The University of Pittsburgh dates to 1787 when the Pittsburg Academy was established in downtown Pittsburgh. It remained as such until 1819 when it became the Western University of Pennsylvania. The School of Mines was formed as a School within the University in 1897. In 1908 the institution’s name was again changed to the University of Pittsburgh. It was that year that the University moved from its location on the north side at the at the Allegheny Observatory site to the Oakland campus where 43 acres of the Schenley Farms property had been acquired. The School of Mines building was the first building constructed on the new campus. From 1864 to 1896, geology was taught as part of the natural sciences curriculum; however, a geology degree was not offered. There was a Bachelor of Science degree option in geology in the School of Mines from 1896 until 1917 when geology became a degree program in the Liberal Arts segment of the University, known then as the “College”.
Henry Leighton, who had come to the University of Pittsburgh in 1910 as an instructor in Mining Geology and Mineralogy, became Acting Head of the Department of Geology in 1930. He later became department head and remained as such until his retirement in 1944 when Richard E. Sherrill took over. In the decade from 1934 to 1944, geology and geography were a combined department. The second chapter of The Society of SIGMA GAMMA EPSILON (the Beta chapter) was formed at the University of Pittsburgh, shortly following the formation of this Society on March 30, 1915 at the University of Kansas. Undergraduate training was emphasized in those early years, but graduate degrees have been granted since 1912 when Harry N. Eaton became the first Ph.D. in geology at the University of Pittsburgh.
The department has gone through several name changes. The name was Department of Geology until 1960 when it was changed to the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. Associated with this name change was a program expansion from essentially only geology to include, geophysics, geochemistry, and planetary science. A paradigm used was the TOPS focus—Tropics, Ocean, Polar, and Space. There was a significant expansion of the graduate program at that time. In 1979 geology was once again added and Geology and Planetary Science remained until to 2015. In 2015, the department changed to its current name, Geology and Environmental Science (see next section). In the period from 1960 to 1965, as the graduate program was expanding, the undergraduate program was diminishing, but from 1970 to 2010 the department maintained a balance between undergraduate and graduate programs. In particular, the creation of the Environmental Studies program in 1996 strengthened undergraduate enrollment. Graduate degrees (M.S. and Ph.D.) were granted in Geology and Planetary Science with students focusing in core areas like geology, geophysics, geochemistry, volcanology, and planetary science. Over the years, undergraduate degrees included a B.S. in Geology, B.S. in Environmental Geology, and a B.A. in Environmental Studies.
In 2001, The Department of Geology and Planetary Science (along with the Department of Mathematics) was awarded a Sloan Foundation grant for the establishment of a Professional Science (non-thesis) M.S. degree (akin to an M.B.A. for science). Students or their employers fund their degree with no support from the University. The Department has awarded nearly 50 Pro-M.S. degrees in GIS and Remote Sensing since that time.
The department name was changed in 2015 to the Department of Geology and Environmental Science to better reflect the evolving focus of research in the department, in part as a result of our last external review. However, that name change marginalized some research areas and relinquished over a half century of reputation building in Planetary Science. Since this time, graduate degrees (M.S. and Ph.D.) are granted in Geology and Environmental Science. Our graduate programs have held steady at about 35 graduate students per year across all programs. The undergraduate degrees now include a B.S. in Geology, a B.S. in Environmental Science (since 2016), and a B.A. in Environmental Studies. We also oversee an undergraduate certificate in GIS, and instituted a Minor in Geology this past year. Our department is also instrumental in the undergraduate certificate in Sustainability.