Recasting the Geography Program and Integrating Environmental Studies
A white paper describing a major reconfiguration of Rowan’s geographical and environmental curriculum
Introduction
Environmental education at Rowan CLAS largely occurs within three different programs; Biology , Geography, and Environmental Studies (figure 1). Biology has been the home of ecological and biological aspects of environmental education for decades and has had a long-standing concentration in environmental studies. Rowan Geography and Anthropologyhas provided a regional and global role in environmental education including a focus on the human aspects of environmental problems as well as applied environmental skills in its GIS and planning tracks. EnvironmentalStudies is a relatively new degree program created as an interdisciplinary degree managed by a board of directors from contributing departments. The program has grown to 92 majors in four short years.
While each of the three academic vehicles for environmental education at Rowan does a great job in the classroom, to date there has only been a modest level coordination among programs. This has created a confusing situation for the increasing number of Rowan students who desire a career in an environmental field but who are not sure which of the multiple avenues at Rowan to take. This white paper explores pathways for reorganizing and recasting the environmental educational offerings at Rowan to reduce redundancy and streamline curriculum to better serve students’ educational needs.
Figure 1. The College of LAS has three different programs that serve environmental careers. While many courses are common among the three entities, there is little coordination in the management of the curriculum for each program. Many students are confused by the options and overlap of the independently developed and administered programs.
Geography’s Need for Repackaging Subdisciplinary Career Tracks: Geography provides a global systems framework and regional perspective that is essentialfor forging a sustainable future. The field of geography plays a central role in researching and addressing the major challenges of our time. For instance, geographers pursue research in climate change, globalization, environmental managementand international relations among others. The first step in the suggested reorganization is the repackaging of geography courses into more marketable “products” that better provide the knowledge and skills needed for employment in environmental careers. While geography is an excellent avenue for preparing students for the emerging “green collar” economy, many potential students never discover the various environmental career paths available through a geography BA degree due to the generally poor understanding of the field of geography by the general public and poor communication of the geography department to market the diversity of sub-disciplinarytracks offered at Rowan.
A recent program evaluation conducted by the Department of Geography & Anthropologyidentified the need to rebrand ourprogram offerings so as to bemore visible and beneficial to student’s career interest.The study concluded that clarifying the content and purpose of our sub disciplinary offerings wouldbest serve the skill set andeducational expertise desired by our students. The areas of specialization within the Rowan Department of Geography and Anthropology include:Geosciences, Globalization Issues, GeoEducation, GIS, Planning, and Anthropology. Because Rowan has only offered a single BA degree in geography, those subfields seldomreach the radar screens of many potential perspective studentswho may be interested in them but donot know they exist under the umbrella of geography. To this end, the geographydepartment initiated a strategic plan of repackaging of our curricular tracks into more concrete subdisciplinarycurricularoptions as well as professionalizing two of the tracks, GIS and Planning into independent BS degrees. While the variety of course offerings remain basically the same, we are repackaging them into more specialized and professionalized degree“products” by converting degree tracks into concentrations, specializations and professional BS degrees in Planning and GIS (figure 2).
Figure 2The Rowan Department of Geography and Anthropology is undergoing a strategic recasting of the curriculum by repackaging existing courses into new concentrations and professionalized BS degrees.
The strategic plan for repackaging the Geography & Anthropology program was initiated in the 2008-2009 academic year. In August 2009 concentrations in GIS, Planning and Geosicencesand a Specialization in Anthropology/Human Geography were approved by the Rowan BOT. Professionalized BS degrees in planning and GIS are in various stages of curriculum review with planning scheduled for completion in the summer of 2010 and GIS to follow in the next academic year. There has been significant support for a Rowan planning degree from the planning profession. We are currently developingGeoEducation and Global Issues concentrations. The strategic plan for improving the Geography program’s visibility through this repackaging is already paying off. Geography majors are at an all time high of 76 and growing and the new concentrations have attracteda combined total of 19 additional students in less than two semesters.
Environmental Studies Need for a Departmental Home.At the same time as geography is repackaging its program, there is a need and opportunity for integrating the program of Environmental Studieswith geography to provide it a departmental home. Environmental Studies at Rowan has become one of the fastest growing majors in the university increasing to 92 majors in only four years of its existence. Like geography, the environmental studies program educates students for the growing green economy. However, since Environmental Studies is an interdisciplinary program at Rowan, it suffers from a number of significant limitations that are reaching a breaking point under the current organizational structure.
