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Committing to a Trinity-Nicholas Partnership
Nicholas School to Promote Undergraduate Understanding of Principles of Ecology and Earth Sciences

I dabbled in natural history in high school, but it was during my formative undergraduate years at Dartmouth that I discovered the excitement of a career in environmental science. No doubt, working closely to analyze New England’s rain chemistry with my undergraduate mentor, Bill Reiners, made a huge difference in my decision to go to graduate school in ecology. But I was in classes with dozens of students who chose other careers. Where are they now?

Many students at Duke, like those at Dartmouth, have an interest in ecology, but are unlikely to choose an environmental field as their primary life pursuit. Most of my classmates from 30 years ago are now lawyers, doctors and investment managers, and I can only hope they carry some memory of what we learned about the basic principles underlying the function of natural ecosystems and our planet. Watching the political mood of the country with respect to the environment, I fear that too few of our educated citizenship share that knowledge. For the sake of our planet, we must do better—at Duke, at Dartmouth, and at all colleges and universities across the nation—to educate our students about the environment.

Duke students will be leaders of the next generation, and my fondest hope is that we can populate the halls of the corporate and government world with those who understand some of the basic principles of ecology and earth science. At the Nicholas School, we are committed to undergraduate education. Since 1995, the school has offered several majors for students in Trinity College—currently an A.B. and a B.S. in environmental science and policy and an A.B. and B.S. in earth and ocean sciences. Each year, we teach about 800 undergraduates, roughly 12 percent of the students on campus. This is a good start, but we must do more to reach students across campus. In our new strategic plan, we have undertaken a renewed commitment to undergraduate teaching and outreach. We want to double our undergraduate enrollments during the next few years.

One exciting new program for undergraduates is a Certificate in Energy and the Environment, to complement the similar certificate we recently began to offer for our professional degree (MEM) students. Many students realize that the competition between finite energy resources and steadily increasing demand is among the most pressing issues confronting our world, and that how we exploit energy resources often has huge impacts on our environment. We expect this certificate to be of interest not only to our environment and earth science majors, but also to undergraduates majoring in social sciences, such as public policy and economics, because the energy system is so pervasive in its impact. This exciting new focal area within the Nicholas School was made possible by the vision of the Gendell family, whose generous gift will add new faculty positions in energy studies and support a host of teaching and outreach activities. (See story >)

One of the great resources of the Nicholas School and Duke University is the Marine Laboratory on the coast in Beaufort, N.C. The lab offers a year-round curriculum for undergraduate and graduate students, as well as a full range of research, residential, and teaching facilities, including the oceanographic ship, the R/V Cape Hatteras. Nowhere is the undergraduate experience more real than at the Marine Lab, where students opt to spend a semester living, working, and studying in small, focused groups, and to gain hands-on research experience through studies of sea turtle reproduction or the mating systems of blue crabs. Some laboratories are held at night, so that students can sample when the tides are right and the seasons are best. In my years as a faculty member in the Biology Department, every undergraduate I advised who went to the Marine Lab thought it was the best part of her undergraduate experience. While Marine Lab semesters are open to all undergraduates, regardless of major, we are currently working to strengthen this rich opportunity for undergraduate engineering students by offering a semester geared toward their particular interests and skills, including research projects involving the remote sensing and sonar tagging of marine life.

I am a big advocate of the class field trip, but unfortunately, given the rapid daily pace of life on campus, field trips have nearly disappeared from the curriculum of the modern university. A bonding between student and nature and lifelong friendships amongst students are forged by a long day in the field and an evening by the campfire. Currently, geologists within the Nicholas School offer popular field trips to Hawaii, Yellowstone, and Florida coral reefs. In addition, the school’s energy field trip during fall break brings students to the oil fields and refineries of Houston to see how the nation’s energy is supplied. We want to extend such field experiences to include a wider range of environmental sciences, and we hope to compensate the faculty for the extra time that this activity requires.

Undergraduate teaching and outreach will factor importantly in the new strategic plan for the Nicholas School. The generous gift from the Gendell family will play a key role in energizing our program, which can now reach out to a wider population of undergraduate students. Certainly, we’ll need additional new resources to expand our undergraduate teaching and activities throughout the school. But look to our exciting new programs to ensure that our nation’s environment will be in the hands of future leaders well equipped to maintain its health.

William H.Schlesinger is dean of the Nicholas School and James B.Duke Professor of Biogeochemistry