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History

The State University of New York College of Forestry at Syracuse University established a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Studies degree program in the 1950s, granting its first degree in Environmental Studies to Lowell Robinson in 1956. Since then more than 1500 students have received a BS Environmental Studies degree from what has become SUNY-ESF. In 1986, the Faculty of Environmental Studies was established as one of eight academic departments of the College. To form this unit, the College's Graduate Program in Environmental Science (GPES) was joined with the Bachelor of Science in Environmental Studies degree program to constitute an interdisciplinary approach to environmental education and research at three degree levels: BS, MS/MPS, and PhD. By 1993, two new full-time faculty had been appointed to the Faculty of Environmental Studies as a result of a national search, the first such additions to the unit.

By 1995, the Faculty of Environmental Studies had acquired unified physical space and academic equipment in Louis Marshall Memorial Hall (Marshall Hall), on the ESF campus. (Louis Marshall, 1856-1929, played a key role in the founding of the New York State College of Forestry, and was the first President of the College's Board of Trustees. He was a nationally prominent civil rights lawyer, an early champion of the wilderness movement, and a leader in forest conservation in New York state.) Departmental resources are augmented by a full-service library at Syracuse University and ESF's Moon Library, specializing in environmental and natural resources materials. Computing equipment is available to students in campus facilities. Desk space was added for graduate students, with doctoral students and graduate assistants given priority.

The Faculty of Environmental Studies added two new dimensions to its palette of graduate instruction in the mid-1990s. A Certificate of Graduate Study in Environmental Decision Making commenced in Fall 1995; it is a 15 credit-hour program available to Syracuse University graduate students enrolled in Law, Management, Public Administration, and Information Studies degree programs. The Master of Professional Studies (M.P.S.) in Environmental Science was approved and implemented in Fall 1996. These programs represented a more rationalized approach to graduate study, allowing degree requirements to be tailored more finely to differing educational goals. In June 2000, SUNY System Administration underscored ESF's leading role in providing undergraduate education in Environmental Studies (and Environmental Sciences), establishing the College's "primacy" in this area among SUNY's 64 campuses and contract colleges.

The ESF Writing Program was created in 1990 and joined the Faculty of Environmental Studies in 1995. The Writing Program oversees a group of related activities to identify and address the literacy needs of the ESF campus and provide courses in the humanities. Writing Program faculty include a Director, three permanent Instructors, two full-time Visiting Instructors, and five part-time Visiting Instructors. The Writing Program offers composition, technical writing, literature, journalism, and humanities courses. In addition to addressing students' writing needs, these courses focus on rhetorical concerns, contextual analysis, critical thinking, and an ecological approach to criticism and composition. The Writing Program has been engaged in four phases of assessment (1990-present), created the Writing Resource Center (1991), and was instrumental in establishing the ESF Learning Communities (2000). In 2002, a Service-Learning section of Technical writing was established, and the Writing Program began playing an instrumental role in ESF in the High School. A Writing Program Council was established to help coordinate program development and delivery in 2008.

In the summer of 2007, the Faculty of Environmental Studies was renamed the Department of Environmental Studies. The same fall, following the recommendations of an external program review, the department submitted for approval to SUNY System Administration a proposal for the establishment of two new master's degree programs (M.S. and M.P.S.) in Environmental Studies; and GPES was reestablished as an interdepartmental graduate program, with continuing participation by Department of Environmental Studies faculty and graduate students. The proposed new degree programs were approved, with graduate students in Environmental Studies first entering ESF in Fall 2008. The department continues to review and update its core mission, related to advancing knowledge of the social and cultural dynamics of ecological sustainability.

Today, the Department of Environmental Studies has 12 full-time, permanent core faculty members. Responsibilities of these full-time appointments include instruction, research, and service, with instructional responsibilities for core environmental policy subject matter in both undergraduate and graduate programs, and for specialized graduate-level instruction. Faculty from the College's Department of Environmental Forestry and Biology participate in the undergraduate Environmental Studies program's Biological Science Applications option. And approximately 18 visiting faculty lend their expertise to a wide range of courses in cultural ecology, American history, environmental communications, writing, and other fields. Altogether, approximately 30 faculty contribute to the Department of Environmental Studies and its programs.

A $600,000 endowment underwrites the department's research and service organization, the Randolph G. Pack Environmental Institute, derivative of an earlier organization called the Institute for Environmental Policy and Planning. The Institute has had formal cooperative relationships with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), and New York State Department of State (DOS). Formal cooperation with several academic units at Syracuse University and Cornell University strengthen the unit's instructional and research base. The Institute has formal relationships with several international institutions, most recently including CINVESTAV, in Merida, Mexico. A smaller endowment of $40,000 supports unit outreach activity. In Fall 2008, the Department launched the John Felleman 21st Century Environmental Challenge Fund to sustain and further develop its programs in the new millennium.

These developments represent an upward direction for the unit, built upon a foundation of endowed funds, faculty commitments, improved staffing, dedicated physical space, rationalized programs, and the institutionalized ability to function cooperatively with kindred organizations locally, across New York state, and around the world.