Department of Geosciences
Georgia State University
Academic Program Review—External Review
March 21-22, 2011
Patricia Gober (Chair), Arizona State University/University of Saskatchewan
Paul Mueller, University of Florida
Raymond Coveney, University of Missouri-Kansas City
Executive Summary
The current Geosciences Department at Georgia State University (GSU) is the product of a merger in January 2006 between a freestanding Geology Department and geographers from the former GSU Department of Anthropology and Geography. While the merger would not have been the first choice of anyone now in the unit, there is general acceptance of the union and modest progress toward realizing the long-term advantages of an interdisciplinary unit. Progress is manifest in the development of a Promotion and Tenure (P&T) document reflecting the challenges of interdisciplinary personnel reviews, broad participation of both geologists and geographers on key departmental committees, and interdisciplinary collaboration among the unit’s junior faculty. Assets are in place, although not fully exploited, for this unit to respond to GSU’s core mission as an urban university with a wide array of problem-oriented interdisciplinary programs.
Progress toward a synthesis of the department’s instructional program and research goals—one that would realize efficiencies in course delivery and generate increases in external and internal funding—has been too slow. The department has responded to the merger and increasing pressure on enrollment by trying to do more of the same rather than by making the difficult, but inevitable, choices that accompany the merger. The unit lacks a mission statement and strategic plan that would define a common purpose and guide faculty hiring, programmatic review, and budgetary decisions. We recommend that the department produce a strategic plan in the next six months and ensure that it is realistic, forward looking, detailed, and in concert with College and University priorities. One possible programmatic focus would marry current expertise in geochemical analysis and GIS with public health and urban planning and policy to solve urban environmental problems in the rapidly growing Atlanta area.
Students are the main victims of the lack of progress toward a new integrated vision. They believe that departmental resources have not kept pace with the growth in students served. Programmatically, an appropriate number of required courses are not offered or are oversubscribed. Inadequate coursework threatens the quality of the degree programs and lengthens the time to graduation. Many TAs do not have offices to meet with students and those who do sit in one cramped room along with eight other people. Student programs are frayed at the seams. Graduate students feel they are on the short end of the stick. In particular, TA stipends are very low, making it difficult to recruit high-caliber graduate students. This is a source of dissatisfaction among the highly productive junior faculty who the department must retain in order to move forward.
Maintaining the status quo is no longer an option. A more complete merger is necessary to respond to the current budgetary situation and changing university priorities. A genuinely interdisciplinary program would be better positioned to take advantage of internal and external funding opportunities. An integrated vision must be agreed upon, priorities must be set, and the department needs to move from a reactive to a proactive mode. Difficult decisions about course offerings, budget allocation, and programmatic goals must be made in the very near future.
Report of the External Review Team
- Introduction and Background
The External Review Committee for the Department of Geosciences consisted of Patricia Gober (Arizona State University and the University of Saskatchewan), Paul Mueller (University of Florida), and Raymond Coveney (University of Missouri-Kansas City). We visited the Georgia State University (GSU) campus on March 21-22, 2011 and met with Associate Provosts Peter Lyons and Timothy Renick; Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and Regents Professor Lauren Adamson and Associate Dean Charles Derby; departmental chair Crawford Elliott, and departmental faculty members, instructors, students and staff. We also toured laboratories and offices. We were uniformly impressed with the openness of faculty and students and with their genuine commitment to geoscience education and research at GSU. Especially impressive was the depth of this commitment in the face of budget constraints, increasing enrollments, and programmatic uncertainty.
The current Geosciences Program is the result of a merger of the disciplines of geology and geography in January 2006. Previously, the Department of Geology was a freestanding unit, while Geography co-existed with Anthropology within the Department of Anthropology and Geography. Immediately prior to the merger, the Geography faculty had lost four professors to retirement, moves to other universities, and an administrative reassignment within GSU. Two remaining tenure-track geographers were then combined with six tenure-track geologists to build a new unit that would be large enough to withstand the natural turnover of retirements, sabbatical leaves, permanent and temporary administrative appointments, and faculty relocation and innovative enough to capitalize on the University’s growing interdisciplinary aspirations and role as an urban university. Today, the department consists of 12 tenure-track faculty members who are about equally divided between geology and geography, three full-time permanent lecturers, two visiting lecturers, and one visiting instructor.
