The outgoing director of GW’s geology program requested one year ago that the University hire a tenure-track professor in an effort to keep the program afloat.
Columbian College of Arts & Sciences officials denied the request, and the leader of the program says the program is now at risk of vanishing.
Catherine Forster, the director of the Geological Sciences Program and the only tenured geology professor, said her retirement this August will leave the program with no leadership if CCAS officials do not hire new tenure-track professors, potentially ending the major and minor programs at GW. She said officials denied her request last spring to hire a new tenure-track professor that would replace Richard Tollo, a now-retired professor of geosciences.
Forster said the program is searching for a new “special service faculty” member, who would teach a “heavy” course load of three classes per semester after CCAS officials approved her hiring request for a full-time faculty member last spring. She said officials did not provide an explanation as to why they denied her request for a new tenure-track professor who would replace Tollo beyond saying they have to “figure out” the future of the program.
“I fear that this is a financial decision, rather than an academic one,” Forster said. “That’s my fear. It’s just cheaper to let the program go and not hire anybody, and eliminate, essentially, everything but introductory geology courses at GW.”
Kim Gross, the CCAS vice dean for programs and operations, said CCAS officials formed a faculty task force this semester to find “the best path forward” for the geology program. She said CCAS is currently looking for a professor to fill the special service faculty position, “just not a tenured line.”
Gross declined to say why CCAS officials denied Forster’s request to hire a tenure-track professor last spring, if CCAS officials plan to end the geology program or incorporate it into a separate program, what instructions CCAS officials gave the task force members or when the faculty task force will complete its work. She also declined to say if officials will hire any new tenure-track geology professors or admit any students with a geology major in the future.
Gross said while the geology program has “very few majors,” the program offers “robust” course offerings that fulfill General Education Curriculum, or GPAC, requirements. She said the number of students majoring in environmental and sustainability sciences has “increased,” and the degree could have “natural ties” to geology.
“CCAS considers geology an important component of a liberal arts education,” Gross said in an email. “The retirement of two tenured faculty members means this is an opportune time for us to examine the program to decide the best way to serve our students moving forward.”
Forster said officials formed the task force of CCAS faculty this semester to draft a report on the structure of the geology program going forward, which included Forster.
“If there’s no permanent faculty here, that is permanent faculty to run the program, to mentor students, to do projects with students, to teach upper-level courses, there will be no upper-level courses, there will be no major, there’ll be no minor,” Forster said. “And this is the worst-case scenario.”
Forster said there are 10 students majoring in geology and 12 students minoring, but that this number does not reflect the number of students who have declared a major or minor in geology over the past “two weeks.”
CCAS students must declare their major before they register for their fifth full-time semester, or the end of their sophomore year, according to the undergraduate academic advising website.
Forster said valuable equipment used for upper-level geology courses like rock saws and petrographic microscopes will not serve a purpose if CCAS officials end or downsize the program.
“We are running a full geology program,” Forster said. “We have all the instrumentation and equipment, so there’s been a big investment in geology already from CCAS or from former members of the department as well.”
Forster said she hopes the program can redesign and develop new courses that emphasize the intersection between geology and other subjects, like political science and environmental science. She said geology is “incredibly important” to sustainability because building solar panels and electric vehicles require geological materials.
“I think the vision is to kind of refocus the geology program itself,” Forster said. “We have some internal retooling to do and to find out how we can further provide courses that are useful to other majors and minors on campus.”
There are 20 CCAS students majoring in environmental and sustainability science as of 2022, according to enrollment data.
Students in the geology program said they are creating a “plan of action” in response to the shrinking program, urging CCAS officials to hire more tenured professors, create new geology-related minors and introduce more fieldwork and networking opportunities.
Andrew Gibson, a junior majoring in geology who co-authored a Hatchet op-ed calling on officials to support the geology program, said students in the program created a task force to design the plan to pitch to Gross to keep the program running.
The plan of action includes creating interdisciplinary minors between geology and other programs, like economic geology, establishing connections between undergraduates and geology alumni and creating a geology preprofessional fraternity.
“Short term, we want to boost the department, advertise it more and keep it afloat for another couple of years,” Gibson said. “Long term, we want to convince the University to invest. It can give back more to the community than it does now.”
Gibson said ending the program would “screw over” students majoring in other sciences that require geology classes to fulfill major requirements. Degrees like bachelor’s of arts in environmental studies and bachelor’s of science in environmental and sustainability sciences programs require geology courses as a major requirement, according to the geography department’s website.
“We’re kind of shooting ourselves in the foot I think if we get rid of a lot of these classes,” Gibson said.
Cecelia Paparella, a sophomore majoring in geology, said she would likely “outsource” her geology education to another university with a larger geology program if CCAS officials were to end or downsize GW’s program. She said terminating the program would also reduce the remaining professors’ access to geological research opportunities.
“If we were to lose this program, or if it were to be absorbed into another department, I imagine we would lose a lot of our amazing professors and a lot of our opportunities like all the field opportunities that professors take on summers and different study abroad opportunities,” Paparella said.
Paparella said she knows at least four students have declared their geology major over the past month, a trend that she believes shows “hope” for increasing student interest in the program.
“We don’t have a whole lot of school spirit at the school, it’s kind of like our thing that no one cares, but within the geology program, we all care about the same thing and we all kind of want to do the same thing, and it’s just amazing,” Paparella said.
Matthew Dubois, a senior majoring in geology, said ending the program would hurt GW’s reputation as a “well-rounded” University because geology is a “fundamental science.”
“I think losing geology more so hurts the reputation of the school, as a major institution,” Dubois said.
Sumi Suda, a senior majoring in geology and a co-author of a Hatchet op-ed asking officials to support the program, said CCAS officials have not communicated with students about the “situation” in the geology program, but students have reached out to officials to express their desire to save the program.
“We think it’s really important and we want to make sure that our voices get heard, and they don’t just overlook a student’s perspective on the issue, because for a lot of us, it does hit quite close to home,” Suda said.
