Senate approves new interdisciplinary program on energy and the environment

The Faculty Senate has granted the School of Earth Sciences permission to establish a graduate interdisciplinary program (IDP) in Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences. In a vote taken on May 26, the senate authorized the nomination of candidates for master's and doctoral degrees in the program for a period of five years, from Sept. 1, 2006, to Aug. 31, 2011.

The new IDP is designed to give students the opportunity to obtain advanced degrees in emerging disciplines that cross all three departments in the School of Earth Sciences—Geophysics, Petroleum Engineering and Geological and Environmental Sciences. Possible fields of study include marine ecosystem modeling, carbon sequestration modeling and computational geosciences.

"The idea for this new program grew out of the school's strategic planning process carried out last year," says Pamela Matson, the Chester Naramore Dean of the School of Earth Sciences. "Many of our faculty envisioned a program that would engage faculty with similar interests from across our earth science departments and allow students to focus their attention and to build strong academic programs in areas that cross-over traditional department boundaries, such as ocean sciences, water resource sciences and earth science computation."

She points out that the new program is distinct from, and complementary to, the Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources (IPER), which draws faculty from many schools on campus and includes training and research in policy analysis along with the sciences.

Kevin Arrigo, an associate professor of geophysics who chaired the eight-member faculty committee that developed the IDP, will serve as its first director.

-30-