New School of Earth and Space Exploration develops next generation of explorers

Great discoveries are made by those who ask fundamental questions and those who are capable of building the apparatus to answer them. The next generation of explorers—those who will probe Earth’s interior, examine the oceans’ depths and travel to Mars and beyond—will need to be part scientist and part engineer. That cross-training, starting at the undergraduate level, is the premise behind Arizona State University’s new School of Earth and Space Exploration.

“Astronomy and geology—the heart and soul of the school—will be fused with system engineering in an unprecedented, transdisciplinary way, to address scientific and technical challenges of the new century, including the needs of NASA’s work force,” says David Young, ASU Vice President and Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Housed in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the School of Earth and Space Exploration will form strong linkages with ASU’s Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering and the College of Education.

Science and engineering depend upon each other, yet, in the world of traditional higher education, the two disciplines are inexplicably separated. Most science majors graduate with only a rudimentary understanding of engineering practices, and many of the best engineering schools require only a few subjects in the fundamental sciences.

“Arizona State University is addressing fundamental and far-reaching needs,” says ASU President Michael Crow. “The drive to explore is part of the fabric of humanity. The new School of Earth and Space Exploration will fill a critical gap in the methodology of exploration by producing scientists who understand engineering and engineers who understand science.”

Essentially, the new school will create a higher education experience in which both the scientists who ask the questions and the engineers who create the capability to answer them are integral parts of the same exploration team. This is not the case today. ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration is designed to integrate curriculum and study across earth sciences, planetary science, astrophysics and engineering, unlike any academic peer in the United States.

Recently approved by the Arizona Board of Regents, the School of Earth and Space Exploration is set to open July 1 with Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor of geology Kip Hodges coming on board as its founding director.

“The inauguration of the School of Earth and Space Exploration is an affirmation of the cultural imperative of humans to explore,” says Hodges. “In the past, science has been an important driver for exploration, and the School of Earth and Space Exploration initiative at ASU is a major step toward building the capacity for 21st century, scientifically motivated exploration of our universe.”

As part of this initiative, the department of geological sciences will move as a whole into the new school, as will the Center for Meteorite Studies. The astronomy faculty also will move into the new school and the department of physics and astronomy will be renamed the department of physics. New faculty will be hired in astrophysics, systems engineering, geological sciences and related fields.

The educational aim of the School of Earth and Space Exploration is to prepare students for leadership roles in the rapidly developing space industry, in academia and in government agencies such as NASA.

“Some will be scientists who are prepared to take full advantage of new technologies to explore the processes that shape our home world and worlds beyond. Some will be the engineers who develop these technologies in collaboration with their scientific colleagues, or who focus on how engineering systems integrate to enable safe and effective exploration of the two remaining great frontiers—Earth's oceans and space,” Hodges says.

Some graduates of the new school “will become those who deliberate the policy implications of a new era of exploration. And others will go on to educate the next-generation of explorers. Our challenge is to develop an environment that sustains this community of learners and emphasizes the transdisciplinary nature of exploration,” Hodges says.

Overall, the educational programs of the School of Earth and Space Exploration “will be an extraordinary opportunity for undergraduates and graduate students to be a part of history,” he notes.

Hodges, a faculty member at MIT for 23 years, has focused his research on the development and evolution of orogenic systems, with particular emphasis on the Himalaya and Tibet. Among his accomplishments is work done on the linkage between tectonic and climatic processes in the Himalaya.

“Basically, we have been able to show a correlation between active deformation and patterns of monsoon precipitation, which is suggestive of a complex cause-and-effect relationship,” he says. Hodges adds that his field of continental tectonics is really an amalgam of disciplines, and he feels equally at home in the laboratory and in the mountains.

“Kip’s interdisciplinary geotectonic research, his innovative teaching at the undergraduate and graduate levels, and his excellent communication skills make him the ideal choice to direct our new School of Earth and Space Exploration,” says Simon Peacock, dean of the college’s natural sciences and mathematics division and a professor of geology. Peacock has known Hodges since 1981 when they were part of a geology team conducting field research above the Arctic Circle in Norway and Sweden.

At MIT, Hodges teaches a freshman class on solving complex problems. He recently told a group of ASU undergraduate researchers that he believes the goal of educators is “to put (students) in a position to solve these really hard problems in society—the problems that keep us up at night.”

“Kip is a highly respected scholar; a traditional scholar in undergraduate education,” Young says.

“I am both excited and humbled by my appointment as director of this exciting new school,” Hodges says of his appointment. “I was drawn to the position by three things. First, the New American University concept of President (Michael) Crow strikes me as the perfect medium for culturing a bold new initiative in Earth and space exploration. Second, I was enormously impressed by the way that the faculty who will shape the new school have embraced the coming changes and are developing a vision of the future.

“And, finally, I am excited about the connections we can make with Dean Deirdre Meldrum of the Fulton School of Engineering, who has a personal interest in ocean exploration through the NEPTUNE project, and with our university colleagues in the Global Institute of Sustainability who work toward a better understanding of environmental systems and our society's role in their evolution,” he says.

Hodges is a co-director of MIT’s Earth System Initiative, which was formed in 2002 to encourage and coordinate multidisciplinary research and education efforts in Earth sciences and engineering at MIT, and to develop strategies to communicate this new knowledge to the community, decision makers and policy makers. A MacVicar Faculty Fellow at MIT, Hodges also is a co-director of the institute’s Terrascope Program, a learning community for first-year MIT students. He has an undergraduate degree in geology from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, and a Ph.D. in geology from MIT. The North Carolina native is the editor of “Tectonics” and is on the editorial board of “Contributions to Mineralogy and Petrology.”

The School of Earth and Space Exploration is enrolling students for the fall semester. Additional information is available online at www.sese.asu.edu.

Carol Hughes, carol.hughes@asu.edu
(480) 965-6375