Geology cutbacks at UVM are likely to have adverse ripple effects

BURLINGTON — In April 2019, Paul Bierman, a professor of geology at the University of Vermont, noticed cracks spidering across the asphalt of a parking lot on Riverside Avenue. Trees on a nearby slope were pitched sideways, down toward the Winooski River below. 

All were telltale signs of an impending landslide.

By October, the cracks had widened, and Bierman contacted the city and state governments, sounding the alarm. He said his warning was passed around among agencies “like a hot potato,” with little action taken. 

Within weeks, on Oct. 31, 2019, the slope crumbled. 

This fall, Bierman’s students focused their projects on Riverside Avenue, studying the risk and offering potential solutions. After all, he said, “it’s only a matter of time before you and I wake up one morning and one of those buildings is down the hill.”

For decades, the Vermont state government has leaned on the University of Vermont’s geology faculty, students and many interns as a key resource in mapping out hazards such as landslides. The Vermont Geological Survey, which conducts the state’s geology research, typically employs, at most, three full-time staff members. The result, as Bierman put it, is “an army of students doing the state’s work.” 

That resource may soon be gone. The entirety of UVM’s geology program, including an undergraduate major and minor and a rigorous master’s degree program, is slated for termination, along with 21 other programs in UVM’s College of Arts and Sciences. The administration announced the sweeping cuts on Dec. 2, prompting a widespread backlash.

In the days since the cuts were announced, faculty across the university have warned that the consequences will be far-reaching. The geology department, with a museum and outward-facing research arm, is a prime example. A wealth of expertise could be lost, Bierman said, though it is still unclear how many affected faculty and courses will remain, program-less. 

“So, when one of these landslides happens, what is the state going to do?” he asked. Unlike expensive consultants, Bierman and his colleagues are, essentially, a free resource.

To answer these concerns, the university administration has pointed to one metric: Low enrollment. The geology department graduates too few students to remain financially sustainable, said Bill Falls, dean of the college, in his memo announcing the cuts. Its faculty-student ratio is one of the highest at UVM.

On its face, the metric appears simple. But the geology department, like the university at large, has spent the past two weeks contending with deeper questions: What, really, is behind these enrollment numbers? And what impacts are not reflected in those numbers?

Changing enrollment

The geology department knew undergraduate enrollment was a problem. The undergraduate programs in geology have graduated about seven students a year, combined, over the past few years. That’s on the higher end of the programs slated to be terminated, some of which graduated two or fewer students per year. 

“The dean’s been sitting in our faculty meetings for the last five years saying, guys, we love your department. But you need more majors. How are you going to change?” Bierman said. 

“I mean, he was blunt: ‘How are you going to get more seats into Arts and Sciences to help solve our deficit?’”

The deficit existed long before the pandemic further imperiled the university’s finances. This year, the university says the College of Arts and Sciences is running short by $8.6 million, and it projects that sum to reach $28 million in the next three years. For years, the university has floated layoffs and instituted hiring freezes, moves that students and faculty say represent a longstanding neglect of the liberal arts.

The geology department, like other programs, was strategizing to get its numbers up. “We were trying to respond to this edict to increase our contribution. And we did,” Bierman said. He and a colleague kick-started two new courses on high-interest topics like climate change, which enrolled hundreds of students. Still, the numbers of majors remained low.

In one sense, Bierman says, it’s true that student interest has declined in some subjects targeted for termination — such as traditional, upper-level geology offerings. In his day, he says, geology grads “got a master’s, went into the oil patch, and made a pile of money.” No longer. “We’ve seen the ups and downs over the years,” says Char Mehrtens, a recently retired UVM geology professor. And recently, that trend has been down.

“We ain’t alone,” Bierman said. Fewer students across the country are enrolling in traditional geology. Since the 2008 recession, similarly, fewer students have enrolled in the liberal arts — and Falls says it was that trend, too, that imperiled UVM’s own College of Arts and Sciences. 

What’s the value of what will be lost?

Yet, there is much that the enrollment numbers don’t reflect — like Bierman’s work on landslides, or his colleagues’ research on groundwater contamination. Some faculty members argue that it is these impacts that should determine a university’s offerings, particularly a public, land-grant university like UVM.

