Tom Hudspeth (left) and Ian Worley (right) work with ENVS field classes in landscape ecology and environmental education. Students gather on Redstone green (center) for the first Solar Fest with music powered by the sun.
Responding to these start-up conversations, UVM
Andrews declared the Program to be “university-
To accomplish this would require ongoing
President Ed Andrews called together a campus-wide
wide”—a key feature distinguishing UVM from
cross-campus discussion and thus the Director was
group of interested parties. He charged the planning
all other U.S. environmental programs. Among
assigned to report to the President through the
committee to develop a program that was “consciously
UVM’s early peers were University of California at
Academic Vice President (Provost equivalent). He
interdisciplinary and liberal, with an honors component,
Santa Barbara, University of Colorado at Boulder,
would participate in the weekly Council of Deans
and designed to educate undergraduates for a broad
University of Oregon, and Middlebury, Williams,
meetings as an in-house catalyst for change for
spectrum of advanced studies in science, policy, and
Dartmouth, Brown.
UVM environmental initiatives. Andrews provided
the professions.” It was an ambitious goal; if UVM could establish a new program, it would clearly be in the forefront of academic leadership in the field. The UVM committee invited Carl Reidel, formerly of Williams College and currently on fellowship at Harvard, to prepare a prospectus for UVM. Carl was soon chosen to be the new director and implement the recommendations. Rather than assign the Program to any single unit, President
At Convocation in 1972, Reidel laid out the UVM environmental vision:
the new director with a budget, a building, and an administrative assistant, Jeanette Brown. The
“What is required is a new synthesis of scholarship built firmly on the strengths of disciplinary analysis… This will mean tearing down some artificial barriers between disciplines, departments, and colleges; between students, professors, and administrators… It will mean new ways of teaching that recognize experience and involvement in community action as powerful teachers of synthesis and wholeness.”
College of Agriculture start-up was folded into the new program and Carl hired Tom Hudspeth to serve as Assistant to the Director and lead outreach person for the Program. In 1973, seven students were admitted to the new major in Environmental Studies, and Program staff and faculty moved into the newly renovated Bittersweet (ghosts and all).
UVM recommends university-wide Environmental Program
Environmental Program founded; Carl Reidel appointed director
Bittersweet renovated and Program moves in
UVM Natural Areas designated
1971
1972
1973
1974
1975
1976
Vermont Act 250 signed into law
Arab Oil Embargo
Safe Drinking Water Act passed
Endangered Species Act passed
The Monkey Wrench Gang, Edward Abbey
Lattie Coor, new UVM President
Vermont Yankee begins operating
The Limits to Growth, Donella Meadows Small is Beautiful, E. F. Schumacher
CFCs shown to damage ozone layer
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