The administrative merger has been accomplished, and there is general acceptance among faculty, staff, and students that the path forward will be based on a common identity as the “geosciences.” The unit is too small to replicate the traditional research and instructional programs of both geology and geography. It is in the process of codifying new programs and procedures to manage the newly joined interdisciplinary unit. To date, the department has achieved a collegial working environment with broad participation of geographers and geologists on key departmental committees, prepared a new P&T document to guide personnel decisions in the new interdisciplinary unit, reduced the previous curriculum by 50 courses to reflect changing instructional capacities, and developed a new undergraduate degree in the geosciences, with concentrations in Geography, Geology, Environmental Geosciences, and Urban Studies. The two latter concentrations reflect synergies of the new interdisciplinary unit.
While acknowledging the effort that has occurred thus far, we believe there is still considerable work to be done to successfully merge these two fields at GSU. Topics that figured prominently in our discussions of interdisciplinary research opportunities included the social and environmental impacts of Atlanta’s Greenbelt, public health impacts of public housing relocation, effects of open space on urban heat island development, impacts of the BP oil spill, Georgia’s natural resources, and hurricane reconstruction—all topics that naturally link the ideas and methods of human geography with the physical sciences. The new unit’s position at the triple junction of science, social science, and geospatial technologies offers endless opportunity to exploit new instructional and research opportunities and to firmly embed it in GSU’s core mission as an urban university with a wide array of problem-oriented interdisciplinary programs.
The unit faces formidable challenges from increasing instructional responsibilities (from 15,286 SCHs in 2008, to 16,535 in 2009, and 17,872 in 2010), while offering undergraduate BA and BS degrees, an MA in Geography, an MS in Geology, a Ph.D. in geochemistry, and a GIS Certificate. Although departmental faculty members are working assiduously to meet the growing challenges of increased student enrollment, the program is frayed at the seams. The status quo is not sustainable. Evidence of this includes an inability to offer sufficient courses for students to graduate in a timely fashion, student complaints about inadequate mentoring, lack of up-to-date equipment and laboratory space, low stipends, poor computer access in the form of insufficient software and hardware in GIS labs, and overcrowded and physically isolated offices.
- Strengths and Weaknesses
2a. Strengths
2a1. The GSU Department of Geosciences is a group of collegial and productive geographers and geologists who have successfully weathered the five years that have elapsed since the forced marriage of distinct disciplines that now constitute the unit. The joint disciplinary nature of the department is accepted by most faculty and students. In fact, the union of geography and geology seems to be viewed with enthusiasm by younger faculty who are less concerned with traditional disciplinary boundaries than most geoscientists tend to be.
2a2. Department faculty produced an impressive number of publications, and it stands with the best geoscience departments of its size. Between FY 2008 and 2010, tenure-track faculty members averaged 1.4 publications annually (Self Study Table F1). Faculty members have published in high-impact journals that are among the best in their separate fields. The upward trajectory (24 in 2010 compared to 17 publications in 2008) is remarkable in light of enrollment pressure on the unit.
2a3. Departmental faculty members have generated a promotion and tenure document that appropriately addresses the unique challenges of an academic unit consisting predominantly of physical and social scientists.
2a4. The Departmental faculty is diverse in terms of its make-up (two females, four Asians and one black among the tenure track faculty).
2a5. Key tenure-track professors have undertaken exciting research initiatives that involve collaborations between geographers and geologists as well as other interdisciplinary efforts with colleagues on and off campus. Several of these collaborations are externally funded (e.g. an NSF-funded project involving the 2010 Deep Water Horizon oil spill). Faculty members have submitted numerous proposals for support in those cases where external funding is not already in place.
2a6. Student credit hour (SCH) productivity is extremely high, demonstrating that the unit is carrying at least its share of University distribution requirements and exceeded SCH production of the department’s peer institutions.
2a7. While responding to GSU’s need for more laboratory science courses, the department continues to offer undergraduate and graduate degrees for the traditional fields and is pursuing new opportunities similar to the joint Ph.D. with Chemistry, such as the ongoing discussions with Computer Science for a similar program.
2b.Weaknesses
2b1. Departmental faculty has yet to construct a cogent mission statement, a long-range plan, or even a list of priorities to guide future growth and development. Although the challenge of integrating geology, human geography, and physical geography is not trivial, producing an appropriate document through intensive and collaborative interactions involving the entire Geosciences faculty is essential before substantive progress is possible on any of the areas of concern listed below.
2b2. The physical plant is outmoded and inadequate. The laboratory and office space in Kell Hall are among the worst we have collectively seen on a major campus. The majority of the graduate student teaching assistants are without desks. The nine who do share a single narrow room have no place to consult with their students—a troubling issue for student privacy concerns. All of the teaching and research laboratories are small or in need of renovation. Safety may be an issue. At least one lab has a non-functioning fume hood.
