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Posted on May 29, 2003 Not
All Are Created Equal: Aldemaro
Romero* and Christina Jones *Present address:
Department of Biological Sciences, Arkansas State University, P.O. Box 599,
State university, AR 72467, USA, aromero@astate.edu,
to whom correspondence should be sent Abstract Environmental
programs have traditionally lack definition of their nature and unifying
principles. In order to ascertain how these programs are presently
constituted in U.S. institutions of higher education, we surveyed 1060
environmental programs/departments between September 2002 and May 2003.
The states with the highest number of those programs/departments were New York
(100), Pennsylvania (92), California (77), Ohio (56), Massachusetts (55), and
while those with the lowest numbers are Idaho and Wyoming (0), North Dakota (1),
South Dakota, Arkansas, and Hawaii (2), Delaware (3), Oklahoma and Utah (4).
However, when the state population is taken into account and the number
of program per 1,000,000 inhabitants is calculated, the results vary greatly for
the ones that were at the top in absolute numbers but remain basically the same
for those that were at the bottom in absolute number. Thus, the states
with the highest number of programs/departments per 1,000,000 inhabitants are
Vermont (30.82), the District of Columbia (17.52), Montana (16.49), Maine
(15.45), Alaska (15.53), and Rhode Island (10.28), and while at the bottom we
find Idaho and Wyoming (0), Arkansas (0.74), Oklahoma (1.15), Texas (1.56),
North Dakota (1.58), Hawaii (1.61), Florida (1.62), and Kentucky (1.71). The
names Environmental Science and Environmental Studies are, by far, the most
common ones being, between the two of them, 47.62% of the program names.
They are followed by engineering (11.04%), Health/Toxicology (7.61%), and
Biology/Ecology/Conservation (6.87%). Between
1900 (the year of the first program created) and 1958, only 14 programs were
established. For the period 1959-1999, there is a dramatic increase in the
number of programs being created. There are two big "waves" in
the creation of programs: one between 1965 and 1976 (with a high peak in
1970) and another starting 1988 and, probably, continuing to this date, with a
peak in 1997. Representatives of the programs surveyed, cited students and
faculty demand as the most common reason behind the creation of those programs. The
high diversity of names and emphases found in this study is consistent with the
premise that Environmental Studies is a field where there is a lack of unifying
principles and clarity of what environmental studies programs should be.
This is a continuous project to be updated on a yearly basis. Introduction There is some uncertainty
about Environmental Studies (ES) as an academic field and about how to design
environmental programs for institutions of higher education (Soulé & Press
1998, Maniates & Whissel 2000). In general, the status of ES programs
(ESPs) is characterized by competing proposals. There is neither agreement
as to the characterization of the domain nor a basis for identification and
selection of accurate and appropriate subject matter of ESPs (Bennett 1996). Traditionally, most ESPs
have been envisioned as an integrating concept that draws elements from many
traditional disciplines, but actual integration or synthesis of that knowledge
has been difficult to define and/or achieve. Thus, it is not always
possible to ascertain when that integration is accomplished. No consensus
has been reached on whether ES Studies is a field that can be described as an
area for professional and technical preparation, interdisciplinary,
multidisciplinary, metadisciplinary or a discipline in itself (Caldwell 1983,
Horning 1996, Jacobson & McDuff 1998, Mattes 1994, McLaughlin 1994, Newell
& Green 1982, Schneider 1997, Wilke 1995). Furthermore, whether or not
its teaching must include certain ethical values and what those values should
be, have also been a source of discussion (Hunn 1996, Kim & Dixon 1993, Orr
1990). Despite all these
shortcomings, there is evidence that ESPs are increasing in number and
importance among institutions of higher education (Kettl 1999, Romero et al.
2000, Maniates & Whissel 2000). Yet, there have been, to our
knowledge, only four extensive, in-depth survey of environmental
programs/departments in U.S. academic institutions (Romero et al. 2000, Maniates
& Whissel 2000, Romero et al. 2001, Romero & Eastwood, 2002). Some
past statistical analyses on their number in higher education have always been
vague (e.g., Brough 1992). The major goal of this
paper is to analyze on a yearly bases as many environmental programs in U.S.
institutions of higher education as possible as a continuation of our previous
work (Romero et al. 2000, 2001, Romero and Eastwood, 2002).
