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SJSU ENVIRONMENTAL FORUM
ANNUAL REPORT TO PROVOST
Academic Year 1999-2000
Dennis Jaehne
Forum Chair
June 8, 2000

Mission

The Forumís mission is to enhance environmental education at SJSU. Our goals are to facilitate a broad, interdisciplinary dialogue on environmental issues on campus; to enhance environmental curricula; to recruit students into environmental programs; to encourage environmental research and collaborations; and to provide outreach to the community regarding environmental programs and opportunities.

Our focus is on collaborative and mutually beneficial activities between and among departments. Participation is open to all interested faculty. This year, as in the past, we had broad representation across departments and colleges.

Meetings and Minutes

The Environmental Forum met eight times during AY 99/00. The College of Science graciously hosted all meetings in their Conference Room. Meetings in September, October, November, December, and February were held on Thursday afternoons. Meetings in March and April were held on Wednesday afternoons. Our final meeting was held on a Tuesday. We rotated meeting days to accommodate as many faculty as possible. Minutes from all of the meetings are posted on the Forumís website at www.sjsu.edu/depts/enfor/

Participation and Organization

Dean Gerry Selter (COS) serves as the administrative liaison to the Forum. D. Jaehne (Communication Studies) was elected Forum Chair at the September, 1999 meeting. Additional Forum participants during 1999-2000 were: B. Bornstein (Meteorology), A. Diaz (Chemical and Materials Engineering) M. Lambert (Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, R. Keady (Comparative Religious Studies), M. McNeil (Chemical and Materials Engineering), U. Ndon (Civil and Environmental Engineering), S. Rafkin (Meteorology), L. Rowntree (Environmental Studies), F. Schiavo (Environmental Studies), D. Schwarz (COSS), and J. Smith (Biology).

Activities and Accomplishments

Forum activities in 1999-2000 focused primarily on consolidating the Forumís prior gains and increasing the visibility of environmental programs on campus. Much of our work sought to improve existing Forum initiatives, and oversee developing programs. To that end we tracked development of the new Environmental Health and Safety Program, updated and improved our Environmental Forum web site, supported environmentally-themed talks and programs, increased our outreach to students, and collaborated on awards programs with the Institute for Research in Environmental Engineering and Science (IREES). At the end of the year we began to explore the possibility of a merger between the Forum and IREES. A more detailed discussion of these activities follows.

EH&S Degree Programs and Funding

The Forum has actively supported and monitored the development of the new degree program in Environmental Health and Safety, serving as a point of contact and discussion among the program faculty and coordinators.
The EH&S program has both an engineering track within the College of Engineering, and a generalist track within Environmental Studies in the College of Social Sciences. Faculty and industry representatives collaborated to develop the curriculum for both tracks. During the past year, both tracks received their final campus approvals. The Environmental Studies track, for technical reasons, was referred to the Chancellorís Office for final approval, which we still await. Both tracks have begun to enroll student majors in the introductory courses. The Engineering track started a semester sooner, so most of the Forumís discussion this past year centered on the final approval of and start up of the Environmental Studies track.

The ENVS 170 introductory course enrolled about 25 students in its initial offering in Fall 1999. About 15 majors have declared themselves in this track. B. Sherin, an environmental professional who helped plan the curriculum, taught the first section of this new course. Among those enrolled were practicing engineers and community workers, suggesting the success of prior outreach for the program. The Forum supported the further development of the Environmental Studies track by contributing its 0.2 assigned time budget to underwrite a program coordinator in the Department of Environmental Studies (B. Olszewski). The purposes of this one time investment are to ramp up the program, to develop advising materials, and to increase contacts and cooperation with industry to better promote and fund the program.

During Spring term, M. McNeil, the College of Engineering liaison to the EH&S Program, worked with B. Sherin to secure industry funding (approx. $1000) of additional student recruitment brochures for the program (attached). Plans are being made for the university to fund a proposed information night with industry representatives. B. Olszewski developed advising forms for the program and also prepared and staffed an outreach and recruitment booth at the campus Earth Day events in April. Coordination meetings between COE, COSS, UCSC Extension, and Mission College have been held. In addition, a work plan for program development has been prepared.

The Forum plans to continue to support the development of the program both on campus and in the professional community.

Environmental Forum Website

The Forum created a web site at www.sjsu.edu/depts/enfor/ to act as a comprehensive source of information on environmental activities and offerings on campus, to improve communication regarding environmental scholarship on campus, and to increase the visibility of SJSUís environmental offerings to the community. D. Schwarz maintained the site and has accomplished a complete site update during this past year. He has graphically enhanced the site and added new categories of information. New links are continually being added and a calendar feature is planned. In addition to the revised and updated Environmental Curriculum list that D. Schwarz obtained, pages have been, or are being developed for campus environmental organizations, upcoming events, student opportunities and activities, environmental research on campus, and environmental partnerships. In addition, the Forum posts all meeting minutes to the website. (A copy of the webpages is attached to this report.)

On Feb. 17, the site had received 125 hits. By June 1 it had received 597 hits. The Forum finds this measure of increased visibility and interest encouraging. We will continue to develop the usefulness of the site.

The Forumís plans to develop a listserve accessible from the website are not yet complete. We hope the recent completion of the campus technology infrastructure upgrade will facilitate development of a Forum listserve in the coming year.

Increasing Student Involvement in Environmental Programs

Two major Forum goals are to attract qualified students into environmental programs and to promote quality scholarship on environmental issues. To facilitate these goals, the Forum worked this year, in cooperation with IREES, to introduce and co-sponsor campus awards for environmental scholarship.

