Departments changed in natural Resources
The College of Natural Resources will be combining their existing programs into three new departments at the beginning of July if approved by the Board of Trustees and Regents.
“This new organization of the college takes advantage of its tradition and history, but positions us to do special things in the future,” said F. E. Busby, dean of college of natural resources.
Traditionally the college has had four departments and one interdisciplinary program, Busby said.
He said this process began in 1998 when Busby became dean and started evaluating how the college was and wasn’t working.
According to the vision statement for the college “The College of Natural Resources will be a leader in discovery, innovation and lifelong learning to promote healthy, diverse and enduring ecosystems upon which human communities depend.”
To help implement this vision several plans were evaluated and in a vote of 26-21-1 by the faculty, this plan was chosen, Busby said.
“The risk we take is that the old model is really the right one. But this gives us great opportunities,” Busby said.
The departments will be called Aquatic Watershed and Earth Resources, Environment and Society, and Forestry Range and Wildlife Sciences, Busby said.
The first will include all the areas that dealt with water including fisheries, watershed science, remote sensors and aquatic ecologists, he said.
“It will be the absolute strongest department in the world in wild land water resources,” Busby said.
The second will include sociologists, economists, human geographers, anthropologists, outdoor recreation and policy, Busby said.
“The uniqueness of this department is that in academia forever these disciplines have always been isolated. The opportunities for interdisciplinary work is just unbelievable,” Busby said.
The last department will include range land and forestry, he said.
“This brings together people knowledgeable in wild land resources and management. This department has significant strength in land management in a multiple-use standpoint. Opportunities for new discoveries, new thinking and new advances are really great,” Busby said.
He said they hope this will bring up enrollment, which has been declining in forestry and range. These were traditionally some of the mainstays for the college.
Also, having only three departments instead of four will help free up some funding that would otherwise have been spent on administration for the additional department and interdisciplinary program.
“The college organization should be based on our intellectual strength, not funding,” Busby said. “But the long term savings will help the three new departments to have a better financial base.”
During the earlier stages and voting on the changes, students were not included in the decision making process, Busby said.
“Unfortunately, students were not as involved as they should have been. We weren’t attempting to keep it a secret, but we didn’t engage them very well,” Busby said.
After students originally found out about the changes, some staged protests to try to stop the process, Busby said.
“At first, students were really concerned. Everyone got really frustrated. They felt like they were being left out of the loop,” said Riley Snow, the college council president.
Changes to curriculum have been left up to the departments to have approved individually, Busby said.
When students found out the change wouldn’t really affect their majors and their degrees would be sustained through the grandfather clause, opposition dropped off, Snow said.
Students are sitting in on the curriculum committee meetings and reporting back to those interested through e-mail, Snow said.
“I’ve been impressed with the amount of importance they [the administration] have put on student input,” Snow said. “This change will give the whole college a facelift.”