Graduate Environmental Program

The OEP’s Director Simon Batterbury attended the Society for Human Ecology’s conference at the University of Manchester, UK in June ‘09.  He gave a paper in a session on ‘Directions in Human Ecology Education’ using the example of the University of Melbourne ’s OEP, which was set up in the 1990s by Prof. Mark Burgman and others. Some of the challenges to the Program were also discussed, including changes to its institutional arrangements and funding over time, and the difficulties of coordination and management across the University. Nonetheless, with record enrolments the Program is flourishing (over 240 students, and 55 starting in Semester 2 2009 alone) . Other programs with a human ecology focus were introduced by other speakers, for example at the University of Geneva, the ANU, Free University Brussels, Univ. of Strathclyde, and the College of the Atlantic in Maine (which has an human ecology theme underlying all its undergraduate teaching). The University of Melbourne OEP postgrad model appears to be almost unique in offering just two core units (subjects) with freedom for students to choose the rest of their degrees from across Faculties or as supervised research projects. Publications from the conference session may result.

The conference also touched on the many environmental challenges facing (mainly) the northern hemisphere, including energy supply, urban growth management, water resource planning, environmental governance,  and international agreements. The abstracts of papers may be found here.