ESS Program Mission Statement

The Skidmore College Environmental Studies and Sciences Program builds upon and enhances the mission of the College. First, the program helps students become environmentally literate citizens. Such citizens as consumers, parents, voters, and community leaders will serve society by acting responsibly as we face the environmentally related challenges of the coming century. Secondly, the program provides an understanding of the connections between academic fields and an interdisciplinary perspective in the preparation of students interested in environmentally oriented career paths in a wide diversity of disciplines.

Students and faculty in the ESS program investigate the interrelationships among cultural traditions, social change, and institutions, and the physical and biological environment in which we live. Because of their increasing complexity, emerging environmental issues require knowledge, methods, and responses that flow from many disciplines. Hence, the program depends heavily on an appropriately balanced understanding of many perspectives drawn from the natural and social sciences, humanities, arts, and pre-professional programs. The ESS major culminates in a team-oriented capstone project, ES 375, that merges theory into practice by employing the student's environmental skills and knowledge in the examination and presentation of an environmental issue.