247-1 Environmental Geology: Transitioning a General Education Class from Natural Science to Health and Well-Being in Response to Changing University Requirements

Session: Balancing Tradition and Innovation: Evolving Geoscience Curricula for a Changing World, Part I

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Environmental Geology is an introductory class that is most often taken by students needing a natural science course (without a lab) to fulfill a general education requirement (GER). The course serves as an important recruiting tool to the geosciences as a commonly found major or course of study. UW-Milwaukee is changing its GERs for the students arriving in Fall 2026 by adding two new "buckets" of study for a total of six: students will need to take three credits from each for a total of 18 GER credits (down from 21) and they will no longer need a laboratory course. In response to the upcoming change, the UWM Geology Department reviewed current GER classes that might reach into one of the new buckets with the goal of not losing students and even perhaps gaining some that we typically didn’t reach in the past.

Even though Environmental Geology clearly fits in its current Natural Science bucket, so do a lot of other geoscience courses that typically enroll more students every semester, i.e., Introductory Geology. Environmental Geology was the clearest choice for the new "Health and Well-Being" bucket as many of the topics covered concern our relationship with Earth processes: avoiding and preparing for natural disasters, accessing clean water, and exploring how climate affects human welfare. With a few small changes to the existing syllabus and the addition of topics usually not covered in class (but do have good coverage in current textbooks and research papers) i.e., air pollution, the newly designed Environmental Geology class was smoothly accepted by the university for a Health and Well-Being GER course.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Program. Vol. 57, No. 6, 2025

doi: 10.1130/abs/2025AM-10788

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