We realized that a faculty, rather than administration, proposal would face opposition and new resources would not be available. The existing geology major provided an excellent basis. It included a broad background in mathematics, physics, and chemistry. We thus tried to provide as strong an intellectual base as possible, given the necessary tradeoff due to the ill-defined but broad scope of environmental science and the constraints on the number of courses requirable. Students also select three classes on explicitly environmental topics, and two social science courses from an approved list in economics, political science, or sociology.
Students can thus design a program meeting their own interests within the broad environmental area.
The program was thus based initially on existing courses. The primary additional responsibility would be on the program director. We recognized that the environmental major would probably have more students than our small undergraduate geology major, and that new courses could be added later. Although the major needed to involve other departments, it would be unrealistic to expect new courses, at least initially. We thus sought advice on suitable courses in other departments from sympathetic colleagues, especially from geography, biology, environmental engineering, and chemistry.