Environmental Studies Department
Mission Statement
The
Environmental Studies Department at California State University,
Sacramento helps students understand environmental problems in their
political, ethical, social, and scientific context.
We believe the study
of environmental issues requires an interdisciplinary approach. To this
end, we emphasize the development of strong writing, research and
quantitative skills, within the context of a broad liberal arts
perspective.
History
The Environmental Studies Program at
California State University, Sacramento arose at a time when many people
had begun to notice the signs of deterioration of the natural environment.
In 1962 Rachel Carson released the book Silent Spring, which was the first
of its kind to expose the hazards of the pesticide DDT and to question
humanity's faith in technological progress. Her book influenced
social change and is credited as the foundation for the contemporary
environmental movement. Americans soon recognized problems with air
pollution, water pollution, soil erosion, deforestation, and resource
limitations.
Many scholars across the country found that their current academic
programs were too specialized to conceptualize and study environmental
problems because their very nature encompassed many academic fields.
Faculty and students began to question how a curriculum could set out to
teach something that would cover environmental problems.
A group of faculty members at California State University, Sacramento took on the task of creating a curriculum to study environmental problems. Professors Marty Brittan in Bioscience, Ken Kerri in Engineering, Homer Ibser in Physics, and fifteen to twenty other faculty, created an interdisciplinary program designed to draw on existing courses in several other academic departments.
The first director of the program was Dr. Wes Jackson, a young geneticist who had published the first text widely used in courses on environmental problems. In 1971-72 Jackson was joined by Professor Charles Washburn from Mechanical Engineering and Angus Wright, a Latin American Historian. Soon Valerie Anderson, a biologist and human ecologist, joined the program as a full time faculty member.
Near the end of the 90's Dr. Mary Brentwood, a political scientist with
experience in salmon restoration joined the department. By 2000 Wright and Anderson had become
faculty emeritus.
Dr. Dudley Burton was hired by CSUS as Chair of the department in 2001. Dr.
Burton, is an engineer and urban an regional planner who came from a
similar position at Baylor University.
The department now has two new faculty members who joined us in Fall of 2007. Dr. Virginia Matzek, and Dr. Michelle Stevens, both of whom are restoration ecologists.
Location
The Environmental
Studies Department is located in room 554A on the fifth floor of Amador.
Amador hall is located on the west side of the campus near the library.
Driving directions
Campus Map