IREES Engineering Student Conference. The first effort sought to introduce a distinct category of environmental award (including a small cash prize) at the annual IREES Engineering Student Conference. Unfortunately, perhaps owing to lateness of notice, no students entered suitable environmentally related projects. This award will be postponed until next year and the Forum will undertake to publicize the program throughout the year and make its first awards in Spring 2001.

IREES Environmental Awards. The Forum also agreed to join sponsorship of the campus-wide IREES Environmental Awards and to help support a modest cash prize for the best environmental research project. This award is open to all faculty and students in all disciplines. The first judging was scheduled to take place in June, 2000. However, it appears that there were too few entrants and the awards competition was cancelled for this year. The Forum expects to publicize the event more thoroughly and make its first awards in Spring 2001.

Science 2 Freshman Orientation. The Forum worked on a plan to make environmental curriculum presentations in the new Science 2 orientation course for freshmen. We gained approval from the College of Science to make such presentations in Fall 2001. The purpose would be to suggest opportunities open to students in various fields of environmental study, with some attention paid to the career possibilities supported by the various environment related majors.
Outreach Brochure. The Forumís most significant outreach accomplishment this year was the production of its first outreach brochure (attached). S. Rafkin assembled the data and oversaw the design and production of the brochure. The brochure describes the Forum and its mission, and lists the environment related programs and curricula on campus, both in GE courses and in departments and majors. We distributed the initial 600 copies of the brochure at the May 5 New Student Orientation and Advising Day in conjunction with the Student Life office. Students picked up all 600 brochures and the Forum web manager noticed an increase number of hits in the two weeks subsequent to the event. The Forum plans to revise and update the brochure as necessary and to make it available at subsequent transfer and advising day events.

Speaker Programs

Following the Forumís successful speaker event of Spring 1999 (a talk by Dr. Stephen Schneider on Global Warming) the Forum considered whether to produce such an event annually. We decided that the Forumís limited resources would be better spent in encouraging and co-sponsoring events with other groups. Accordingly, this year the Forum contributed some funds to partner with the Institute for Social Responsibility, Ethics, and Education, the Institute for Teaching and Learning, and the College of Education to bring Dr. Chet Bowers to campus. On April 27 Bowers delivered a public lecture in Morris Daily Auditorium on "Developing a Practice of an Eco-Justice Pedagogy." Afterwards, he met in a two hour roundtable with faculty and students. In early May he returned for a two day seminar/workshop on the same topic in the College of Education.

IREES/Environmental Forum Merger

At the suggestion of M. McNeil, speaking as an IREES Board Member and a Forum member, the Forum considered the potential of a merger of the two campus units. Currently, the groups have similar missions to promote environment related curriculum and research. With limited faculty time resources, and environment related faculty divided across two activities, there could be efficiencies as well as synergy from merging the two groups. In addition, IREES, as an institute, has potential for fundraising and funding contribution to the Forumís work. The Forum could serve as the umbrella group with its larger scope of mission and the IREES could function as the research arm of the Forum. IREES has already expressed interest in expanding its scope to include environment related research in all curricular and disciplinary areas and is willing to modify its name to make explicit its support of general "environmental studies" beyond the colleges of science and engineering that were its founding focus.

There is a strong historical precedent for such an integration in the original campus "environmental collaborative" that was precursor to IREES. Additionally, such a merger could strengthen the campus commitment to and coordination of environmental programs and curricula. Such a merger could also improve the credibility of both organizations. The Forum decided to support (and continue) merger discussions in Fall 2000 to work out the details and implications and to seek the appropriate approvals.

Summary and Recommendations

The Forumís cooperative, interdisciplinary format has advanced our important common goals for improving the success of environmental programs on campus. The website is established and useful and appears to be attracting interest. Our outreach brochure supports the mission (and complements the website) by placing practical curricular information into the hands of new students. We have started modest awards programs to recognize, promote, and reward environmental research on campus. We have overseen the introduction and startup, as well as the early promotion, of a new degree program in Environmental Health and Safety, a program that involves significant cooperation with and contribution from private industry in our area. That program is now attracting majors and is moving into its growth phase. Finally, we have established such productive cooperation with IEES that a merger of the two groups now seems both feasible and desirable.
We have accomplished these objectives with a modest budget of residual environmental collaborative funds and with the Provostís 0.2 assigned time contribution. Together, these resources functioned as effective multipliers for larger projects. Maintaining our resources at that level seems both prudent and promising for the foreseeable future. We believe that our curricular mission continues to be important for the campus and the community inasmuch as major environmental problems and challenges still confront us.

Our primary recommendation at this time is that the Provost continue to support the mission and work of the Forum as in the past and by acknowledging the importance of its activities in the ongoing curricular development of the university. We specifically recommend that the Provost support the merger plan we submit to join the Environmental Forum with IREES. While we do not have specific funding needs at the moment, we recommend that the Provost be as receptive and helpful as possible in supporting specific needs that arise as our work develops.
 

Budget, Accounting, and Finance

The Forum is grateful for Dean Gerry Selter and the College of Science administrative staff for providing the Forumís administrative support. COS staff have maintained the Forumís books and managed its budget and accounts. The Forum operates currently with residual funds from the previous SJSU Environmental Collaborative.

EXPENSES
ENVIRONMENTAL COLLABORATIVE FUNDS, 1999-2000

7/1/99  Beginning Balance .................................7,528.00
7/3/99  Student Assistant (web) ....................... ...(480.00)
3/9/00  0.2 release/B.Olszewski .......................(3,374.00)
5/25/00  Funding for 0.2 release ........................3,374.00
5/31/00  NO 39027/Brochures ................................(62.00)
6/6/00  Honorarium/Bowers Lecture, 4/27/00.....(500.00)
6/1/00  BALANCE...................................................6,846.00