Despite two upcoming professor sabbaticals, the environmental studies program is assuring majors that they don’t need to worry about their academic opportunities next year.

Currently, the environmental studies program employs one full professor, Program Director David Orr. Orr, on sabbatical this year, was hired in 1990. For 10 years, he was the program’s only tenure-track professor. However, the appointments of assistant professors John Petersen and Katy Janda in 1999 and 2002, respectively, correlated to growing student participation in the program.

The program has petitioned the College to appoint two replacement professors. As visiting professor Ben Wisner is filling in this year for Orr, these two temporary professors will teach the classes normally covered by Janda and Petersen. They may even offer classes that correspond to their own particular areas of research, as has Wisner in the form of the “Global Environmental Issues: Risk Reduction” class. As of the fall semester, only one class, “Green Design,” has been dropped from the program’s offerings.

Environmental studies facilities manager and lecturer Cheryl Wolfe-Cragin is certain that the appointment of replacement professors and the return of Orr will enable students to pursue environmental studies courses as they would normally. Furthermore, Petersen and Janda’s sabbaticals will enhance the department in the future by allowing the professors to take time to research, write and engage in other scholarly activities.

According to Wolfe-Cragin, the highly popular Oberlin program will continue to serve students with a course menu “more diverse in its offerings.”

Though it is a comparatively young body, the environmental studies program has fast become one of Oberlin’s defining features. When asked to comment on the program’s burgeoning popularity, Ross Peacock, Oberlin’s director of institutional research, pointed out that “in 1995 we graduated 15 ENVS [environmental studies] majors. In 2004, that number was 44. So in 10 years, the number of majors has almost tripled.”

The program’s three core professors each work in different focus areas: Orr specializes in environmental policy and ecological design, Petersen in systems ecology and Janda in energy issues and building performance.

However, these integral approaches to environmental studies are augmented by courses taught within the program or in other disciplines by professors from upwards of a dozen departments. These professors specialize in varying concentrations from biology to art to history. Some students worry, however, that the program will suffer when Petersen and Janda take sabbaticals next year.

Roger Laushman is an associate professor of biology and is currently acting as the director of the environmental studies program in Orr’s absence; he commented that the “sabbaticals follow standard College procedure for tenure-track faculty and it is a coincidence that Petersen’s and Janda’s schedules overlap this time...Tenured faculty can take a sabbatical leave after six years of service. Tenure-track faculty have a ‘mid-probationary’ leave following the first three-year appointment.”

Wolfe-Cragin and Laushman both are confident that this coming year will see Petersen awarded tenure and the corresponding sabbatical time. Therefore, he will enjoy sabbatical at the same time that Janda will take her “mid-probationary leave.”