The BAES program’s greatest challenge is that it is homeless. It doesn’t belong to any departmental program, has no budget, shares a single secretary with most other interdisciplinary programs (and economics) and has no focal point for meetings, study groups etc. Since there is thislack of a home department and only a single tenure-track professorto serve all 92 students, there is a growing perception by students that the program is not taken seriously nor adequately supported by the university. Students are required to take the majority of core courses from the same professor, Dr. Patrick Crumrine. This presents a situation that is academically poorfor the students since it deprives them from a diversity of viewpoints as well as professionally detrimental to Dr. Crumrine since his workload is filled to capacity by program core courses making it impossible to teach courses within his specialty. Another problem is the transiency of the program director which has changed four times in the past five years. Students find the lack of a full department frustrating and counterproductive to their academic aspirations. The continuation of its homeless status could result in adrop in the reputation of the program which could undermine its long-term success.
Although the existing organization of the environmental studies degree,is quite broad from a liberal arts perspective, it lacks a focus on career options and depth. Students have expressed disappointment that the degree does not result in a particular specialized skill set. Many of the environmental studies students are remedying this lack of depth by taking applied courses in biology, chemistry and sociologythat provide the marketable skills that they desire. However, the lion’s share of elective bank courses taken by ENST majors arewithin geography including in the geosciences, planning and GIS. Many environmental studies students are adding minors and concentrations in GIS, planning, geosciences, geography and anthropology as well as biologyand chemistry. A fair number of ENST students are doing dual majors in geography or biology. The growingpresence of environmental studies majors in geography classes has already resulted in a significant cultural merger of environmental studiesstudents and geography students at Rowan. Moreover, a merger of programs would allow sharing of course responsibilities so that, for example, there could be one unified senior seminar class for both programs taught by other members of the geography program. This could free up Patrick Crumrine from that course responsibility allowing him to teach other courses such as upper level courses in his specialty.
Possible Reorganization of Biology’s Environmental Studies Concentration: The third organizational shift suggested is the possible reorganization of Biology’s Environmental Studies Concentration. The Environmental Studies Concentration in biology predates the BAES and has been quite popular. There are currently 6 students enrolled. The concentration has three tracks (environmental planning, environmental sciences and environmental testing and technology). The ES concentration is interdisciplinary in nature with courses listed from Biology, Geography, Chemistry and others. Although the environmental studies concentration is different from and complementary to the Environmental Studies BA and minor programs, there are some major sticking points that could benefit from better coordination and integration:
1) Students are confused between the BAES, the ES concentration, the ES minor and the environmental planning options of the geography concentration in planning. Each of these four options has many of the same courses listed.
2) Some BAES students would like to specialize in one of the three tracks of the ES concentration but they are precluded from taking a BA in ES and a Concentration in ES at the same time since they both have the “environmental studies” label.
3) The planning curriculum in geography has evolved significantly since the ES Concentration in biology was formulated and there is now a whole series of courses that go into planning the environment that are not listed in the ES Concentration. The geography planning concentration has strong environmental focus and it may be most prudent for the students to have some of these newer courses.
To address these issues, it might solve at least some of the confusion to divide the ES Concentration into its three component tracks as separate concentrations (figure 3): 1) environmental sciences concentration, 2) environmental testing and technology concentration, and 3) anenvironmentalplanningconcentration coordinated with geography’s planning concentration.
Figure 3The Environmental Studies Concentration housed within the Biology Department, could better coordinate with the other Rowan environmental curriculum if the individual tracks were turned into separate concentrations. Currently Environmental Studies majors are precluded from also taking an environmental studies concentration since it has the same program name. This would allow environmental studies majors to have a more specialized concentration in planning, environmental science or environmental testing and technology.
Housing the Environmental Studies programin Geography: Integrating the Environmental Studies program into the Department of Geography and Anthropology (figure 4) provides ENST students and faculty a departmental home with all the benefits such as: 1) a departmental secretary, 2) a physical home location for students, 3) coordinated and streamlined budget, 4) an expanded pool of faculty for mentoring and advising, 5) a combined number of majors that will soon reach 200 which will help to legitimize proper support of the programs, 6) a diversity of faculty with different expertise and points of view, 7) the professional support of colleges within the home department for T & R mentoring etc, 8) sharing the departmental faculty service load for open houses, orientation, departmental and university committees, etc., and 9) providing a atmosphere of legitimacy and support for the environmental studies degree program. The Geography department could be comfortable with the idea of environmental studies integrating with the program since the discipline of geography has far more overlap with environmental studies than it has difference. To quote Wikipedia (the source of all knowledge…):
“the distinction between institutions which do award such degrees [Bachelor of Environmental Studies] and those which award B.A. degrees for geography, for example, is usually one of university bureaucracy, rather than curriculum.”
