But each of these joint activities requires negotiation, and environmental faculty run the risk of burning out. They must assemble start-up packages for joint hires, work with other departments to fill courses during leaves of absence, plan construction of new buildings, line up internships, mentor research outside their areas of expertise, testify before local zoning boards, run field trips, set up their own labs, and use and learn new technologies—all while conducting their own research and teaching. Support staff. Are environmental programs and their new directions being supported by their administrations? Despite the fact that most colleges currently have tight budgets, many provosts and deans that we interviewed were determined to somehow find the resources necessary to continue these interdisciplinary initiatives. Strong administrative support often follows student interest, but we found that programs particularly thrive when MAY 15, 2005 / ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY ■ 223A
initiatives are integrated into institutional strategic plans or when interdisciplinary programs are a central part of the academic structure. Where available, compensation or release time for interdisciplinary teaching or research has improved the morale and productivity of environmental faculty. But our review leads us to conclude that administrations should go further. Would a theater program not put on a performance? Facilities and subsidies for public performances are built into the budgets of theater, music, and dance programs. Given the benefits that community-based programming brings to students and colleges (3), the infrastructure to implement these initiatives should be a standard part of environmental program budgets. Administrations at some of the schools we visited have recognized these institutional values in an innovative way by hiring a full-time environmental program manager—at least for the duration of their AWMF grant. These managers enhance faculty productivity and college–community interactions and are central to the success of the environmental programs. The manager’s duties may include coordinating constituencies often not centrally located; supporting hands-on learning by setting up field trips, internships, and service-learning ventures; facilitating newsletters; arranging for speakers; providing a career center and alumni liaison; and maintaining program webpages. Similarly, although environmental programs engage in laboratory and field teaching and research, they usually have little technical support for complex equipment. The growing use of geographic information system (GIS) technology is a perfect example. For environmental programs, GIS is an integrating technology that brings the social and natural sciences together, allowing departments to communicate on common ground. Local databases should be established and developed. These provide content for service-based links with the surrounding community, inform campus and community sustainability issues, archive student contributions, and can be used in various classes. And GIS is a marketable skill for environmental graduates. However, maintaining a GIS lab requires sustained technical support personnel who can also train faculty. Chemistry departments would not think of running labs without directors who maintain inventory and set up equipment. Environmental programs similarly need infrastructure to function at the highest level. Aside from the need to rethink and restructure faculty and staff workloads and infrastructure, what else did we see that concerned us? Diversity. Although this problem extends across the natural sciences, environmental programs at suburban and rural institutions in particular are having difficulty involving underrepresented-minority faculty and students. Rob Figueroa, at Colgate University, told us that Caucasian students are put off by explicit references to race, such as a class titled “Race and the Environment”, while underrepresented-minority students are disinterested solely by the topic “environment”. Strategies for increasing diversity across colleges and universities include 224A ■ ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY / MAY 15, 2005
targeted recruitment of underrepresented-minority faculty; course offerings in environmental justice, international sustainable development, and other issues of interest to underrepresented-minority students; links with ethnic studies programs to increase awareness of race and class issues related to environment; co-sponsorship of events with the multicultural affairs community; and support for summer research by underrepresented-minority students. Women faculty. At a surprising number of environmental programs that we visited, we met recently hired, untenured women faculty who are overloaded with interested students and are responsible for overseeing a diverse curriculum and suite of initiatives. Some of these women even hold nontenured, indefinite appointments or are the only designated environmental hire at the college. Institutions must create sustainable roles for new faculty in interdisciplinary programs in which they can thrive and be promoted (6).
Final thoughts Environmental programs across the country are now an established component of the academic landscape; however, they are relying on an unsustainable infusion of faculty energy and time. Institutions need to set up incentives and rewards for involvement in all interdisciplinary program activities that go beyond the classroom and faculty research. In addition, administrations should recognize that integrating learning with applied and social experiences, something environmental programs do so well, is important to their students’ intellectual development (4). To build interdisciplinary capacity in the United States, we must make investments in interdisciplinary undergraduate education at colleges and universities, because our students are the researchers, decision makers, and citizens of the future. Stephanie Pfirman is a professor of environmental science at Barnard College, Columbia University, where she has chaired the environmental science department since 1993. Sharon J. Hall is an assistant professor of environmental science at Colorado College. Tom Tietenberg is a professor of economics at Colby College, and he directed the college’s environmental studies program from 2000 to 2004. Address correspondence about this article to Pfirman at
[email protected].
References (1) Weis, J. S. The Status of Undergraduate Programs in Environmental Science. Environ. Sci. Technol. 1990, 24, 1116– 1121. (2) Kormondy, E. J.; Corcoran, P. B. Environmental Education: Academia’s Response; North American Association for Environmental Education: Troy, OH, 1997. (3) Acting Locally: Concepts and Models for Service-Learning in Environmental Studies; Ward, H. R., Ed.; American Association for Higher Education: Washington, DC, 1999. (4) Baxter Magolda, M. B. Creating Contexts for Learning and Self-Authorship: Constructive-Developmental Pedagogy; Vanderbilt University Press: Nashville, TN, 1999. (5) Colby College. Problems in Environmental Science: Lakes Investigations, Sept 27, 2004; www.colby.edu/biology/ BI493/BI493.html. (6) Babcock, L.; Laschever, S. Women Don’t Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide; Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ, 2003.
