NEBRASKA EAS DEPARTMENT CLOSURE
Figure 2. Students and faculty protesting outside the building for the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Science’s hearing with the Academic Planning Committee. (News footage from Nebraska 8 NOW, McKenzie Johnson, Oct.11, 2025)
It’s very common for freshman students to enroll in something else, then switch majors to Geology somewhere along their undergraduate track, usually after taking one awe-inspiring class. It’s also common that a lot of freshman Meteorology majors sign up, but balk at the number of math and physics courses required. EAS has plans to address this with a new “Pathways to Success” course for freshmen. In the hearing, Dr. Clint Rowe attributed this to a lack of upfront information during undergraduate recruitment. It turns out that faculty have been cut out of the recruitment process since the pandemic. Instead, info about the Geology and Meteorology degrees is being spread by academic advisors who don’t know the ins and outs of the program. EAS wants to change this. When prospective students get a chance to speak with faculty during the recruitment process, they have a better understanding of what the degree entails and how much work it can be, and these students arrive on campus feeling more prepared.7
The metrics also penalized EAS for its small size. The metrics
ranked it low in terms of number of courses and yearly research publications. But it’s a false comparison that a department with only 20 full-time faculty should match up pound for a pound with a much bigger department. Additionally, Dr. Erin Haacker pointed out that – after adjusting for size – the publication, conference presentation, and teaching track record of EAS was on par with those of other institutions. This decision was also reached last year by the UNL chapter of the AAUP.7
The research output of the EAS faculty was flawed in its
measurement. No part of the metrics accounted for the impact or prestige of the journals in which faculty were being published. EAS’s average citation rate is over 230 citations per faculty member per year. EAS also received research funding from numerous organizations that was simply unaccounted for, namely the USGS, Nebraska DOT, Nebraska Department of Education, NASA, and NOAA, totaling over $5.3 million in research funds over the last decade.7 There was no regard given for some of the long-lasting research efforts EAS has done, whether that be in the Amazon, Gulf of Mexico, or Antarctica. Throughout Nebraska, the EAS faculty are highly respected for their numerous cross-disciplinary projects and efforts. One major example is the Great Plains Community Climate
www.aipg.org
Resilience Institute, which contains 29 faculty members and is led under Dr. Clint Rowe of EAS. Their research is also highly productive, with over $24 million in externally-sourced research funds currently active as of the time of writing, and over $90 million in research funding secured over the last decade. These numbers don’t even touch on the nature of their research projects, which are critical for numerous topical issues, such as groundwater monitoring, critical minerals, alternate energy resources, climate modeling, and storm forecasting.
The metrics also only accounted for publications by faculty who
are actively teaching at UNL, which heavily penalizes EAS. They have lost a lot of high-performing faculty over the last decade, and the numerous publications and contributions from these faculty were not taken into consideration at all. I checked the faculty directory and could count five professors who have since retired from when I was a student in 2019, most noteworthy being Dr. David Loope (the Sedimentology Sage) who had been at UNL since 1986.
The proposed cuts would involve terminating 12 teaching positions from EAS. Along with that, the University told EAS that certain faculty deemed “high-powered staff” would be relocated to other departments, like the School of Natural Resources. So, according to the University’s own standards, the EAS faculty are too valuable to lose, but the department itself can be scrapped. I’m still confused about that. If EAS is cut, the faculty terminations would start in December 2026. But the University also said that students currently enrolled in a degree with EAS would be allowed to graduate with those degrees. I don’t see how both of these can be true at the same time. How can students graduate from a department that no longer exists? How can faculty perform their teaching, research, or outreach if the department doesn’t exist? As Dr. Adam Houston brilliantly stated in the hearing, “Without EAS, I effectively become a one-legged stool.”
Some efforts have been suggested for damage control. In the
hearing, EAS mentioned that they can increase revenue by adding a new non-thesis MS degree in Meteorology, designed to be suitable for students who are working full-time.7 They could also defer some cost by merging with the Environmental Sciences department, although that’s not a popular option, given how it could dilute
Jan.Feb.Mar 2026 • TPG 21
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