PUBLISHING PATTERNS IN THE EARTH SYSTEM SCIENCE DEPARTMENT, A NON-TRADITIONAL GEOSCIENCE PROGRAM AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE
The University of California, Irvine (UCI) was founded in 1965. In 1989-90, the School of Physical Sciences examined the possibility of establishing a geosciences program where, up until this time, there had been no geology program included in the UCI campus science curriculum. The Earth System Science Department has its roots in the atmospheric chemistry research of F. Sherwood Rowland's laboratory group in the Department of Chemistry. The focus of the proposed geosciences program was nontraditional and did not emphasize the usual "rock" geology. In 1990 Ralph Cicerone, a specialist in atmospheric chemistry and former director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research's Atmospheric Chemistry Division, joined the UCI faculty. With Dr. Cicerone came a change in the focus for the departmental curriculum; it took on the "global change agenda," and the founding faculty members were hired in the atmospheric sciences, geochemistry and oceanography.