Department Goals and Objectives

Consistent with its mission, the goals and objectives of the Earth and Environmental Sciences Department involves the achievement of goals in nine major areas of student growth, learning and community outreach.

1. Scientific Knowledge Base To communicate to every student the essential understanding of Earth, Earth processes and environments necessary to informed citizens in the 21st century

To improve student understanding of the nature of scientific knowledge; where it comes from, how it is constructed and evaluated, its strengths and weaknesses
To provide a carefully constructed, comprehensive program of courses, scheduled in a timely manner, that supports immersion in the essential knowledge base required for BA/BS level mastery in all of our major tracks so that every major achieves significant knowledge of the Geosciences
To work closely with students during advisement to ensure that they use the University's General Studies Program in ways that maximize the achievement of their goals
To insure that students have a knowledge base in related sciences, mathematics, statistics and computer software applications appropriate for future careers in the Geosciences

2. Personal Aptitudes and Perspectives

To foster personal initiative, responsibility and independence
To help students develop self esteem based in real achievement
To foster mutual respect between students of diverse backgrounds, values and experiences
To promote the development of professional perspectives by increasing opportunities for students to interact with professionals from academia, government organizations and the business world
To increase student appreciation of the power of mathematics/statistics in posing problems, creating rigorous hypotheses, testing and evaluating hypotheses and developing meaningful solutions to problems

3. Critical Thinking and Decision Making To improve student abilities to pose the kind of meaningful questions or problems that underlie scientific research

To improve student abilities to synthesize, analyze and evaluate information from a variety of sources
To improve student abilities to develop multiple hypotheses and to justify one choice of hypotheses using multiple lines of evidence
To student abilities to make logical inferences, both inductive and deductive, from information gathered from reading and/or laboratory and field investigations
To improve student abilities to approach situations with multiple points of view and to change their point of view when it is warranted
To improve decision making abilities by focusing on careful observation and data gathering and information analysis to decide on a course of action

4. Quantitative Reasoning and Problem-solving

To enable students to ask meaningful questions and pose significant problems stated in a quantitative manner
To improve their ability to recognize multiple ways to approach questions and solve such problems
To ensure that students can use statistical, algebraic, trigonometric and exponential equations to state problems, state and test hypotheses, predict test/survey results and evaluate the quality of hypotheses

5. Modern Technology and Instrumental Analysis

To ensure that students have useful knowledge GPS and GIS technology in locating and portraying many types of information
To continue to improve the analytical capability of our laboratories so students will have access to modern instrumentation and its uses
To ensure that the graduates of our program are competent in and comfortable with the uses of instrumentation in collecting data and solving scientific problems

6. Individual Initiative in Laboratory and Field-based Research

To achieve the ability to review, analyze and synthesize current knowledge
To be able to design and implement research projects To be able to analyze data and make statistical inferences To be able to map data collected in the field and/or imported from existing data bases
To continue to increase internship, cooperative education, laboratory research and field experience opportunities for our students
To encourage professional presentation and/or publications by students in local, state, national and international forums

7. Oral, Written and Professional Communication

To effectively present information learned from critical reading and laboratory and/or field based research
To be able to write clear laboratory and field reports
To be to present orally the results of laboratory and field research
To have experience with creating and presenting professional posters

8. Community Based Research and Recruitment

To further develop urban based research program with a significant local community component
To develop articulation agreements with local high schools
To develop meaningful articulation agreements with NJ community colleges
To develop graduate program articulation agreements with other Universities

9. Interdisciplinary Initiatives

To initiate and develop an interdisciplinary core program in Environmental Science in close cooperation with other natural science departments in the College of Arts and Sciences
To develop, in consultation with programs in the College of Professional Studies geography certificate and minor program in Geographical Information Systems (GIS)
To work closely with the College of Education to train excellent teachers of science
To explore the development of a Masters in Science Education Program in conjunction with other departments in the natural sciences and the Deans of the College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Education

10. Faculty Development

To engage in ongoing assessment of the faculty, students and curriculum so that we continue to build on our strengths and address our concerns in a meaningful way in an ever-changing world
To encourage professional presentations by faculty in local, state, national and international forums
To encourage professional publications by faculty
To continue to write successful Grant proposals to fund student and faculty research, urban research, recruitment, program development and implementation, and improved technical and laboratory facilities
To continue to promote diversity in our faculty's backgrounds, skills and perspectives