HR: 11:35h
AN: ED12A-06 INVITED     [Abstracts]
TI: Strategies for Growth in a Young Earth Sciences Department
AU: * Clement, B M
EM: clementb@fiu.edu
AF: Department of Earth Sciences, Florida International University SW 8th St & 107th Ave, Miami, FL 33199 United States
AU: Hickey-Vargas, R
EM: hickey@fiu.edu
AF: Department of Earth Sciences, Florida International University SW 8th St & 107th Ave, Miami, FL 33199 United States
AU: Draper, G
EM: draper@fiu.edu
AF: Department of Earth Sciences, Florida International University SW 8th St & 107th Ave, Miami, FL 33199 United States
AB: The Department of Earth Sciences at Florida International University (FIU) has been fortunate to be part of a rapidly growing university. FIU began offering classes in 1972 with an initial enrollment of 5600 students, and today enrollment exceeds 35,000 students. During this time the Department of Earth Sciences has grown to a faculty of 14 and offers the BA, BS, MS and PhD degrees. Our department, however, has faced the same challenges meeting many Earth Science departments in that our number of undergraduate majors has not grown at the same pace as the university enrollment (or at the same pace as enrollment in our graduate program). Two strategies have proven effective and have helped the department build its program in spite of this challenge. The first strategy was to create tenure-track positions with a 50% assignment in the Earth Sciences Department and 50% in a research center on campus. We currently have two faculty who have half-time appointments in the Southeast Environmental Research Center, and we have a new faculty member joining in the Spring who will have a joint appointment with the International Hurricane Research Center. This strategy has made it possible to gain expertise in, and to offer courses in, critical areas (such as hydrogeology and meteorology) that we otherwise would not be able to offer. The second strategy is to develop strong courses for non-majors that satisfy FIU's University Common Curriculum requirements. A particularly successful example is a new course titled "The History of Life". This course was designed to take advantage of our existing expertise in paleobiology, and offer a class that satisfies the University Common Curriculum requirement that every student take a laboratory course in the life sciences. This class now fills to capacity each semester with more than 200 students. This course not only boosts our department's productivity, but it lets us reach 200 new students each semester with many potential new Earth Science majors among them.
DE: 0850 Geoscience education research
SC: Education and Human Resources [ED]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005