Program Quality
Overall, the University of Maryland, Marine Estuarine and Environmental Science (MEES) graduate program is excellent and is an important asset to the mission of the University System of Maryland (USM). MEES is a particularly excellent graduate program in marine and estuarine science and it has pockets of strength in selected other areas within the environmental sciences. For research and graduate training in estuarine science, in its most general sense, it is among the best programs in the U.S.
MEES is a bottom-up program sustained primarily by the involvement and interest of faculty within the 3 UMCES institutions, UMCP, COMB-UMBI, UMES, UMBC and UMB and supported by some key administrators. Consequently MEES appears to lack support and advocates at senior levels at some of the participating institutions. The leaders of degree-granting USM institutions have a variety of incentives to build programs within their own institutions, whereas there are few if any incentives to build programs across the university system.
MEES graduate students are excellent and are generally happy in the program. They identify a common set of programmatic issues, primarily in organization and course offerings, that need attention. There are straightforward fixes for these issues and these fixes are discussed in the recommendations below. Graduates are very successful in a broad range of careers, particularly government and academia. MEES plays a
particularly strong role in feeding scientists into government service, and this is a career track that, when recognized as a strength of the program, can be developed more broadly and used more directly to further improve the program.
The MEES Director, Ken Paynter, is generally well thought of as a program coordinator.
The full time assistant director, Debbie Morrin-Nordlund, is extremely popular and her dedication and rapid response to the needs of the program are greatly appreciated by the faculty, staff and students at all participating institutions. Program leadership at the level of the Deans, Provosts, Presidents, and Chancellor suffers from the part-time nature of the Directorship and the lack of strong advocates at these higher levels of the University System. This leadership void is deemed to be a function of a weak cross-institutional identity in the strongly decentralized UM system and the lack of a coherent approach to environmental programs throughout the individual campuses and the system itself.
Relationship to System-Wide Environmental Scholarship at USM
The University System of Maryland and its campuses have before them an important opportunity to raise the profile and quality of their academic environmental programs by
creating and developing synergies that arise by combining existing disciplinary strengths.
This prominent university system has excellence in all of the important areas of scholarship and education for most of the major environmental challenges that face Maryland, the United States, and the world. However, these pockets of excellence appear to be narrowly constrained because they are rarely brought together around large,
interdisciplinary questions – one of the side effects of the decentralized culture. The MEES program is one of the most successful models within the USM for how graduate training (and even interdisciplinary research more broadly) can be accomplished within this system. While this review committee does not believe that MEES should grow to be the single umbrella for all environmental graduate training at USM, it can be
strengthened through the system-wide prioritization of environment and sustainability. It can also be a model for other cross-institution environmental initiatives. We recommend that USM capture this opportunity.
A compelling need of USM is a single focal point for environment and sustainability across the system. This focus is particularly important for graduate programs, so that students applying can see the full set of opportunities. Such a focus can be easily accomplished with a single web portal that points potential graduate students to the different USM graduate programs in marine and environmental science, some of which are new, and that clarifies the respective strengths and differences of these graduate programs. We recommend a single web portal entry point for "environment and
sustainability at USM" that gives the big picture of existing USM environmental science using a thematic approach around environmental challenges (e.g. urban sustainability, sustainable watersheds, the Chesapeake Bay, etc). This web portal should have branching points to all of the possible graduate programs, both on first principles (ecology, oceanography, sustainable development, agriculture, etc.) and thematically, allowing prospective and current graduate students to identify opportunities such as MEES, Environmental Science and Technology, Smart Growth, etc. Development of this web portal would also help to identify gaps in the environmental sciences in the system that cross-system sustainability leadership could begin to fill.
UMCP and USM have two potential options to follow: Option #1 -- strengthen the existing MEES program -- Sections II and III of our report contains recommendations as to how to do this, leaving it more or less the same in stature and success; or Option #2 -- strengthen the MEES program AND take a more ambitious approach to define an
“umbrella” structure (e.g. Institute) with the goal of organizing existing USM graduate- level efforts in environment and sustainability, including MEES, to stimulate cooperation and collaboration across truly interdisciplinary lines.
We believe that the University of Maryland System already has the faculty and programs that define it as a major player in graduate education in the environmental sciences, including ocean sciences, in the U.S., and that the academic leaders should pursue some version of Option #2. This is a unique time in history with respect to the popular sensibility to environmental issues and need for solutions informed by the social and natural sciences, and Maryland, with its diverse and heavily populated natural systems and its proximity to the nation’s capitol, is in a strong position to offer excellence in
environmental sciences in its broadest sense. One approach is for USM to develop an Environmental Sciences Institute that would serve as an intellectual and visionary umbrella for a federation of environmental science enterprises at the graduate level, of which one such enterprise is a strengthened MEES. Such an Institute would be expected to develop rapidly a highly visible and respected national profile. Such an Institute will require credible and talented leadership, together with strategic incentives for disparate units and faculties to participate in a system-wide enterprise located within a supportive management and accountability structure. Should USM decide on option #2, changes should be made with the full recognition that MEES has been very successful, that it is a key model, and that it will be one of the signature strengths of the Institute.
Any changes should preserve the general nature of the MEES program that promotes this success. In particular, graduate training in the marine-estuarine area should be guarded and enriched, in consequence of the already strong program in this general area.
For option 2, Leadership of the Institute with the goal of organizing existing USM graduate-level efforts in environment and sustainability into a coherent program needs to be carefully considered. The program should be rooted in an academic unit at UMCP that subscribes to and advocates for a Director’s vision for a re-organized program. The Director, which should be an individual with a national/international reputation, should be an individual whose task it is from waking to sleeping to provide intellectual and visionary leadership to system-wide graduate programs that focus on the environment and watershed issues, from the mountains to the sea, especially within the context of the Maryland landscape. The Institute (for lack of a better name and the Committee was not fully familiar with all possible options within UMCP and USM for an administrative unit) should be structured to encourage participation not only of programs within various UMCP colleges but throughout USM. Furthermore, the Director should be at a
sufficiently high level that will enable the person to work authoritatively to build the program, e.g. with the status of a department head within a prominent school or an institute director level position answerable to the Provost. The Director should have a dotted line to the USM Chancellor's office as a means to facilitate system-wide
participation and to promote the concept that success will grow from collaboration and creativity among the USM institutions. The Director should establish and rely on an advisory council with a representative from each of each of the graduate programs participating in the Institute..
USM may choose not to invest in environmental sciences through a system-wide Institute. If UMS chooses this path (Option 1), MEES itself can be strengthened and developed into a further renowned graduate program through leadership and vision. A broad, forward-looking vision for MEES has not been articulated. If MEES is to move beyond what it has been historically, such a vision must be put forward. To follow this path, a senior visionary person should be recruited to lead MEES. This person would have to be given appropriate “clout” to build collaborations across the System. For a program of the size of MEES, a Program Coordinator is essential to manage the
operational and day-to-day activities of MEES, and the current Director serves this role ably in the existing part-time position. To add stature and further excellence to this program, however, will require the addition of a full-time Director. The operational
“home” for MEES is also critical to its success. MEES should continue to be rooted in an academic unit at UMCP, and one that subscribes to and advocates for the Director’s, Provost’s and faculty’s vision for MEES. As we recommend for the Institute option in the preceding paragraph, the MEES Director under option 1 must have some structural connection (e.g. a “dotted line” on the organizational chart) to the USM Chancellor's office as a means to facilitate system-wide participation and to confer appropriate stature to the position. The Director should establish and rely on an advisory council with a representative from each of the MEES units.