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Geology cut in Missouri
Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau cut its geosciences degree,
along with its geography and sociology degrees, last fall because of budget
issues. The geology department itself will be dissolved by May 2005 if not sooner.
Despite being “very productive,” the department did not attract enough
majors to remain cost effective, says David Probst, the chair of the geology
department.
The university will cut the seven-person geology department to three tenured
faculty members, Probst says, and will eliminate courses such as mineralogy,
petrology, geomorphology and sedimentary geology. “Anything that would
have purely supported a traditional geology major,” he says, “those
courses are being dropped. The only ones retained are in the general education
curriculum or support general education and environmental sciences.” The
geology courses that will remain include introductory geology, hydrology, remote
sensing and an interdisciplinary course on the history of Earth and life through
time that is part of the university’s general studies program.
Probst is in the physics department, which was combined administratively with
geology at the beginning of this year. Physics was also “on the chopping
block,” he says, but only lost one faculty position, owing to the central
nature of that discipline to the university’s program. Probst also notes
that physics students enter the university intending to major in physics, whereas
geology students were “internally recruited, and from the administration’s
point of view, they were already here.”
Probst says that the university decided to cut a few of its smaller programs,
those with lower numbers of majors and higher costs, than to make university-wide
cuts. “It really came down to money,” Probst says. “It’s
a sad situation, but that’s the bottom line.”
Naomi Lubick
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