All UW-Madison students could be required to take an environmental science course to graduate, under a proposal from an Associated Students of Madison committee.
In a meeting Tuesday, ASM’s Sustainability Committee discussed upcoming steps to garner support for their environmental education requirement campaign, which proposes adding a three-credit environmental science requirement for all UW-Madison colleges.
“People can graduate with a huge component of society not even on their radar,” Sustainability Committee Vice Chair Leah Johnson said. “So, I think our biggest uphill battle will just be getting that across to people and showing that it’s important and that people are graduating without that knowledge and we’re doing them a disservice.”
If implemented, the proposal would use the additional environmental science class to satisfy the current natural sciences requirement. The committee also wants colleges to allow the course to count in multiple categories so students don’t have to worry about completing another requirement.
“In order to get the administration to take us seriously we need to have student support, but to get student support we need to have the administration side taking care of things so we’re trying to figure out how all that’s going to work,” Johnson said.
Students who take an Advanced Placement environmental science class in high school may skirt the requirement, Johnson said. The committee’s research team has begun to compile a list of existing courses that fulfill the requirement in order to prepare for questions about hiring.
“I feel like we wouldn’t really need to hire necessarily a lot more professors as much as working these classes into a requirement that already exists,” said Billy Welsh, Sustainability Committee Chair.
The committee has scheduled several meetings with professors, including experts on sustainability and opponents of the campaign. Although they have not yet determined a date, the group will meet with Dr. Nick Balster, director of the environmental sciences major.
