Environmental monitoring degree planned for professionals

Advancements in the technologies of remote sensing, geographic information systems, and global positioning systems will give us powerful new tools to do everything from mapping Wisconsin’s wetlands to tracking down abandoned hazardous waste dumps and guiding land use planning.

There’s just one problem. Employers are hard-pressed to find people who can use the new array of technologies to full advantage.

Enter Tom Lillesand and the faculty and staff of the Environmental Monitoring Program, who plan to launch a professional master’s degree to meet the growing demand for expertise in the geospatial sciences.

Lillesand, who chairs the Institute for Environmental Studies’ Environmental Monitoring Graduate Program and directs its Environmental Remote Sensing Center (ERSC), has long predicted revolutionary changes in how society gathers, organizes, and uses spatial data about the environment. If he and others can clear the necessary hurdles soon enough, the program may be in place as early as this fall.

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation last year awarded them $195,000 via the Graduate School to cover the start-up costs of the degree program over three years. Chancellor David Ward and Graduate School Dean Virginia Hinshaw have strongly endorsed the program as part of a university-wide effort to offer new “capstone” and professional degrees for individuals seeking further education.

Tim Olsen, a UW–Madison Ph.D. student in curriculum and instruction (emphasizing science education) with a minor in environmental monitoring, joined the IES staff in January to help get the program on its feet. Olsen is a former deputy director and programming/training officer for the Peace Corps in Botswana and Namibia. Educated in physics and anthropology, he also has taught in the United States and abroad.

The new program will not replace IES’s more traditional master’s program in environmental monitoring, established in 1977. Rather, the two will co-exist for distinct purposes and audiences. The professional master’s program will prepare students interested in immediate, practical applications of geospatial technologies, whereas the traditional master’s program will continue to emphasize research.

Full-time students will be able to complete the professional program in two years, says Lillesand, while the traditional master’s program often takes three or more. Although the new program will not require a thesis, its career students probably will write an independent-study paper or participate in the Environmental Monitoring Practicum, a group project conducted every other year.

“One of the things we want to make sure of is that people don’t perceive this professional option as a watered-down version of the traditional option,” says Lillesand. “It’s different in its focus and it’s no less rigorous. It’s just different.”

Eventually, the professional master’s program will accommodate about 25 students at a time. About half are expected to come directly from undergraduate programs in science or engineering. The other half will be returning to school with at least one year of professional experience. Less than a third of the students entering the current master’s program arrive with related work experience.

Lillesand says the Sloan Foundation chose to fund the new program because it addresses one the foundation’s top priorities. “On a national level, Sloan is interested in promoting enrichment of educational relevance in a highly technological world,” he explains.

And Lillesand and his colleagues had no trouble finding public and private employers eager to endorse the proposal for the professional degree.