Curricular politics
The development of a new course or a new curriculum can challenge the innate infrastructure of established institutions. A course is a prized possession of a department because it provides credits to the faculty member and financial benefits to the department, since administrators use course metrics to allocate resources. Curriculum modification can affect politics and resource allocation. So, as a first step, to avoid or at least minimize conflict, an analysis of existing curricula is a necessity. It is also essential, in planning new courses and programs, to identify a unique thematic emphasis which can be used to demonstrate why they bring added value to the institution.
Parallels
Examining the Earth as a system provides the opportunity for a trans-disciplinary approach. The discipline of systems science itself embodies the fact that no one individual can understand a system, especially one as complex as the Earth system (Laszlo 2001). To paraphrase Churchman (1968), one cannot understand a system until that system is understood from the viewpoint of another. There are several parallel developments among the ESS programs surveyed for this section, including the need for team taught courses, for courses that enable non-science majors to gain knowledge about science oriented issues, and for courses that enable students to develop an understanding of principles before they move into using technologies such as datasets and models.
Team teaching
For ESSE courses or programs to succeed, an institution needs to develop an administrative philosophy and plan to support interdisciplinary team teaching. This can be difficult because educational institutions do not readily support courses that require the teaching expertise of several professors, mainly because of added costs. Each professor must be compensated, meaning that the per-credit cost of delivering a team-taught course to students goes up. Too, when faculty from multiple departments teach a single course, no single department can claim the total enrollment for the course, meaning that the funds allocated to them by the central administration are a fraction of what they would be if the course were taught within their department alone.
It is therefore necessary to engage the administration at all levels of organization, from department chair to college dean to provost, and to aid them in understanding why the complexity of Earth system science dictates that, if it is to be taught successfully, there must be input from multiple faculty members. Faculty members and departments must also understand that they will have to make a commitment and have the desire to teach a course in ESS. Team taught courses can be exceptionally valuable, but major care is required to coordinate the contributions made by each professor. Team members must be sure to understand the world view of one another, and to have a solid grasp of the content that each person will deliver. Especially rewarding is when team members share overlapping interests but bring differing perspectives to the subject matter. In addition, inviting select experts to lead courses for a short time enables students to gain a new angle on a subject. By distributing the course load, an ESSE program can tap distinguished experts for multiple courses.
Partnerships within an institution
Endorsing a systems framework and examining the Earth as a system seems obvious. Administration appears to support multi-disciplinary approaches except when it involves increasing costs to accomplish the goals. Studying and teaching about a system as complex as the Earth requires an effort that embodies disciplines that can address all processes, including those in the physical, biological and social realms of the system. Assuming that no single faculty member can adequately teach about the Earth system, it is essential to engage willing faculty to co-teach ESS. Partnership and collaboration requires understanding and commitment. A diverse set of colleagues should agree to participate in the co-development of a course. Faculty who do this must get to know each other well, and all should design the course and participate in all classes, at least at first. This will take significant time and discussion, paying special attention to learning the language of others. Geologists, biologists, and sociologists speak different dialects, and it is a challenge to interpret and understand the diversity of viewpoints. The course should initially engage all participating faculty and a limited set of tolerant students who can assist in tuning the curriculum. Partnerships between faculty, especially from different departments and colleges, evolve over time. It is therefore very difficult to expect new, young faculty to engage in ESS course development, unless they have an already established network of colleagues across the university.
Academic reward
Co-teaching an ESS course requires a commitment from faculty members who have a broad base of research experience in key components of the Earth system and who already have taught a related course within their department. Faculty with experience in Earth system processes, such as biogeochemical cycles, climate dynamics, plant and animal communities, microbial processes, human social systems, land use change, and population dynamics, possess a core knowledge that can be translated relatively easily into an ESS course.
Leadership within and among institutions
To successfully implement the complexity of developing and co-teaching a trans-college course, a course coordinator is essential. Administrators must provide at least partial financial support for a course coordinator (preferably a senior graduate student or a Post Doctoral candidate), and the support should be matched by the colleges whose faculty members commit to co-teaching. To sustain administrative commitment to the course, it is essential to continually inform administration about its progress and about the successes achieved by the students and the faculty, as well as any problems which emerge that may endanger the success of the course.
To gain a perspective on other educational institutions and their successes and issues, it is advantageous for those developing ESS courses to participate in workshops and educational forums supported by the ESSE community. It is important to ensure that all members of the co-teaching team within an institution participant in the workshops. Not only can participation lead to new insights, but also provide deeper understanding of the richness and dimensions of the ESSE community, and the degree of collaboration and support possible through multi-institutional interaction.