EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

FIVE YEAR REVIEW OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES PROGRAM---1998

Over the period of review, since 1992, the Environmental Studies program at Ramapo College of New Jersey has attracted a stable and growing student population with a strong and challenging curriculum, newly updated and focused upon sustainability. The productivity of the related faculty and students remains high, with major grants awarded through the faculty’s Institute for Environmental Studies for diffusion of Ecological Literacy and for environmental education programs, with successful completion of four Mid-Atlantic Environmental Conferences, annual Earth Day celebrations, and with many individual accomplishments. The continuing vitality of the program has required circumvention of some serious roadblocks. Important decisions lie ahead. The following issues and questions underlie this review:

· What is the future role for Environmental Studies at Ramapo College? As a mission central program that has none-the-less faced diminishing resources, is there support from the institution for program growth?

· Is the revised curriculum sufficiently responsive to the field, to student needs and to resource limits, and will it prove competitive in a curricular area of increasing popularity?

· How can the program develop a stronger student census and should it do so given resource limitations?

· Is there a need for additional faculty resources to support existing programs, to cover the environmental fields adequately, to offer leadership to the program, and to support growth in academic and entrepreneurial directions?

· Should the program continue from the base of two Schools, Science and Social science, choose one of these schools or attempt to forge a new School of Environmental Studies?

· Should the program expend resources on winning grants for outreach projects addressing regional sustainability and expand on soft money?

· Should the program proceed with plans to build a masters program on sustainability?

These questions are in many ways generic to academic programs that seek to understand how to best maximize their strengths and overcome their weaknesses. However, the Ramapo context, the opportunities of place, and the option to maintain regional leadership as an environmental institution of higher learning represent unique features of the review.