Reclaiming Our Turf

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Science

4 CSA News January 2011

Science

By Madeline Fisher

our

soil scientists seek to grow theprofession and bolster its image


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January 2011 CSA News 5

independent flm showcase, theSundance Film Festival. Narrated

by the actress Jamie Lee Curtisand promoted by other celebrities,Dirt! later aired nationwide on PBS,propelled by reviews that called itthought-provoking, invigorating,and un.

Not bad or a movie whose soleaim was to take audiences insidethe wonders o the soil. Yet evenor such a flm, soil itsel was

something o a dirty word, as Certi-fed Proessional Soil Scientist andClassifer Larry Baldwin discoveredwhen he got a chance to talk withone o the flmmakers.

I asked him, Why did you callit Dirt! The Movie? Why not Soils!The Movie? recalls Baldwin, who isvice president o the North Caro-lina environmental consulting frmLand Management Group, Inc. andan SSSA member. And he said,Because the word soils has nomarketing to it.

So it has gone with soils o late;the subject seems to hold scantappeal with the public. Studentshave been turning away rom soilscience in droves, leaving academicdepartments scrambling to reinventthemselves in order to survive. Dur-ing the 1990s, membership in SSSAdropped signifcantly, although thenumbers have since rebounded.Meanwhile, consultants like Bald-win have seen engineers, geologists,and other proessionals muscling in

on the rightul work o soil scien-tists.

All o this has led to a ground-swell o concern about where thisproession is going, says SSSAmember Nick Balster, an associatesoil science proessor at the Uni-versity o WisconsinMadison whostudies soil science education. It hasalso led to action by SSSA. A group

o Society leaders has been telecon-erencing monthly to discuss theissues, Baldwin says. In the mean-time, an Advocacy/Education TaskForce, convened in 2007 to studyeducation and employment trends,published its results and conclusionsin the SeptemberOctober 2010 issueo the Soil Science Society of America

Journal (74:14291432). And last July,Dawn Ferris joined the Society asSoil Science Program Coordinator.

Her charge: To improve relationsbetween SSSA and state soil sciencesocieties, expand certifcation andlicensing programs, and increasecontinuing education opportunitiesor proessionals.

The steps are all extremely posi-tive. Still, i soil science is going to

bolster its image and gain the rec-ognition it deserves, it will take notonly a groundswell o concern, butalso o thought and action. Ferrisrecommends that everyone read thetask orces paper on trends in soil

science education and employmentas well as the article, Growing theSoil Science Proession throughInvestment, Vestment, and Valida-tion, published in the MarchApril2010 issue o the Soil Science Societyof America Journal (74:453460). Sheencourages members and certifca-tion holders to contact the Societywith their questions, comments, andideas.

I really encourage people to talkwith us, Ferris says. Thats how

things are going to happen.Ferris hersel has been involved

in the SSSA or nearly two decades.A native o Wisconsin, she earneda B.S. and M.S. in soils and a Ph.D.in orest hydrology beore embark-ing on a career that has includedpositions in consulting, government,and academia. In 1993, she beganvolunteering with SSSA, helping

to develop a set o perormanceobjectives or proessionals thatunambiguously defned the practiceo soil science. A ew years later, shewas involved in bringing a licensingrequirement or soil scientists intoMinnesota, where she worked atthe time. She also became a char-ter member o the Council o SoilScience Examiners (CSSE), whichwrites the national exams used orlicensing and certiying soil scien-tists. She has served on the councilever since, including six years aschair.

Enhancing Certifcation,Licensing

During much o this time, Ferriswas also talking with Luther Smith,the Societies director o certifcationprograms, about ways to enhancecertifcation and licensing in soilscience. When he oered her a jobearly in 2010 to do just that, Ferriswas an assistant proessor at OhioState University and well on herway to tenure. In the end, however,she couldnt let the opportunity

pass.It occurred to me that I could

do more or the proession o soilscience being on sta at SSSA, shesays, than I could ever hope to doas a proessor at OSU.

Much o Ferriss passion touphold her proession stems romthe 14 years she spent as an envi-ronmental consultant. Like Baldwin,she was dismayed to see licensedengineers, geologists, and othersdoing the work o soil scientists. Shealso saw that soil scientists wouldnever enjoy the same stature asthese licensed proessionals unlessthey became licensed themselves.