We continue to study the following characteristics: 1) geographic
distribution; 2) number of programs per institution; 3) how those programs
define themselves by name (e.g., environmental studies, environmental science,
etc.); 4) emphases of those programs by areas of knowledge (natural sciences,
social sciences, humanities, interdisciplinary); 5) degree offered (B.A., B.
Sc., Masters’, Ph.D.); 6) whether internships and study away/abroad
opportunities were offered and if any of those was required; 7) vital statistics
(number of students enrolled, number of students graduated in 1998, 1999, 2000,
2001, 2002 number of faculty involved in those programs and the status of those
faculty, i.e., number of faculty that: a) were assigned to the
environmental program/department, whether they were b) full-time, c) shared with
other departments/programs, d) part-time faculty,
8) year in which the environmental program/department was created, and 9)
why the program was created. For
this edition, we have also made some inquiries on the operating budgets of those
programs. Materials
and Methods We define as an
environmental program/department any of those that use the word environmental in
their title, from the standard environmental studies, science, and engineering
to the less common environmental journalism or law. We also include those
that although their names do not carry the word environmental, define themselves
as environmental in nature in their advertisement material. Much of the data presented
in this study was collected in the last three years from the previous editions
of this paper (Romero et al. 2000, Romero et al. 2001, Romero and Eastwood
2002). In addition to the methods
used then, we obtained the most recent information through direct contact with
the administrators of the programs themselves via email and telephone.
Administrators of programs for which we had information previously were
asked to provide updates, and those who we contacted for the first time were
asked to complete the entire survey. We
also visited the websites of particular colleges and universities, and consulted
Rodenhouse (2000). Direct responses
(about 50% of the programs surveyed) were compiled.
For those that did not reply to our request for information we based the
data provided in this paper on their advertised information either in their web
pages or in their brochures. When
there was no advertised information in a specific category, we assumed no
changes and left the information as it was in Romero and Eastwood (2002).
Each program was treated as an individual entry for statistical purposes
even when there was more than one program for the same academic institution. Data collection was
carried out between September 2002 and May 2003. To locate the
programs/departments, we used online search engines such as Peterson’s guide
to graduate schools (www.petersons.com) and
Peterson’s CollegeQuest for undergraduate programs (www.collegequest.com).
We also used other sites that carry extensive lists of higher education programs
in the environmental arena, such as the web page of the Committee for the
National Institute of the Environment (www.cnie.org) and Second Nature (http://www.starfish.org).
We also looked at Brillault (2000) as a source for environmental law
programs. Other programs were
located through their web pages by typing in the words environment or
environmental and matching those with the words program and/or department in the
following search engines: Excite, HotBot, LookSmart, Lycos, Snap,
About.com, and Google. In order to locate programs/departments that were
more recently created and for which information was not readily available in the
sources cited above, we have been scrutinizing job advertisements for academic
positions in the Chronicle of Higher Education and Science since September 1999.
Results
and Discussion General: Results are
compiled in Table 1. We present information on a total of 1060
programs/departments in 578 institutions of higher education. 324 of them
were colleges and the rest universities, independent graduate schools, and/or
law schools. Those programs are
listed alphabetically according to the name of the academic institution to which
they belong. At the end of
this Table we list the URL address from each program from which we obtained the
initial information, whether or not people from that program/department
responded to our survey, the name of the person we contacted or who at least
appeared as responsible for the program/department based on his/her title
(program director/coordinator, chair), and the email address of that
program/department that we used or at least appeared to be the one for
contact/further inquiry for that program. Click here for Table 1 Geographic Distribution:
The second column on Tables 1, identifies the location of the institution by
state. The programs/departments per state are summarized in Table 2.
In order to see whether these numbers really represent any level of interest for
these kinds of programs in the academic institutions of these states, they must
be correlated to the population in those states. Using also U.S. Census
Bureau data (http://www.census.gov) as for 1 July 2002, we divided the number of
programs/department by the population of that state and region. Table 2. Number of
Environmental programs/departments per state/population
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