404 Altschul Hall, 3009 Broadway
New York, NY 10027, USA
Phone (212) 854-5618
Fax (212) 854-5760

Faculty/Staff
Overview
Barnard College is a liberal arts college for women, affiliated with Columbia University and integrally related to New York City. Barnard has a long tradition of educating undergraduate women in the field of environmental science, including natural resources and conservation. As long ago as 1949, the college had a program in Environmental Conservation and Management. In 1984 the college formed a Department of Environmental Science, following the phase out of the Geology and Geography departments. Peter Bower chaired the department until 1993, when Stephanie Pfirman, was hired as chair. Martin Stute joined the department in 1995, and Brian Mailloux in 2005. Diane Dittrick and Terryanne Maenza-Gmelch are Laboratory Directors for the multi-section laboratory course, "Introduction to Environmental Science." Catherine Cook is the department's departmental assistant.

Environmental Science faculty are active researchers who have received support from the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research, the Department of Energy, the Keck Foundation and other institutions. Pfirman's background and interests are in oceanography and Arctic environmental science, Stute's are in environmental physics and hydrology, Mailloux's are in groundwater microbilogy, Bower's are in local environmental issues, Liddicoat's are in paleomagnetism, Dittrick's are in environmental literature, ethics and advocacy, and Maenza-Gmelch's are in forestry and ecology.

Science faculty at Barnard teach 4 courses per year. Class sizes in the Environmental Science Department are generally less than 25 and often less than 10 for upper level electives. Since 1995, the department has placed an emphasis on interactive, multi-media approaches to teaching. Professors are encouraged to integrate into their curricula discussions, team and small group projects, demonstrations, computer data analyses, web-based materials, and field trips. Connect here for a power point presentation summarizing the department's multi-media oriented courses, or you can go to the course websites via our Course Descriptions page.

Student advising is an important part of faculty life at Barnard. The number of seniors graduating with a major in environmental science has increased from 11 to 31 in the past eight years. All Environmental Science majors are required to complete a senior thesis. Over the past 6 years the Environmental Science senior thesis has developed from a single semester literature review to at least 2 semesters of in depth research, which typically includes field, laboratory, and/or data analysis components. All senior theses are overseen and reviewed by a member of the department, although many students have research mentors from the greater Columbia or New York community.

The Barnard Environmental Science Department is allied with and complementary to the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences (DEES) at Columbia University. Barnard Environmental Science tenure track faculty are voting members of the DEES faculty. This affiliation means that Barnard faculty serve on graduate student committees and examinations, and Columbia as well as Barnard institutional committees. Faculty are adjunct associate research scientists at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO), have offices (and Stute has a lab) at LDEO, conduct joint research projects with LDEO and CU faculty and scientists, and are involved in the Columbia Earth Institute including major initiatives such as the Environmental Molecular Science Institute and the Arsenic Mobilization in Bangladesh Groundwater project. See Affliliates.