2b3. Faculty offices are scattered throughout two buildings which limits the potential for faculty and student collaboration. Co-locating faculty offices would have expedited a more functional and complete amalgamation of the former units.
2b4. The supply of courses for graduate students and upper-level undergraduate students in both the science and social science is inadequate. The department has a policy of rotating seminars across geology, physical geography, and human geography. Thus, a seminar in each of these areas is offered only once every three semesters, forcing students to go outside the department for courses to meet the requirement of three graduate seminars. While it may be desirable for students to take courses from cognate fields, this did not seem to be the view shared by the students who met with us during our visit. In the midst of our group interview with approximately 30 students, one graduate student forcefully interjected that she “came to Georgia State to study geography not history.”
2b5. Rapid growth in enrollments in the laboratory sections of science courses, combined with ongoing efforts to maintain the separate geology and geography degrees, has stretched the unit to its limits. The SCH production at GSU Geosciences Department is substantially higher than at peer universities with comparable or even larger faculties (See Self Study Table B1 and B8).
2b6. Faculty turnover is excessive. Over the past three years the department has lost several tenure-track junior faculty members in part because of the merger. The department has also lost tenured professors who left for what they perceive to be greener pastures. Static salaries may have been a factor, but the GSU situation over the last three years has, of course, not been unique among universities or the country. The departure of faculty is a primarily the result of uncertainty associated with the consolidation of disciplines and perceived lack of support for and direction of the Department.
2b7. The absence of full professors among a faculty of 12 members deprives the department of the leadership and experience necessary to redefine its role in this difficult situation. The lack of senior leaders may partly explain the slowness of the unit to develop a departmental mission statement and an action plan. The department is now blessed with a cadre of junior faculty who are productive, interdisciplinary, and collaborative. It is not clear, however, who has the heft, experience, and vision to lead this unit to a more sustainable long-term state and provide a role model for junior faculty.
2b8. Geosciences graduate students are severely undercompensated. The $6000 annual stipend for M.S. graduate teaching assistants is quite low--much lower than the compensation at any of our campuses. Furthermore, the positive benefits of this small stipend are offset by various required fees totaling $1666 per year ($2400 if enrolled in the health plan). This issue was cited by the junior faculty as one of their greatest concerns. The low stipend makes it difficult, if not impossible, for the department to recruit and retain high-quality graduate students. While the issue is very real, it is also true that the department has not been aggressive enough and creative enough in leveraging its outside and inside funding to address this problem.
2b9. It takes too long for graduate students to complete their degree programs. A pool of 29 GTAs should produce more than eight masters–level graduates per year. The progress of students is slowed by the paucity of course offerings for graduate students and the lowly stipend which forces many students to find supplemental employment, thus distracting them from thesis research.
2b10. External support for faculty research is too low. Between FY 2008 and 2010, faculty received only three external grants totaling $246,039 (Table B3)—far below what we would expect for a geosciences faculty of this size and quality. That said, many faculty have made substantial effort to obtain outside funding, and it is possible that they are building the requisite experience for success in this demanding process. It is also clear that the options for gaining additional external support are greatly hindered by the lack of space and technological infrastructure.
- Goals and Objectives
The department’s goals address some, but not all, of the issues that are articulated above. The self-study report accurately notes that the merger is incomplete, but it stresses programmatic hurdles that lie ahead without presenting a set of core themes around which the new geosciences program would be organized. While it is true that the masters program needs to be “modified,” the traditional geology and geography programs need to be integrated if this unit is to offer credible degrees with existing or even slightly improved resources.
The self-study document focuses on numbers at the expense of quality. It is unrealistic to believe that the unit will be able to increase the number of majors and degrees conferred, improve instruction by graduate students, and increase service to the university by increasing student-faculty ratios (Goal 2). The goals sections reads more like a “laundry list” of what they perceive that the university and outside reviewers want to hear more than a set of priorities that recognize the difficult tradeoffs involved in moving forward. More of the same is not working. Realistic goal-setting involves prioritizing this laudable, but impossible, set of goals and objectives.
- Student Body Metrics
Undergraduate students enrolled in the Department of Geosciences have SAT combined scores averaging 1,076 (Geography) to 1,102 (Geology), scores which are above average compared to national norms and comparable with performance levels of peer institutions. The department has accepted a relatively high percentage of applicants to its graduate programs which may explain why matriculating graduate students have relatively low GRE scores. Scores experienced a marked dip in 2009, from which the department recovered in 2010.