Geography enrollments nationally sank to their lowest levels in the last
quarter century (~3,000 bachelor degrees) in 1988 and then rebounded to their
highest levels ever in the mid 1990s (~4,000), before sagging back, though not
quite as hard, by 2000 (~3,500).
PPT 2
The trend in the California State University system since 1992 is roughly
similar to national trends. Geography peaked in the CSU in 1992 at not quite
1,200 bachelor's degrees granted and then slumped to roughly 825 by 2002, with
a small rebound since then (to about 910).
PPT 3
Geography at California State University, Long Beach, seemed to reflect
national and state trends, declining since its peak in the early 1990s, with
geography declining rather precipitously until about 2000, down to 60 majors
in F/2000 and only 50 by S/2001. At that point, Geography began growing and
growing substantially. By F/05, we had 116 majors, making us the largest
undergraduate geography program in the CSU. Not only that, our relative share
of geography majors in the CSU System expanded from 7% in F/2000 to 13% by
F/2005! Indeed, Geography @ The Beach accounts for 2/3 of the growth in the
entire CSU system from F/2002 to F/2005! This presentation will examine
diversification as one of the central engines in our department's growth since
the beginning of the decade.
PPT 4
By 2001, Geography had begun trying to figure out where its majors were
coming from and what we could do to attract more of them. We learned that
other, cognate programs we had coöperative projects going with were also
having similar problems. We began to discuss opportunities for working with
Geological Sciences, which had seen similar drops in major enrollments since
1992, at the national, state, and campus level. This discussion later
included geoarchæologists in the Anthropology Department.
One common concern was that these fields tended to attract students quite
different from the CSULB student population, which is extremely diverse. The
various geoscience programs remained overwhelmingly white on a
minority-dominated campus. We realized that we had to increase our
attractiveness to students other than the declining white middle-class that
had traditionally been drawn to them.
PPT 5
Indeed, there is a significant association between student diversity and
trends in a major's growth. I examined the different sized Geography,
Geological Sciences, Anthropology, and Environmental Science and Policy majors
as a function of their sizes relative to the largest size they'd attained in
the 1997-2005 years. Diversity explains about a quarter of the variability in
a major's relative size!
PPT 6
Perhaps our most successful such collaboration was the Geoscience Diversity
Enhancement Project of 2001 through 2004. Faculty in physical geography,
geology, and archæology at CSULB established summer research programs
and then recruited community college and, later, high school faculty to work
as partners in these projects. The community college faculty's summer salaries
were paid through NSF, so that allowed many of them to dispense with summer
teaching. Each of them nominated a student from an underrepresented group, who
had shown interest and aptitude in one of these three collaborating
geosciences.
PPT 7
The students were paid for two months of full-time work as research assistants
in the field and lab, which gave many of them their first real interaction
with relatively "natural" sites all over Southern California, sort of the
Yosemite experience they never got as kids.
PPT 8
GDEP was a total win-win all around. Some 29 students participated, as did
30 CSULB faculty and graduate students and faculty at six local community
colleges and five local high schools. Part of our team was David Whitney in
the Psychology Department, who served as project assessor (and, indeed, full
participant observer). He found that all students reported greater
self-confidence and increased educational ambitions: All wanted to go to
graduate school!
The community college and high school faculty got to engage in research
projects, reported using more hands-on field and lab components in their
classes, and felt they had a much better grasp of career prospects in
geography, geology, and archæology and how students should prepare for
them. The CSULB faculty reported much better understanding of the kinds of
pressures facing poorer students, especially minority students, and that that
might affect how well they reach out to such students in their regular
classrooms.
As GDEP evolved, the interactions across disciplinary boundaries led to a
number of interdisciplinary projects and these interdisciplinary projects
often took on a community service quality. The whole group remain friends,
which has blunted the natural tendency of departments to compete with one
another.
PPT 9
In our discussions within GDEP and within the Geography Department, we feel
that we have become more effective at communicating with students who may have
had drastically different upbringings, which may be one reason the majors in
the collaborating programs are becoming more diverse. Not only are they
becoming more diverse, the number of majors is growing.
PPT 10 This
effect is really pronounced in the Geography enrollments: Substantial growth,
marked ethnic diversification, and a noticeable post-GDEP acceleration in
these.
PPT 11
Diversification along gender lines has remained essentially flat in
Geography from F/2000 through F/2005 at roughly 40 percent. Anthropology,
too, is flat, but at a much higher plateau: approximately 2/3 of their
majors. Geological Sciences really fluctuates, but the meaning of these
cycles is unclear, given the small size of the major. Gender diversity was
not a target of GDEP's activities, but it is odd to see Geography so much
below the campus as a whole in its percentage of female students. Geography @
The Beach is still kind of a guy thing.
PPT 12
Geography can grow, and individual programs can do a lot to raise their
profile in student minds. One possible avenue is reaching out to similar
programs to create multidisciplinary programs that can increase the common
pool of students drawn to geography and similar disciplines. GDEP brought
together three departments at CSULB and faculty from six community colleges
and five local high schools, creating a mentoring watershed for students from
high school through community colleges into our three departments. Geography,
particularly, has aggressively courted the community colleges, and it bears
remembering that minority students and students in poverty are far likelier to
start their college careers in the community colleges. Working with the
community colleges can both increase the number of majors as well as the
diversity of the students in our major. It is in the interest of university
geography programs to do everything they can to build communities of
geographers at every level of the educational system and assist geographers at
community colleges and high schools to promote the discipline and incorporate
research findings and research processes into their pædagogy.
We cannot confine our appeal to what is a declining demographic in California
and other parts of the country. We need more students, and one way to grow our
majors is to tap into the interests of underrepresented students. And
interdepartmental and interinstitutional collaborations utilizing aspects of
GDEP might be an ideal way to build channels of diverse student flows into our
programs, support our own research activity, and serve our communities at the
same time.
PPT 13
Acknowledgments and more information.
PPT 14
Scenes from GDEP summers.
Other CSULB faculty participants:
- Geography: Christopher T. Lee and Suzanne P. Wechsler
- Geological Sciences: Elizabeth L. Ambos, Richard J. Behl, Robert D.
Francis, Gregory Holk, María-Teresa Ramírez-Herrera, James
Sample
- Anthropology: Daniel O. Larson
- Psychology: David J. Whitney
