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What’s the secret sauce behind UT’s new environmental studies department? Inviting folks from across disciplines to come to the problem-solving table together.

Dan Huber, chair of the new department, says that while UT previously had an environmental science degree that trained students to measure environmental problems, it wasn’t preparing them to go out into the greater community and actually develop solutions to those problems.

Last September, BBC News reported alarming findings from a worldwide survey of 10,000 16-to-25- year-olds: Nearly 60% of them said they felt “very worried” or “extremely worried” about climate change, and more than 45% said feelings about climate affected their daily lives.

Another survey by PBS NewsHour and Generation Lab just two months later, however, found that a majority of young people ages 13 to 29 in the U.S. are optimistic that it is still possible to prevent the worst long-term effects of climate change.

While many universities house environmental programs within traditional science departments, UT’s is a truly interdisciplinary program that taps into the expertise of — and networks within — 13 departments across campus. Students can choose from four concentrations within the department: communication, humanity and geography, natural sciences and public policy. And in keeping with the program’s flexibility, students can graduate from the pro­gram with a wide range of credentials — a bachelor of science, a bachelor of arts, a minor in environmental studies and a minor in sustainabil­ity are all options. Whatever degree students pursue, they all build their foundation in the same core classes: two “Introduction to Environmental Studies” classes, a geographic infor­mation systems course, precalculus, microeconomics and an environmen­tal studies capstone.

Huber believes that in graduating students from this new department UT is essentially putting an army of problem-solvers out into our communities. “We have major challenges, and we need people who don’t look at the world in silos, who understand the connectivity of complex systems and are positioned to help create solutions to those problems.

BETTER TOGETHER

While he couldn’t have predicted it early in his career, it’s fitting that Huber is the department’s inaugural chair. “I’m a biologist who pretends to be a mechanical engineer,” he likes to joke. Throughout his career, he has been using the principles of mechanical engineering to study the function of organisms — how their skeletons are built and operate. But dig a little deeper, and it’s clear the heart of his research has always been to connect the dots across disciplines that may not seem related. 

“Over the course of my career, I gradually started moving from purely academic research projects into more applied research projects. And over time, I started thinking about the bigger, arguably more important, challenges we can tackle using an interdisciplinary perspective,” he says. The further along he went in his career, the more Huber began to think about how environmental science interacts with key “dots”: economics, public policy, communication and the tools we need to develop solutions. 

“We need to understand the economic concerns associated with any of the solutions that we develop. We need to communicate effectively about those issues, to improve civic scientific literacy about those issues. And then, ultimately, the solutions are going to come down to a combination of public sector and private sector tools that can be used,” Huber says.

Since launching in September, Huber says, the response to the Department of Environmental Studies has been “absolutely terrific.” The introductory core courses filled up immediately, and professors from other departments routinely reach out to Huber to ask how they can contribute to the program.

“At the end of the day, we don’t want to produce students who simply have a lot of knowledge, because having a lot of knowledge doesn’t necessarily get you hired, and it doesn’t necessarily qualify you to solve complex problems,” Huber says. “What we’re really trying to do is build this program around professional practice, and what will help our students be marketable.”

Madelaine Lauger, a senior from Las Vegas, is already seeing the benefits of UT’s wider academic lens. She recently completed an internship with a Tampa-based consulting firm within its ESG — environmental, social and governance — department. “It was the perfect intersection of my coursework, and so encouraging to find a career path that balances my interests,” Langer says. After graduation, she hopes to pursue ESG and sustainability as a career. “It would drive me crazy to be in a field where I wasn’t driving change.”

REAL-WORLD SKILLS

Todd Campbell is a vertebrate ecologist with a special interest in the amphibians and reptiles of the Southeast. He spent 19 years within UT’s biology program before transitioning over to environmental studies, where he’s an associate professor. And he’s just as passionate about invasive species as he is about the value of civil discourse.

Having spent years working in both the public and private sectors, he wants to be sure he empowers his students not only with a working knowledge of, say, biological diversity, but with a skill that too often goes overlooked in today’s world: the ability to compromise.

“Yes, you may want to save the world, but you’re going to have to give an inch or two in order to get what you want — that’s the bottom line,” he says. Campbell worked as both a regulator and a consultant for the regulated — everyone from small mom-and-pop developers to Enron, Shell Oil and some of the biggest phosphate mines in Florida — and he’s adamant that “without some kind of consideration of both sides, you’re never going to win. You can’t railroad your opinion through and think it’s going to become law, because there will always be another side, and they will have valid points and savvy leaders and deep resources.”

