Andrew Riely’s Oct. 31 article [“The Environmental studies curriculum should be re-worked”] regarding the Environmental Studies curriculum raises important issues about the shortcomings of the department, but his criticisms stop short of a full analysis. Riely argues that the ES curriculum is “not coherent enough” and “fails to adequately challenge students” and offers his suggestions for important major requirements. However, Riely does not go on to analyze why these limitations exist. In focusing his recommendations exclusively on the ES department, Riely misses the fact that his grievances should rest more broadly with the college as a whole.

Environmental Studies is currently “fighting for its existence” because of a historical lack of institutional support, not because of internal failures. In 2002, the department graduated over 20 majors, despite having only one full-time faculty member and a comparatively small budget. Seriously understaffed, the ES department has struggled to respond to student demand with few resources and little ideological support. In a constructive sense, focusing on the institutional lack of commitment of the college means the issue at hand is not only how the ES program should commit to improve for its majors (which is logistically impossible), but how Macalester as a whole should commit to improving the ES department. This, in turn, requires an analysis of the overall level of Macalester’s academic engagement with environmental concerns.

When students appealed to the administration for more ES faculty in 2001, they were told that because ES is an interdisciplinary major, it is up to individual departments to hire faculty with an environmental focus within their field. It is therefore fruitless to call the lack of an environmental literature or history course a “glaring hole in the Macalester ES program.” The fault cannot lie in any specific department; it lies with Macalester’s general lack of commitment to ecological literacy, as well as a negligence in recognizing Environmental Studies’ contribution to academic discourse and understanding the world in which we live.

Recognizing the centrality of ecological literacy to a liberal arts education would improve courses for the benefit of all students, not merely those in the ES department. For example, rather than advocating highly specialized courses such as Field Botany for all ES majors, Macalester should recognize the significance of a general familiarity with local natural history for all students. Integrating ecological literacy into the curriculum would emphasize the importance of understanding how the environment is at once social, political and cultural, and therefore concerns us all. Although the ES department could be at the forefront of such cohesion, it cannot do so without academic and administrative support.

It is increasingly imperative that Macalester provide students with a background in environmental integrity. Over 50 years ago, urbanist Lewis Mumford wrote that “all new thinking must now be ecological”; today, biologist David Orr states that ecological literacy refers to “the art of living responsibly,” echoing Macalester’s Statement of Purpose, which claims that students “should be prepared to take responsibility for their personal, social and intellectual choices.” As it becomes increasingly clear that environmental issues play crucial roles in the arenas of social justice, power and class struggles, Third World feminism, international politics and conflict, cultural identity and transformation, and economic globalization—in short, that ecological literacy is no more about turning off bathroom lights than multiculturalism is about international folk dances—Macalester must inevitably move toward confronting environmental understanding as part of its commitment to liberal arts.

Since the signing of the Talloires Declaration in May 2000, Macalester has slowly but steadily improved its environmental awareness and accountability; faculty, staff and alumni have been supportive of a variety of campus initiatives. Student frustrations in the ES department, therefore, reflect not institutional failures so much as the simple fact that Macalester’s offerings have plainly reached their limits. The department should maintain its flexibility, allowing majors to simultaneously specialize in traditional disciplines, while increasing the ability of all students to approach the growing importance of environmental knowledge. In order to do so, the ES department now needs, more than ever, institutional and academic support to provide the services and pedagogy the entire college richly deserves.