We’ve
been warned more than once already. Academic geology departments are under attack
and have been for more than a decade. In a 1995 Geological Society of America
(GSA) newsletter, Geoff Feiss, then geology department chair at University of
North Carolina, Chapel Hill, wrote: “We all need to care about the stability
of academic geology programs in perilous times.” We should have listened.
In the spring, the University of Connecticut (shown here), citing budget problems
among other concerns, announced it was going to dissolve its geology and geophysics
department. Geology departments are facing increasing challenges to survive.
Photo by Peter Marinas, University of Connecticut.
Feiss, a geologist, noted that seven schools in the Southeastern Section of
the Geological Society of America (GSA) alone had each “either disappeared
or been given the fright of its life.” Since 1996, the numbers have only
become worse. Between 1989 and 2002, the number of “geo-” departments
(geology, geological sciences or geosciences) in the United States decreased
by 16 percent and “earth science” departments dropped by 22 percent.
Over this same period, 19 colleges and universities stopped offering any bachelor’s
degree that could be listed in the American Geological Institute’s (AGI)
Directory of Geoscience Departments (see sidebar
for additional statistics).
The trend for geology departments is clear. The first step is elimination of
the geology department, replaced by a broader, fuzzier (and perhaps “friendlier”)
name. The next step is to add other disciplines, probably reflecting administrative
mergers. Then, oblivion.
Our two recent Geotimes Geologic Columns (see April
and May 2004) have considered the reasons why geoscience programs are the
targets of program reductions and suggested what departments themselves can
do to avoid the chopping block. Our subject here — in what could be considered
the third installment of the series “The Department You
Save May Be Your Own” — is what can and should be done outside
the threatened programs to provide support. Geology departments cannot save
themselves alone. The geological and scientific communities must be engaged,
too.
What do we need?
A carefully constructed and broadly supported statement of what geology has
to offer to society and a set of standards for reference.
Geology departments don’t exist — or cease to exist — in a vacuum.
Having a broader context in which to make the case can make an enormous difference.
Professional programs ranging from engineering to fashion design have nationally
recognized programmatic standards to reference. Among the physical sciences,
however, only chemistry has the benefit of broader standards, through the American
Chemical Society. Although earth science has a presence in the National Science
Education Standards, it is not enough. Instead, geologists should emulate what
our colleagues in geography have done.
In 1994, the American Geographical Society, the Association of American Geographers,
the National Council for Geographic Education and the National Geographic Society
developed the National Geography Standards, called Geography for Life. These
standards provide a clear description of “what every young American should
know and be able to do in geography.” The original motivation for creating
this statement was the inclusion of geography in the K-12 core curriculum outlined
by the “Goals 2000: Educate America Act” (Public Law 103-227). However,
the geography standards work equally well for undergraduate programs responding
to demands for institutional effectiveness plans, program assessment and review,
and strategic planning. A number of undergraduate geography programs refer to
the standards on their Web sites and use them to demonstrate that their programs
are providing the education the national standards describe. Such standards
are also important for reaffirmation by accrediting bodies.
Deans and other campus decision-makers understand the importance of program
accreditation. In fact, they often list successful accreditation reviews as
accomplishments during their tenure. Furthermore, accreditation standards are
sometimes enforced by laws that require graduation from an accredited program
before candidates can sit for certain license or registration examinations.
We are not proposing that the geosciences create an accreditation program, but
we can learn and borrow from programs that have accreditation standards.
The American Geophysical Union (AGU), AGI, GSA, the National Association of
Geoscience Teachers (NAGT) and any other professional organization that cares
about the future of geology should mount a major effort to produce and publicize
a set of “national geology standards.” The process of developing these
standards will require cooperation among these organizations to focus their
energy on fostering the future of our science.
Accurate, useful, comprehensive data about geology programs collected and maintained by a central site.