“I’m personally outraged that a decision of this magnitude was made on the basis of this one metric,” Mehrtens said. The decision did not qualitatively evaluate the programs, she explained. “As a scholar, I’m horrified.” She said the cuts could be “extraordinarily damaging” to the state’s geological research.

Take, for example, the department’s graduate program, which is also slated to be cut. That program, Bierman says, is small only because of the resources allocated to it by the university, not because of declining interest. It accepts few of the program’s many applicants.

It “baffles me” that the university would slash the program, Bierman said: “We take five students a year because we can support five students a year on what the university gives us. And we refuse to bring in students that we cannot support.” 

This is the argument of the faculty union, and others who oppose the cuts at UVM. Under-resourcing these programs led to low enrollment in the first place. And further, they say, the enrollment metric doesn’t account for what could be lost, should the cuts go through.

Unintended consequences

Michael Abbott, director of the drinking water program in the state of Maine, graduated from UVM’s geology program in 1997. He loved the program, he says, and was sad to see the news that it may be terminated. 

But he also knows what cuts in geology studies can mean for state government, because it happened six years ago in Maine.

In 2014, the University of Southern Maine announced it was getting rid of it geoscience program. Despite student protests, the cuts went through. “When that program was ended, it left a huge gap,” Abbott said. “They’re not present in those discussions and those projects. We don’t have that resource anymore.”

“It’s sad, you know. I’d hate to see the same thing happen in Vermont.”

Already, state officials are warning of the impact the cuts could have. In a letter to VTDigger, Jonathan Kim, Vermont’s acting state geologist, wrote of “critical unintended consequences” of the geology cuts. He urged the administration to “immediately reconsider” the decision, noting that it could halt the state’s projects on landslide mapping and groundwater contamination in Rutland.

“I just can’t imagine the state not having a geology department, and not having expertise there for the geology of the state,” said former state geologist Marjorie Gale. “The [Vermont] Geological Survey is very small. A lot of our projects rely on collaboration.” She was “completely surprised and disappointed” by the cuts, she said. 

Both Gale and the state geologist before her were graduates of the UVM geology program, and that’s not by chance. The program’s graduates, equipped with expertise particular to the state of Vermont, frequently go on to work in state government. 

The loss of local, entry-level geologists was a consequence of university cuts that Abbott says he saw in Maine, as well. Vermont, with a unique landscape and geological history, says Gale, “really benefits from having people trained here with scientists who understand Vermont geology.”

UVM’s collaboration with the state is “so extensive it boggles the mind,” Mehrtens said. 

After a dramatic landslide in Waterbury last year, faculty with UVM geology mapped out the area to evaluate future risk. Others studied the Clarendon Gorge to gain clues about PFAS contamination. Interwoven with all of this research is the growing impact of climate change, another key area of geological research. 

“Taking those resources away could be a very big mistake right now, in a time where we really need more focus and expertise and education going into [climate],” Abbott said.

An uncertain future

Like other programs at UVM, it is unclear what, exactly, the future of the geology department will look like. The cuts are still a proposal: They must be reviewed by the faculty senate, and then voted upon by the university’s board of trustees, whose members have so far been tight-lipped about the proposed cuts.

“Dissolving the geology department would not necessarily eliminate research in that area,” Enrique Corredera, a spokesperson for the University of Vermont, wrote to VTDigger, noting that instruction in some areas would also continue.

But faculty members say the loss of a degree-offering program will necessarily harm their work. And they fear that, even before the cuts are decided, their colleagues may begin to think about moving elsewhere.

“If this drags on,” Bierman said, “what’s going to happen at that point, which I think will be really sad, is UVM will lose its best talent. Because those are the kind of people who will get hired away.”

“I think our department is unified in wanting to stay here, and not move on,” he said. 

Still, Bierman said, there could be a silver lining. Since the cuts were announced, the geology faculty members have begun to take a hard look at their curriculum, he said. For years, they had been revamping their coursework “on the edges,” in an attempt to reimagine geology for a student body that, increasingly, is interested in the human applications of hard sciences. 

But now, the department is considering a question it hadn’t before, Bierman said: “What if we throw that entire package of courses into the garbage can? And we say, what’s it going to take to bring students to modern geoscience?” 

“UVM is a place of great inertia,” he said. “And that part of me gets it, like, turn over the applecart. I just wish they’d had a plan for putting the apples back in it when they turned it over.”