The Environmental Analysis (EA) program has intellectual roots reachingback to the early 1990s.  Beginning as a challenge to the prevalentparadigm of scientific reductionism and departmental isolation, earlyenvironmental discussions at Pomona College criticized thepervasiveness of unquestioned assumptions within academia.  Anespecially powerful example was the belief that global warming could beanalyzed and addressed within the existing set of academic departments.

At Pomona the discussion of an environmental major came against thevery ingrained beliefs of the time – that environmental topics couldonly be properly addressed at the graduate level and that environmentalstudies was a ‘hippie’ or ‘touchy-feely’ pursuit.

In 1996 a group of Pomona faculty formed the EnvironmentalScience/Studies Interest Group with the hope of bringing anenvironmental major to Pomona.  That year the Environmental InterestGroup, led by Professors Elderkin (Math) and Reinen (Geology), createdthe first outline for an environmental program at Pomona and in doingso created the core-track-capstone model currently in existence.

The next year, 1997, Pomona’s first environmental course, Introductionto Environmental Studies, was taught.  Like the current Introduction toEnvironmental Analysis course it had an unusually high enrollment of40+ students.  In ’98 a second core course was added, Introduction toEnvironmental Science, team-taught by professors Fowler (Biology) andKwok (Physics).  By the end of the year a solid introduction to environmental academics had been established.

Still, in ’99 the two introductory courses stood alone and lackedhigherlevel courses to feed the sparked interest of students.  Thislack of academic follow-through would change within the year.  At thePomona lunch-time speaker series Professor Hazlett (Geology) made aprovoking speech on the dire need for the study of environmental issuesat the undergraduate level.  He passionately argued thatstudents—undergraduate students—needed to be prepared for theenvironmental issues they would face in their post-college lives.  His speech was followed by an article in the Pomona alumni magazine, which contributed to the endowment (in time) of a new, ¾-position Environmental Studies chair byPomona alumnus Dr. Stephen Pauly.  With the needed money in place tostart an environmental major, the Environmental Interest Group stillhad two important issues to resolve (and would not resolve them untilAugust of 2001): What should be the name of the program, and who wouldbe the coordinator.

The "naming debate" divided the Environmental Interest Groups into twocamps – those who believed that Environmental Studies was too ambiguous for a name or too loaded of a term, and those that claimedthat the name Environmental Science would exclude the non-scienceapproaches to the environment.  In 2000 Dean Poch recommended acompromise – Environmental Analysis – which would be later nicknamed "EA."  Not being a "loaded" term, no faculty member could deny the inclusiveness of this moniker to all approaches to the study of the environment.

By the summer of 2001, EA still lacked a coordinator.  Being preferableto have an in-house faculty member take the position, Dean of Faculty, Gary Kates, asked Professor Hazlett if he would be willing to accept the position.  Hazlettagreed with the full support of the Environmental Interest Group, andin the fall of 2001 EA had its first cohort of EA majors (EA-ers).

Since 2001, EA has been headed by Professor Hazlett except for twointerim coordinators – Professors Elderkin and Fowler.  Tracks andcourses have been tweaked in recent years with the addition of theninth and final EA track – Race, Class, Gender and the Environment. Also, the historically two-course core has been reduced to the single,still very popular course, Introduction to Environmental Studies.  EA has undergone an external review and self-study processin 2008 that will culminate in recommendations for the growth and improvementof the program in the years to come.