By Prarthana Jayaram

As conversations about sustainability and conservation come to the forefront of our country’s consciousness, Haverford is eager to keep up with the times. Thanks to a recent grant from the Andrew Mellon Foundation (AMF), the college is beginning to plan out the introduction of a program for environmental studies. Bringing together courses from the sciences and humanities, the program is designed to address environmental issues from different angles, keeping Haverford’s perspective fresh and current.

For years, faculty members have been interested in bringing the field of environmental studies to the college. Assistant Vice President for Academic Resources at Haverford John Mosteller explained that the AMF sparked the college’s interest several years ago. Spurred to action, the college began asking different departments to put together requests for new hires.

After the Chemistry, Biology and Anthropology departments were selected, Haverford applied for and received a grant from AMF for $1.5 million, to be matched three to one by Haverford’s own fundraising within three years.

A working committee headed by Chemistry Professor Robert Scarrow and English Professor Kimberly Benston oversees the program’s development. The committee is currently determining which courses to offer and faculty to hire.

The Chemistry department was the first to make a hire as Professor Helen White joined the Haverford Faculty this fall. This semester, White is teaching a section of General Chemistry this semester, focusing on topics of environmental chemistry; in the spring, she will teach an upper-level course in environmental studies. With a PhD in Oceanography and a lifelong enjoyment of the outdoors, White will undoubtedly be an asset of the environmental studies program at Haverford.

“I think that a liberal arts college is the perfect place for this sort of thing. My kind of research fits really well into interdisciplinary, small liberal arts college environment,” she said. “When you are looking at something like the environment, you can pick one aspect that you are going to look at, but that is always going to have an effect on other fields.”

As part of the working committee, White is responsible for more than just her own research and course planning. She is also helping to gather information on environmental studies programs at other schools in order to benefit Haverford’s developing plan.

Each of the other departments now has space for one faculty hire. The Biology and Anthropology departments will bring possible professors in over the course of the next year. Anthropology Professor Jesse Shipley, who serves on the working committee, explained that in the spring candidates will give lectures open to the community. Students are encouraged to attend and participate in the selection process. Shipley and fellow Anthropology Professor Zolani Ngwane are both interested in the new conversations that environmental studies will open up on campus.

“Anthropology courses will be looking at the ways that people engage with their environment,” said Ngwane. “I think this can create new dialogues on campus.” Shipley added, “It is exciting to have someone in Anthropology and someone in Chemistry doing the same thing—it is not usually done.”

“We are still in the data-gathering mode, trying to hear from students, alumni in environmental careers,” said Scarrow, emphasizing the importance of the research stage of the hiring process. “We are asking faculty which of the courses they already teach have environmental implications, because, although we are bringing in new faculty members, we think the program needs more than three faculty members.”

The likely outcome, at least at first, will be a concentration at Haverford, Scarrow predicts. As Bryn Mawr’s environmental studies program has been in existence for several years already, the working committee is still in conversation with Geology Professor and Environmental Studies Director Don Barber to develop a plan to possibly create a bi-college concentration.

“As a college we still have to work out details,” said Scarrow, adding that a bi-college program was not set in stone as yet.

The final program will most likely rely on aid from three main centers on campus: the Hurford Humanities Center (HHC), the Center for Peace and Global Citizenship (CPGC), and the Koshland Integrated Sciences Center (KINSC).

“They are providing seed money to help get the whole initiative off the ground, and they will remain an important source of funding for lectures, symposiums, and academic activities that would be directly connected to curricular work on the campus,” explained Mosteller.

The centers will offer help in different ways. Mosteller said that he imagines the CPGC funding student internships and fieldwork in the future, while the KINSC will likely support research in the sciences with an environmental focus. Finally, he said, “Mellon is very interested in the HHC having an integral role because they want to veer away from [just] environmental science.”

 “We have the funding and the infrastructure, partnered with faculty and groups on campus, to do things on campus, so we look forward to more opportunities to work with the environmental studies program,” said Director of the Hurford Humanities Center and Comparative Literature/Spanish Professor Israel Burshatin. He cited the recent screening of Sanjay Kak’s "Words on Water," a movie that focuses on environmental activism in India, as just one example of the center’s continued support of environmental studies.

Maintaining a balance between the scientific and humanistic perspectives to science is something that Burshatin values highly. “There is a disconnect between the painterly and literary involvement with nature and actual treatment of the environment,” he said. “Somehow, as citizens, we are not all that aware of our interactions with the natural surroundings, even though, in terms of human thought, it is impossible to have a philosophical tradition that does not deeply interrogate our position in the natural world.”

On its current trajectory, the working committee seems set to incorporate diverse perspectives on environmental issues into the curriculum, forming a foundation for the environmental program based both in sciences and humanities.

“At Haverford,” said Burshatin, “it is important for us to always keep that balance.” 

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