1. Background 1: Earth and Environmental Sciences at Queens
College
Queens College is one of the senior colleges of the City University of New York (CUNY), the largest municipal college system in the United States. Established in 1937, the College has sought to offer strong liberal arts education to working class people, originally mostly European immigrants. Our success is indicated by the fact that in our brief 60 years of existence, more Queens College graduates have gone on to earn doctoral degrees (Ph.D., M.D., J.D., etc.) than those of any other institution in the United States. Today, the College has grown to a campus of approximately 12,000 undergraduate students (74% female) and approximately 4000 graduate students. Slightly fewer than half of students are Caucasian, while the rest are fairly evenly distributed among Asian, Hispanic, African-American and other ethnic groups (Fig. 1a). The College's mission today is the same, although a changed population reflects new immigration trends. Most of our students live in the borough of Queens, which is cited in the 1990 U.S. Census as the most ethnically diverse county in the United States. Slightly fewer than half of the incoming freshman identify English as their native language (Fig. 1b). Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Korean, Greek and another 60 languages are identified by the other half as their native languages (Fig. 1b). The students
today still come from the working class, but now include immigrants themselves as well as their children. The weighted average age of undergraduate students in degree programs is 28 years (Fig. 1c). About a third of them work full-time while pursuing their degree. An example of the College's commitment to provide
support for our mostly female, older-than-average, working-class students is a
campus day-care center for young children of the students.
The College is committed to maintaining strong science programs as part of a
strong liberal arts education. In 1998, the School of Earth and Environmental
Sciences (SEES) was formed, with a core faculty from Geology, and associated
faculty from Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Economics, Philosophy, and
Urban Studies. Queens College has maintained a successful Geology program
since it was established in 1962. However, the severe budget crisis in 1976
and subsequent ever-shrinking State and City financial support for CUNY has
made a substantial detrimental impact on all departments, including Geology.
By 1991, the number of active Geology majors declared during that academic
year decreased to a very small number (Fig. 1d). It was only after the
introduction of Geoscience Education and Environmental Science majors in 1995, and the subsequent introduction of the Environmental Studies
Major in 1996, that the total number of active majors declared in each academic
year increased significantly. In the academic Year 1999-2000, the faculty of the
SEES welcomed 23 new majors into our program. The total number of active
majors in the program is approaching 100, the highest level since 1976. More
than 95% of our majors graduate with a B.S. or B.A. degree, most of them
taking 5 years to complete all their degree requirements.
This welcome trend of growing numbers of active majors is to a
large extent a reflection of the changes in the curriculum and the SEES’s
commitment to environmental science education. This trend is especially
significant in view of the declining total enrollment at the College since the
mid-1990s, in part the result of higher admission standards and elimination of
remedial programs. We were able to convince about 10% of the approximately 2000 students enrolled in our non-major and introductory courses that Earth and
Environmental Sciences offer worthy career options. Those who do not want to
pursue a professional Geology or Environmental Science career can now work
towards a Geoscience Education or an Environmental Studies degree. In recent
years, the increased awareness of the environment by the general public and
the increasing demand for high school science teachers have convinced about a
third of our Geology Majors to pursue a career in education, although these
effects are difficult to quantify. These adjustments made in the teaching
and research direction by the SEES are fundamental. Even the Geology major
now has a set of new requirements, with a balanced emphasis on the earth's
surficial and internal processes. The fundamental changes in the curriculum
were made possible by the recent hiring of three tenure-track faculty members
with expertise in aqueous geochemistry (Yan Zheng), hydrology (Shiaful
Chowdhury) and ecological engineering (Julie Mankiewicz). However, the total
number of faculty members in the department remains ten,unchanged since 1991 because of retirements.