For nearly two decades, Campbell has been assigning his classes to a debate. This past semester, like many prior, his students argued for and against the Endangered Species Act. “I’ve done this for almost 20 years, and virtually every semester, the pro-ESA team loses — dramatically — because they rest on their laurels. They think ‘Well of course everybody would want to save endangered species!’ So they don’t do the work that’s involved in formulating an argument that might convince the other side to do something differently.”

The lessons his students take away from his course are less about microorganisms and more about critical life skills: listening, empathizing, negotiating and persuading. What he wants all of his students, and all of the students who come through the new department, to internalize: “You’re never going to get anything done if you don’t at least try to incorporate what the other side is thinking.”

NEXT-GENERATION SCIENCE

Named faculty mentor of the year by the Florida Undergraduate Research Association, Bridgette Froeschke was, like Campbell, formerly a member of the biology department faculty; she’s now an associate professor of environmental studies. She believes that UT’s interdisciplinary approach truly represents the future of science. An expert in time series analysis, predictive modeling, refinement of essential fish habitat and environmental policy, Froeschke attended a National Science Foundation training program last summer where the focus was on team science. “The fact that UT students can now graduate with degrees that cover not only the natural science side of environmental studies but also communications and health and all of these other components will allow them to be more well-rounded people to solve problems,” she says. “And that positions UT at the top of this new way of doing science.”

Froeschke says that while academics are good at talking to people with their same expertise, they’re not always the greatest at communicating that information to people in other disciplines. The environmental studies department, however, encourages folks to talk through ideas and share information and interact with people they may have otherwise never encountered. And her students are welcoming that call. “Today’s UT undergraduates are so willing to try new things and make a difference,” she says.

Miranda Isabel DeBeary, a junior from Philadelphia, is decidedly in that camp. She says it can be a little bit depressing sometimes, hearing the statistics about all of the environmental problems in the world. “But it’s so inspiring that I’m sitting among peers who are interested in making a change and making a difference. And it’s reassuring that I’m not alone in this — there are so many people here who are seeing issues in new ways and want to do something about it.”

THE MORE, THE MERRIER

Adrienne George, assistant teaching professor in the new department, has loved science ever since she was a child who relished playing with bugs. “I was very lucky that I never had parents who discouraged me, who never said ‘Ew, that’s gross,’ or ‘Girls don’t do that!’” she says. Part of what excites her about the new environmental studies department? The inclusive nature of it.

As a Black female scientist, she is encouraged by the expanded reach of the program and the potential it has to draw more, and more diverse, viewpoints to environmental issues.

Environmental science, like all of the sciences, George explains, has what is called the “leaky pipeline” —   the further you go along the career track, the more you’re going to see individuals fall out of the field, with a majority of the people falling out being women, people of color and other groups that have been traditionally underrepresented in the sciences. But if you start bringing students from other fields over to environmental science, to see a unique lens through which to approach environmental concerns, you’re naturally going to expand the diversity of all kinds. And different viewpoints make everyone stronger.

“I probably think about things very differently than many other faculty members because of my background. And I see situations where having that additional voice can cause people to do a double-take or say, ‘You know, I never even thought of that and maybe this is something that we need to consider more,’” George says. 

It can be intimidating to be the lone dissenting voice in a room — humans have issues with change, George acknowledges — but the diversity of thought is critical. “Often the reason we’re facing problems in the first place is that we keep doing the same thing over and over,” she says.

What George strives to teach all of her students is that everybody plays a role within the environment. “Even if you never take a scientific class, you are contributing largely to the environment, and the environment is also largely contributing to your lifestyle. So why not have some type of voice in this and be able to change the direction of how we’re currently going?”

And so for all the doom and gloom around environmental issues, for all of the surveys and headlines preying upon fear and dread, UT’s new environmental studies department is showing that change is possible and that we can all be a part of it.

“Oftentimes when you ask people what they think an environmental scientist is, they picture someone in a lab, someone running experiments, some crazy tree-hugger. They have all these preconceived notions,” says George.

“But what I always try to drive home to students is that we need people on all fronts, from all disciplines, if we really want to make a meaningful change.”

By Jessica Blatt Press
Illustrations by Ellice Weaver