Case Study: University of Nevada, Las Vegas

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Jump down to The Department * Considered for Elimination * BSGD Visiting Workshop * Changes Arising from the Workshop * Looking Forward

Context: The University

UNLV is a campus of the state university system. Founded seventy years ago as a land-grant university, it is situated on 300 acres of land, and offers approximately 180 degree-granting programs to about 20,000 students. Recently the president initiated campus-wide reform of general education courses, with a stronger emphasis on student learning outcomes.

The Department of Geoscience

The eleven-year-old Department of Geoscience has 19 faculty members: 7 full, 7 associate, and 5 assistant professors. They offer undergraduate, masters, and doctoral degrees. Undergraduates choose between degree programs in Geology, Earth Sciences and Environmental Geology. Students at the graduate level select from Geology, Geophysics, Hydrogeology, and Soil Science. During the 2009-2010 academic year, the department had 64 undergraduate majors and 60 graduate students. The department grew over 2006-2008, adding 2 professors. Budget cuts were made in the following 2 years: when the department lost one professor they were unable to replace her. The chair currently expects that the number of faculty will gradually shrink due to retirements.

The department is well respected within the university and the quality of its graduate program is recognized. The university rewards MS students for 'best thesis' about 30% of the time. Recently the faculty began to concentrate on growing their graduate program, and increasing the numbers of its graduates. As a result, they reached a critical mass of students and theirs is now considered a research-intensive field science program. With that increase they also met the US World and News Reports ranking criteria and for the first time have been ranked, which the chair considers very positive.

At the same time, the number of students enrolling in geoscience General Education courses has been declining. A new introductory level course, offered in 2009-2010, attracted only 10-12 students. One factor contributing to low enrollments is a recent increase in general education science classes offered by other departments, such as Introduction to Environmental Science, that may be more attractive to students than Introduction to Geology. In addition, until the department realized they were in danger of being eliminated, most professors in the Geosciences department did not consider teaching introductory courses important and many viewed teaching 100-level courses negatively. Consequently, those courses were not always taught in the most dynamic and engaging ways. One consequence of these low enrollments is that the Department of Geoscience is one of the most expensive within the university in terms of cost/FTE.

Department Considered for Elimination

Given the state's budget crisis, the university had decided to cut 6 departments, and listed 20 for possible elimination. The Geoscience Department learned that they were one of the most expensive departments on campus, were teaching a far lower number of students at the 100-level than any other department, and were being considered for elimination. The chair believed that the department needed to focus on increasing its General Education enrollments along with other strategies for increasing their value to the university and beyond.

Building Strong Geoscience Departments Visiting Workshop

The department hosted a Building Strong Geoscience Departments visiting workshop in March, 2010, focusing on increasing the department's value to the university. Following the workshop the department described what they had learned from the workshop. Among the items faculty noted were:

• General Education courses: Professors better understood the importance of increasing their FTE and how to go about it. One realized that everyone in the department needs to contribute toward this goal, another learned that the department's approach to teaching General Education courses was "out of date," and a third rethought his time allocation to undergraduate education and General Education courses.
• Curriculum: During the workshop faculty discussed curriculum revisions and all agreed that revisions should be made. Some realized that their perceptions of curricular issues were mistaken or outdated; all realized that there were too many graduate course requirements; one noted that all faculty should be involved in revising the curriculum; and one noted how valuable it was that the faculty reached consensus that the entire undergraduate curriculum needed an overhaul. The workshop helped faculty look at the curriculum as a whole rather than each professor thinking only of her/his own courses.
• Other departments: Faculty members mentioned the value of talking with the presenters and learning what other geology/geoscience departments are doing.

The curriculum has not been overhauled for 15 years, although 8 years ago the department began to increasingly emphasize hydrogeology with newly hired faculty in soil science and low temperature geochemistry plus a 200-level course on global climate change, which is now also offered at the 100-level. Faculty members generally work well together but recently curriculum revisions became a somewhat divisive topic. The faculty has been split along disciplinary lines: those whose areas include rocks and economic geology tend to favor the current traditional curriculum, while those within hydrogeology, soil science and climate change have advocated a more flexible, interdisciplinary curriculum with fewer requirements of geoscience majors. Having reached a consensus on needing to revise the curriculum is therefore particularly significant.

Changes Arising From the Workshop

All geoscience faculty members are now engaged in working toward the department's goal of revitalizing General Education courses and revising the curriculum in order to increase the department's value to the institution and to better serve their undergraduate majors. The faculty works as a team when they focus on issues discussed at the workshop. Here are some of the changes that have already been implemented:

• Making General Education courses more attractive: Members of the faculty first looked at grade distributions for their geology courses, and compared them to other disciplines within the university as well as geology courses at other institutions. They discovered that their introductory courses were notably more rigorous than those of other programs and were perceived by students as too difficult. Professors from the department have been working with the University General Education Committee to develop grading parity/comparable rigor for their General Education courses relative to other science courses at the university. They also renamed/re-evaluated the names of all introductory courses and rewrote course descriptions to make courses more appealing to students.
• Developing new courses: Faculty members have developed several new lecture courses, which they consider both relevant and appealing: Global Warming, Planetary Geology, and Oceanography. In addition, they have designed two new distance-learning courses: Physical Geography, to be offered fall 2010, and Natural Disasters, to be offered spring 2011.
• Reducing the number of required geoscience credits in their degree programs: While the average number of courses required by geoscience majors at other universities is ten, UNLV geoscience majors are required to take seventeen. Although the faculty had begun to examine and revise their undergraduate curriculum pre-workshop, one outcome of the workshop was that all faculty members recognized the importance of revising the curriculum now. By reducing the number of required geoscience credits in their degree programs, they hope to broaden the appeal of becoming a geoscience major.
• Recruiting students to the geoscience majors: Faculty members have begun giving recruitment lectures, highlighting career opportunities in geoscience, in their own General Education classes and at a local community college. They will make a program presentation to all incoming science students in the fall of 2010. The faculty also increased outreach efforts to high school students, hosting 32 high school honors students at the department's annual student research symposium in April, 2010.
• Promoting the department to the administration: In the spring of 2010, when departmental cuts were under discussion, faculty members in the department were awarded four grants from the NSF and NASA. The chair immediately shared this news with the university President and other administrators, with positive feedback.
• Promoting the department on campus: This spring faculty members visited college advising centers and spoke with academic advisors across the campus and placed advertisements about the department in the student newspaper.

Looking Forward

While the department appears to be safe for the moment, there will another round of cuts next year and faculty members remain concerned about the future. As a result, they have identified and rallied around common goals and all are involved in implementing the steps they identified to revitalize the department and increase their value to the institution. By developing new General Education courses, making existing courses more attractive, reducing the number of credits for their undergraduate majors, actively recruiting students to their programs, and promoting themselves to the administration and the rest of campus, they expect to see positive changes in their enrollments, particularly in General Education courses.