Licensure, she explains, is alegal requirement dictated by statelaw that aims to protect the health,saety, and welare o the public. Butlicensure also protects soil scienceproessionals because only those

A flm about soil might seem like a doubtul draw orviewers. But in 2009, the documentary, Dirt! The

Movie, debuted at none other than Robert Redords


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[Licensure andcertifcation] are

protecting ourpractice. Thats whatit comes down to.


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people who meet state standards oreducation, experience, and per-ormance on exams are allowed towork as soil scientists in licensingstates.

In granting licenses, however,states tend to be all over the map.North Carolina, Minnesota, Texas,and Wisconsin, or example, allrequire proessionals to pass bothCSSE exams: the undamentals examand the proessional practice exam.Several more states use one o theseexams; others, like Tennessee andSouth Carolina are deciding whattheir licensing rules will be. Andmany more states dont yet license

soil scientists, Ferris says.The reason its important or

states to require both CSSE exams,she stresses, is that this providesnational consistency, or comity, inlicensing. A soil scientist licensed inWisconsin could immediately applyor a license to practice in NorthCarolina, or example, whereasthis wouldnt be true in a state thatdoesnt share Wisconsins licensingrequirements. Thus, Ferris spentmuch o her time this summer and

all meeting with ofcials in variousstates and encouraging them toadopt similar licensing rules so thatsoil scientists can easily cross statelines.

In the meantime, there is alsocertifcation. Although certifcationthrough SSSA (see www.soils.org/certifcations/cpss-cpsc) is volun-tary and doesnt carry the legalstatus o licensing, it does convey tothe public that a qualifed person iscarrying out the work, Ferris says.Importantly, many states laws also

dictate that a certifed soil scientistperorm certain kinds o work; orexample, the design and installationo septic systems. But this require-ment is oten let out o state law,as well, which is why proessionalsneed to keep a close eye on legis-lation to make certain soil scien-tists are being named as rules areupdated.

Its protecting our practice,Ferris says. Thats what it comesdown to.

Baldwin agrees, adding that anyproessionwhether medicine, en-gineering, law, or soil sciencehasthe same three legs. Proessionalsmust acquire a specialized body oknowledge. They must then applythat knowledge responsibly in theirwork. But in between is the publiccall or the knowledge, which ariseslargely through laws, regulations,and policies. Without this public rec-ognition and demand, a proessionisnt truly a proession, he says. Its

just a body o knowledge.

Finding opportunities to protectand enhance the proession was alsothe goal o the Advocacy/EducationTask Forcea group o dedicatedSSSA members, including Ferris andBalster, who had all heard stories oryears about soil sciences decline.But when the members convenedor the frst time in 2007 under theleadership o SSSA and ASA mem-

ber John Havlin at North CarolinaState University, they realized thatstories alone werent enough; they

needed solid data. So in 2008, thetask orce commissioned a surveyo soil science students, academicdepartments, and employers, whichqueried them on matters such asstudent enrollment trends, uturecareer prospects, the downsizing(or growth) o academic programs,and the preparedness o soil sciencegraduates.

Soil Sciences Image

The survey yielded a trove o in-

ormation about these topics, Ferrissays, which can be read about bothin the SSSAJ paper and in a longer,companion report. But perhaps themost interesting fndings centeredon something the task orce hadntasked about explicitly: soil sciencesimage.

For one, students, employers,and departments all agreed that in

the minds o many, soil science isstill linked exclusively to produc-tion agriculture, when in act theproession is much broader. Whenasked where they saw themselvesemployed in the uture, studentrespondents81% o which weregraduate students, Balster notesoverwhelming chose the environ-mental sciences (agronomy rankedthird, while soil science came inninth). Similarly, many depart-ments indicated that interest in theenvironment, land use, and sustain-ability seemed to be attracting morestudents to soils today. And whenasked where uture job growth

would be, employers, too, said envi-ronmental science.

The results thereore suggest thatsoil science could sell itsel betterto students and the public by tyingitsel more closely to the environ-ment. Similarly, job market trendsindicate that departments may wantto train students more broadly inenvironmental scienceas indeedmany o them are doing already.However, this also creates a di-lemma or educators, Balster says.Broad, interdisciplinary educa-tion has well-known benefts. Butin delivering it, departments maystruggle to maintain the depth otraining theyve traditionally oeredin subjects such as soil chemistry,soil physics, and classifcation. As aresult, a ull-service education insoil science may become less com-mon, and graduating students may

be less capable o passing soil scien-tist certifcation exams at the end.