Figure 4The Environmental Studies program could benefit from being housed within the Department of Geography & Anthropology. The Environmental Studies Concentration housed within Biology may consider being split into two individual concentrations to allow environmental studies students the options of taking those programs. Patrick Crumrine would find a departmental home in Geography and an academic home in Biology where he would be involved with any future environmental sciences curriculum.
This housing of the program, however, should not diminish the interdisciplinary nature of the program which is one of its major strengths. We propose that after integration the interdepartmental ENST board of directors will continue tomaintain oversight of the program. Major decision-making would be done by the ENST board whereas less important departmental responsibilities such as committee representation, faculty senator, chairs meetings, etc. would be shared by the entire Geography department. The Environmental Studies Concentration housed in Biology would remain in Biology with the suggestion that the concentration be split into two: Environmental Science Concentration and Environmental Testing & Technology. The Environmental Science concentration could then eventually evolve into a BS in Environmental Sciences (with coordination with Chemistry). Patrick Crumrine would logically be affiliated with both the Environmental Studies program and the Environmental Sciences offerings in Biology.
An Integrated Environmental Curriculum: Whether or not ENST is housed within Geography & Anthropology, the most important thing is that the all involved faculty work to ensure that the curriculum is streamlined and better coordinated. Students that desire education and training for an environmental career should have clear educational program tracks that lead to their career and academic goals. To this end, we propose a new integrated structure for environmental programs (Figure 5). Students would choose a major degree path (option “A”), and then would be highly encouraged (perhaps eventually required)to choose a secondary curricular focus area. For example, a student seeking a planning careerwith additional background in environmental management could do a BS in Planning and then specialize with a minor in Environmental Studies. The modularity of the program would not diminish the base bachelor degrees offered but would coordinate program elective courses to count toward a concentration or minor. Furthermore, many other concentrations / minors such as urban studies, sociology, etc.could also be integrated into the model.
Figure 5-All the Environmental programs could be integrated into a comprehensive set of degree programs and minor/concentration options. Students would select a major degree program from the “A” bank and then possibly choose a specialty concentration from the curricular focus area (“B” bank). The “B” bank concentrations would also be available to any other major such as engineers who may desire addition environmental skills education.
Possible Integrated Studies Options: The modular reorganization of the environmental curriculum at Rowan not only provides avenues of specialty focus and marketable skills development but also allows the possibility for an integrated hybrid geography and environment degree curricular model. The exploration of this kind of model was requested by the Provost. In the model any two “B” sequences with an additional methods and capstone course would result in an integrated studies BA. To ensure that the total number of credits completed would be sufficient, individual courses that arefound in both the desired “B” sequences would not be double counted. In essence this degree would be a combination of two different minor/concentrations. As an example, a student interested in environmental management with strength in planning issues would choose sequence B8 and B2. It must be emphasized, however, that such a degree is neither a planning nor an environmental studies degree.
Phased implementation:This proposed curricular makeover and possible integration of geography with environmental studies will be a major transformation for all programs. It is, however, a reorganization of existing curriculum and not the creation of new programs. There are no additional costs for this reorganization and in fact the streamlining and coordination of curriculum will reduce redundancies and could represent a cost savings. Phase one of the Geography strategic plan has already been completed including the approval of the following specializations/concentrations within the past few years: 1) planning, 2) GIS, 3) Geoscience, and 4 ) Anthropology/human geography specialization. Phase II includes advancing the BS in Planning. Our program evaluation identified that planning is a major field of employment for our graduates but that our current planning track in the Geography BA is limited since the term “planning” on the degree name is a requirement for a direct path for professional certification. Since planning is an existing track, nearly all the courses are already offered regularlyno further resources will be needed to institute the BS. Furthermore, there is a rich pool of professional planners within the region who we tap for adjunct instructors. The curriculum proposal for the BS in Planning has already received approval from the senatecurriculum committee and awaits final BOT approval.
Environmental Institute: Finally, there are multiple environmental projects and initiatives that are outside of curricular programs in the realm of research and outreach. These projects and activities can be organized under the umbrella of an Environmental Institute. For example, the Department of Geography & Anthropology has several activities that fall under such extracurricular activities including 1) the Geospatial Research Lab for GIS and mapping, 2) the Studio for Sustainable Community Planning and3) the Geographic Alliance for Geography Education. Other Departments likely have their own activities that would be included under the umbrella. CLAS dean Parviz Ansari is interested in having such an environmental institute become the mechanism for coordination of environmental activities among various departments and the greater community.
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