Young School Has Deep Roots

Nicholas School's Anniversary Marks Coming Together of Forestry, the Marine Lab and Geology

by Scottee Cantrell

The Nicholas School may celebrate its official creation date as 1991, but its roots go back to a forestry school, an island program and a one-man geology department that are almost as old as the university itself.

The School of Forestry, the Duke University Marine Lab and the Department of Geology started out on separate paths in the 1930s, but over time those paths would cross, and by the late 1980s they reached a critical juncture that drew them all together.

Nicolas School Dean Norman L. Christensen Jr. remembers it as being an exciting but difficult period because it brought together two forces: "One that related to these three programs, for which the university had failed to articulate a clear vision and had threatened to eliminate; the other was the recognition that Duke had developed an extensive set of faculty resources across the university with interests in the environment that needed to be brought together in an interdisciplinary structure to deal with emerging global environmental issues."

"It was these forces coming together that catalyzed a charge from Provost Griffiths to create a task force to think about how Duke might position itself to really move into a world class position in the area of environmental problem-solving and how these various programs might contribute to that process," says Christensen.

That task force, chaired by Christensen, recommended the creation of the School of Environmental Science and Policy, which became the School of the Environment. Christensen was named dean and the new school opened up "shop" in the south wing of the Biological Sciences building in 1991 with a small faculty and budget and with a big vision for the future.

Many of those who weathered those challenging times are still shaping the school as it moves into a new decade as "one of the very best environmental programs in the country, maybe the best professional program in the country,"says Christensen. Here are some thoughts from Christensen; Kenneth R. "Ken" Knoerr, professor of environmental meteorology and hydrology and director of graduate studies for the Nicholas School; Joseph S. "Joe" Ramus, professor of biological oceanography and former director of the Marine Lab; and Bruce H. Corliss, professor of earth and ocean sciences and interim division head.

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