Clarkson tweaks division

POTSDAM — Clarkson University is giving its environmental division a new name in the hopes that it will attract more students and gain a higher profile.

The Center for the Environment is being renamed the Institute for a Sustainable Environment. The department will oversee the college's efforts to make the campus greener, as well as its environmental studies academic programs, which include two undergraduate degrees, as well as a master's and a doctoral program.

The Center for the Environment "has had graduate programs in environmental science and has helped to foster research. We also have undergraduate interdisciplinary programs in the biology department which have sort of been orphaned programs," said Philip A. Hopke, the department's director. "This will allow us to have articulated curricula from freshman to graduate school and make these programs more visible."

Both graduate degrees are in environmental science and engineering. The university for years has offered two degrees for undergraduates: environmental health sciences and environmental science and policy, which have been housed in the biology department.

Biology is not the right place for the undergraduate programs, which also should have an emphasis on things such as political science, Mr. Hopke said.

"They're not biology, they're not engineering, they're not science," Clarkson Provost Thomas C. Young said. "They're really quite interdisciplinary, and having them assembled within the institute will allow them to flourish and be a benefit to Clarkson."

Since the programs no longer are shackled to the biology department, a recent hire in the political science department teaches environmental policy, for example. The 50 or 60 students in the programs will be able to take advantage of more classes across the academic disciplines, Mr. Hopke said. It also may help attract more students out of high school and allow the university to create more environment-related degree programs. Clarkson already is in discussions with SUNY Canton's criminal justice program about starting a homeland security-related major, he said.

Those majors likely won't begin admitting students for at least a year, since there is a long approval process within the university and the state.

Creating the institute has been a topic of discussion for several years, but it has taken a long time to work out all of the details and logistics, Mr. Young said.