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Communication and competition in environmental studies

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Abstract

College-bound students and graduate students interested in environmental studies and environmental science have hundreds of programs to choose from, and potential suitors in the academy are eager to be noticed. This article considers how purveyors of environment-related degree programs and majors use branding and other communication strategies as they compete for students and other coveted resources. Departmental and degree nomenclature is examined so as to discern how academic institutions respond to changing intellectual fashions and popular interest in environmental affairs. This analysis is aided by Harold D. Lasswell’s insights into the politics of communication.

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  1. Romero and Silveri (2006) document two “waves” of new “environmental programs” in the periods 1965–1976 and 1988–2005. In all, they tally more than 2,175 new “programs” emerging during the two waves, combined. The authors use “degrees” and “programs” interchangeably. Romero and Silveri (2006: 10) specify that of the 2,175 programs offered in the environmental field in 2005, 621 were at the bachelor’s level and 274 were at the master’s level; the remainder were doctoral or law degree programs. Organizational forms of interdisciplinary environmental programs are more clearly presented in CEDD’s national survey. Vincent (2009b) notes that approximately one-third of programs in CEDD’s survey are in stand-alone academic units (e.g., a department of environmental studies or college of environmental sciences). More programs still were housed in an academic unit that offered environmental studies or environmental sciences among other majors or degree programs (Vincent 2009b). This was especially true of environmental science programs.

  2. Soulé and Press (1998), for example, criticize contemporary environmental studies curricula for lacking core intellectual foundations and rigor. They surmise that eclectic combinations of natural and social scientists, who typically compose environmental studies programs, tend not to agree on common intellectual foundations for the field. Hence, they inevitably fail to design majors with structure and coherence. In contrast, Maniates and Whissel’s (2000) survey of environmental studies curricula find comparatively few cases of the “anything goes” or scattershot approach predicted by the critics; Maniates and Whissel are unconvinced that multidisciplinary faculties are necessarily prone to conflict or to develop shallow curricula.

  3. Whereas the University of Colorado at Boulder Environmental Studies Program website indicates that the program separated from the Department of Geography in 1993 (University of Colorado at Boulder 2009), other sources mark 1994 as the date of separation (Anonymous 1998).

  4. The comparatively negligible expected increase in the number of employees in the “forest fire inspectors and prevention specialists” job category (200 additional employees between 2008 and 2018) raises serious questions about America’s preparedness to combat expected increases in climate change-induced wildfires (see, United States Global Change Research Program 2009, especially, p. 66, 79, 82, 95, 100, 112, and 131).

  5. Environmental “health” workers in the “environmental scientists and specialists, including health,” occupational category:

    conduct research or perform investigation for the purpose of identifying, abating, or eliminating sources of pollutants or hazards that affect either the environment or the health of the population. Utilizing knowledge of various scientific disciplines may collect, synthesize, study, report, and take action based on data derived from measurements or observations of air, food, soil, water, and other sources (United States Department of Labor 2009c).

    In the job category, “environmental scientist and protection technicians, including health,” an employee:

    performs laboratory and field tests to monitor the environment and investigate sources of pollution, including those that affect health. Under direction of an environmental scientist or specialist, may collect samples of gases, soil, water, and other materials for testing and take corrective actions as assigned (United States Department of Labor 2009d).

  6. The forestry profession’s recruitment efforts cannot be helped by reports of low job satisfaction among federally employed foresters. The Best Places to Work in the Federal Government 2009 survey placed the U.S. Forest Service at 206th out of 216 organizations ranked by overall employee satisfaction (Society of American Foresters 2009). See also, JobsRated.Com’s 2009 survey of “best” and “worst” occupations which rated “lumberjack” the single worst job from a list of 200 professions. The ranking was based on criteria such as work environment, physical demands, stress, income, and hours per week (JobsRated.Com 2009).

  7. Cohen (1988) derived four lessons from the demise of the geography department at Harvard: (1) struggling departments should not over-rely on a single, influential figure to save the program; (2) poor teaching does not help the departmental cause; (3) departments are weak that are characterized by intellectual fragmentation and lack of a common conceptual framework; and (4) size matters—small faculties are vulnerable, and if the faculty stays small, it must become adept at creating intellectual networks.

  8. These findings depart somewhat from Murphy (2007: 124–125) who marks the late 1980s as the “end of an era of decline” in geography programs; he records no “major loss” among geography departments since that time. The fact that our findings diverge from Murphy could be semantic, i.e., we catalogued dropped departments and graduate degree programs among all institutions of higher learning listed in Peterson’s, whereas Murphy makes reference to losses (or lack thereof) in “major” departments. Moreover, Murphy documents the emergence of 12 new graduate-level degree programs in geography between 1995 and 2005 (Murphy 2007: 127).

  9. YouTube’s “community guidelines” declare (YouTube 2009), “We’re not asking for the kind of respect reserved for nuns, the elderly, and brain surgeons. We mean don’t abuse the site. Every cool new community feature on YouTube involves a certain level of trust. We trust you to be responsible, and millions of users respect that trust. Please be one of them”.

  10. Though the meaning and significance of “land ethic” requires more commentary than a single excerpt from the concept’s inventor (Aldo Leopold), a pithy distillation is found in Leopold’s admonition to “…quit thinking about decent land-use as solely an economic problem. Examine each question in terms of what is ethically and esthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient. A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it does otherwise”. (Leopold 1968: 224–225).

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Acknowledgments

Tatyana Ruseva, Justin Naab, and Joel Bolinger are gratefully acknowledged for their help compiling and organizing data for this project. Helpful comments on prior drafts were provided by Susan Clark, Garry Brewer, William Ascher, and Shirley Vincent.

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  1. School of Public and Environmental Affairs and the Hutton Honors College, Indiana University, 811 East Seventh Street, Bloomington, IN, 47405, USA

    Matthew R. Auer

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Correspondence to Matthew R. Auer.

Appendix I

Appendix I

Table 4 Environment-related degree programs dropped between 1989 and 2006
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Auer, M.R. Communication and competition in environmental studies. Policy Sci 43, 365–390 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-010-9109-z

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