Currently every department chair trying to promote or defend her or his program
has few information resources that can help. The AGI Directory is one
valuable resource but it is only updated annually and does not provide all the
metrics that departments may need. Without a comprehensive, up-to-date central
data warehouse, the information available to geology departments is ad hoc,
incomplete, outdated or anecdotal. Every academic department lives and dies
by comparative data, such as student-credit-hour production, numbers of undergraduate
and graduate degrees, enrollment, faculty composition, external funding and
budgetary information. Departments desperately need a frame of reference for
their own quantitative measurements.
Most geology programs belong to one of three kinds of institutions: research
universities, predominately undergraduate state-sponsored universities or liberal
arts colleges. Worthwhile data for comparisons must come from institutions within
the same group. Any one of the professional geoscience societies could take
the lead in gathering, organizing and distributing these data. Organizing and
implementing this effort will take resources, but a central source of accurate
data will also save incalculable resources that are currently being wasted,
as every department has to collect its own comparative data from scratch. Every
geoscience program in the country could benefit, and therefore the profession
would benefit as well. No one else is going to do this for us.
Systematic, centralized support for planning efforts.
Finally, we can save ourselves a great deal of time, which we could spend on
improving our programs, by helping departments produce the kinds of planning
documents all institutions now require. Anyone who has not recently delved into
the world of assessment in higher education cannot imagine what is expected
now. As with data collection, individual departments are on their own to develop
plans and strategies for survival. This, like individualized data collection,
is not only wasteful of time and energy, it potentially hurts the profession.
A first encounter with the language of assessment provides about as much insight
as a volume of IRS regulations written in ancient Phoenician. Professional societies
can provide help by making the assessment process understandable and valuable.
Today, every academic course must have a set of explicitly stated objectives
and outcomes, a detailed plan for assessing the degree of success in achieving
the objectives, and a plan for how this information will be used to make improvements
in the course. The same idea applies for an individual degree program, the academic
department, its college and the institution as a whole. No one escapes this.
As in the case of a centralized clearinghouse for accurate data, a group of
professional societies can provide a central repository for strategic plans,
assessment programs, evaluation instruments and outcomes reports that can be
shared with interested programs. Departments should not have to start from scratch
when they undertake outcomes reviews or assessment studies, and the results
will be far stronger if geoscience models can be shared broadly. This effort
could build on current community-sharing efforts, such as AGU’s Heads and
Chairs program and AGI’s Associates program, but include the information
that department chairs need to ensure their survival. A geology department that
is able to use a strong example from another geology department arguably will
have a better final result than if they start with a model from an English department.
As Carl Drummond of NAGT pointed out in 2001: “Programmatic survival in
the face of the complexities of the modern university demands thoughtfulness
on the part of all faculty.” Today, this demand is the responsibility of
geoscientists as a group, whether they hold faculty positions or not. Professional
societies can and should play a leadership role in the effort to protect departments.
These organizations have experience and a structure for political action and
for organized responses. They have access to data that can help everyone. They
have the resources to undertake studies that demonstrate the value of geology,
and they have the credibility to issue the results in reports that will command
attention.
A former president of GSA described the responsibility of that professional
society to all geologists: “To retain the respect of the community and
to retain influence for good, we must be able to justify the existence of a
society devoted to investigation … The question ‘Cui bono?’ [to
whose benefit] will be asked, and the answer cannot be avoided. … the Society
must have more to do with the outside world if the outcome for science is to
be what it should be.” The president was John J. Stevenson and the year
was 1898. How much longer can we afford to ignore the warning?
| The
numbers
Recent closures of geology programs at U.S. colleges and universities
reflect a continuing decrease in the number of bachelor degree-granting
geoscience programs. Geology programs are becoming the province of well-endowed
smaller colleges and large universities. Schools with smaller enrollments
and scarcer resources are eliminating geology departments or broadening
their scope, sometimes beyond recognition. Most closures start with a
simple name change or merger and then continue on to dissolution. Longitudinal
data from the American Geological Institute’s Directory of Geoscience
Departments support this trend (see feature above). |
Drummond, Carl N., 2001, Ten common principles of geoscience departments - Part I: Journal of Geoscience Education, v. 49, n.2, p. 108.
Feiss, P. Geoffrey, 1996, The survival of academic geology programs: GSA Today, v. 6, p. 16-17.
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