F&ES expands curriculum for fall 2000 majors

JOHN YI/YH Sage Hall will house many new environmental studies courses.

Increasing student demand has made environmental studies the fastest growing major in four-year colleges across the nation. As a result, colleges and universities across the country are establishing environmental studies departments or adding courses in the area—and Yale is no exception. In addition to submitting a proposal for a new set of courses that signals a significant restructuring of the Studies in the Environment (SE) major, Yale is also actively engaged in reinventing its environmental program.

"Yale and its students deserve a world-class program in the environment—great courses and an exciting major," James Gustave Speth, JE '64, LAW '69, Dean of the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, (F&ES), said. "It is important for Yale's environmental school to contribute in a major way to these goals." Through efforts spearheaded by Speth, the school has proposed a set of six courses, open exclusively to undergraduates, to SE's faculty committee. Speth hopes the courses will eventually form the core curriculum that SE lacks right now. The proposed courses will have no prerequisites and will be open to all undergraduates. Though the proposals have yet to be approved, Yale College Dean Richard Brodhead, BR '68, GRD '72, believes that as soon as next year, Yale could offer a significant number of new interdisciplinary lecture courses to undergraduates through F&ES. "I am very grateful for the leadership that Dean Speth has given to the effort to strengthen our offerings in environmental studies," he said.

The proposed classes would be taught by full-time tenured faculty from the F&ES department, including Speth himself. In addition, they will offer an interdisciplinary approach to studying the environment—an approach that has been lacking in the past due to the lack of a core SE faculty. "We cannot push undergraduates into a potpourri of classes spread across a wide expanse of disciplines without showing them how the knowledge that they learn in these classes are related to each other," Professor John Wargo, FOR '81, GRD '84, the first director of undergraduate studies (DUS) of SE, said. "The faculty must decide on what a core set of courses in environmental studies should be composed of."

Speth believes that the creation of foundation courses in environmental studies should include environmental science, environmental economics, environmental policies and politics, environment and public health, and the value of ethics, as well as an introductory overview of the major environmental challenges of the next century.

The progress leading up to the proposed improvements has been gradual but consistent. In 1997, Brodhead formed a committee to help generate interdisciplinary work in environmental studies and discussions about the proper shape of an environmental education. His work in part has led to two new courses offered this year that study the environment from an interdisciplinary perspective. "Without Dean Brodhead's courage in willing to do things differently, none of the restructuring of Yale's environmental education would ever take place," said Robert Dorit, who worked with Brodhead to develop the new Environmental Studies course that will be offered this spring. Dorit's Environmental Studies course will cover concepts including demography, complexity, risk assessment, and interaction. "This course is a test of whether an interdisciplinary approach to studying the environment could be conveyed at an introductory level," he said.

The other new course is Associate Professor of Environmental Risk Analysis John Wargo's Human-Environment Interactions, which presents the scientific, political, economic, social, and cultural challenges that arise in addressing environmental issues, ranging from pesticide use to environmental justice. Neither course is designed specifically for SE majors. "We are interested in the whole phenomenon of environmental education," Brodhead said. "We do not want to exclude students who are interested in this area."

Furthermore, existing departments like Ecological and Evolutionary Biology (EEB) are increasing their offerings and strengthening the tracks within their majors that would be relevant to students wishing to study environmental issues. Phylogenetic reconstruction and systematics specialist Michael Donahue will come to Yale from Harvard next year. "[Donahue] will focus on the biodiversity side of environmental education and research," EEB Chair Gunter Wagner said. "His course will be a flagship course for environmental education because he will teach students to appreciate the vast scope of biodiversity and the intellectual challenges it presents."

The SE major as it stands currently is lacking in many important areas, including official status as an academic department, a group of core faculty, and core offerings for undergraduates, according to Geology and Geophysics Professor Robert Gordon, the acting chair of SE's faculty advisory committee. Gordon says the program depends on voluntary teaching taken on by members of other departments, ranging from chemistry to architecture. SE's only faculty member is its DUS, Steven Stoll, who is now on leave. "We need some faculty members whose job it is to concentrate on environmental studies," said Associate Dean of F&ES Gordon Geballe, GRD '81, the acting DUS of SE.

"Yale has long been aware of some frustrations and insufficiencies in its offerings in environmental education," Brodhead said. "Part of the reason is because courses relevant to the environment were spread broadly throughout the University and that there was a lack of courses that were able to truly integrate all the complex aspects of the environment in its curriculum." There are two main reasons for SE's lack of official department status. When the major was first created in 1984, the man who was most responsible for its creation, was then-Yale history Professor William Cronon, GRD '80, now a professor of History, Geography, and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. "Certain departments were concerned that a stand-along environmental studies major would take students away from the majors that they offer," Cronon said. He proposed that the major be established only as part of a double major. "There were legitimate concerns in departments like biology and geology and geophysics that thought no student tried by a broad environmental studies major would be prepared to undertake a rigorous graduate program in environmental science."

SE's status as part of a double major is a challenge which poses a unique problem for students. A student must take anywhere from 10 to 16 courses to be a SE major, many of which are required for the major. This means that a student would have to use most of his electives to complete the SE major. In the early '90s, SE graduates peaked at 19. Last year, the number was only seven. "I don't want to have to take all the requirements for my majors and then realize that at the end of my four years here, I didn't take enough courses outside my majors," said Kelly Levin, JE '02, who plans to major in EEB with an emphasis on environmental policy.

"Environmental studies is a funny territory in academia," Cronon said. "Its strength is that it shows that connections exist among widely different majors. But its vice is that it lacks time to teach students in-depth knowledge because the very nature of the major requires it to spend a lot of time on the breadth of knowledge needed for the discipline."

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