But the implications could alsogo much deeper, Balster says. It

could easily change our knowledgebase as a society because we mightlose the contributions o specializedscientists and specialized studentswho really understand the soilsystem, he says. When I thinkabout my role in society, these arethe trade-os that concern me as aneducator.


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I think sometimeswere our ownworst enemy. Assoon as you saythe word soils,

hal your audiencehas gone to sleep.

BackdropimagecourtesyofDavidWein

dorf.


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As an employer o new soil sci-ence graduates, Baldwin is alreadyseeing evidence o this shit in theresumes that cross his desk. Increas-ing numbers o applicants hold de-grees in interdisciplinary programs,such as environmental management,rather than in core disciplines, suchas soils, geology, or orestry. ButBaldwins company needs peoplewith core knowledge and skills,which means these students need to

be retrained beore theyre able tocontribute, Baldwin says.

At the same time, he agrees thatsoil science needs to start marketingitsel in line with the times. I think

sometimes were our own worstenemy. As soon as you say the wordsoils, hal your audience has goneto sleep, he says. We have to ham-mer land use, land development,and land policy issues. Soils areintegral to all o that.

The trick will be fnding the bal-ance between breadth and depth,

but some departments alreadyseem to be getting the hang o it. AtBaldwins alma mater, North Caro-lina State University, or example,

undergraduates can choose betweentwo rigorous soils majors: one witha more traditional ocus, called Plantand Soil Science, and another with acontemporary name and emphasis:Natural Resources. Similarly, theUniversity o Minnesotas Depart-ment o Soil, Water, and Climate o-ers a broad major in EnvironmentalSciences, Policy, and Management.But students who choose to minor insoil science will also receive enoughspecialized training to meet thecourse requirements or Minnesotas

soil science licensure program, thedepartment says.

Better Communication

The above discussion points toanother major fnding o the survey:Students, departments, and em-ployers need to be talking with oneanother more.

What struck me was how manytimes the same complaint [aboutcommunication] came up in theresponses o all three groups, Ferrissays. Somewhere communicationhas to be better acilitated.

For example, when asked howthey got hooked on soil science,survey respondents cited a host oreasons, but one o the most com-mon was completing an internshipin soils work. Yet students alsocomplained they had trouble fnd-ing both internships and jobs, not-ing that their departments seemedill equipped to provide such help.Employers, on the other hand, said

they had lots o internships andjobs available. Their problem wasfnding qualifed people to fll them.In act, when asked about fndingtrained soil scientists in the uture,37% o employers thought it would

be harder in the coming years, whileonly 7% thought it would be easier.

The fndings indicate that theresan apparent disconnect occurring

between soil science departmentsand employers o our students,Balster says, and it could be add-

ing to soil sciences woes. Studentsmay not be choosing soil sciencebecause they arent aware o the jobsthey could get upon graduation.Departments may be inadvertentlycutting courses that employers needstudents to complete, such as soilclassifcation. And without inorma-tion rom employers about theseneeds, departments have a hardertime justiying themselves to uni-versity administrators and endingo cuts. So I think more researchis warranted to understand this dis-

connect and how it can be fxed sothat we re-establish the conduit orour students into the proession,Balster says.

Educating the Public

A better connection needs tobe established between two othergroups, as well: soil scientists and

the public. Despite an increasingawareness o environmental issues,U.S. citizens still seem mostly oblivi-ous to the centrality o soils in prob-lems such as ood insecurity, waterquality, erosion, and climate change.Instead, most people in the UnitedStates still think o soils merely asdirtas the makers o Dirt! The

Movie shrewdly recognized.

That tells you right there thatwe dont understand that the es-sence o soils is lie, Balster says.In my opinion, theres a criticalsocietal change that needs to happenin how we appreciate the soil andview its role in the sustainability o

this planet.The task orce had several recom-

mendations or SSSA on this ront,as well:

Promote the soil scienceproession and its connectionto the environment at earlierstages o education, includinghigh school.

Integrate the subject moreully into K-12 curricula by

building on the Societys al-

ready established program insoil science education.

Experiment with hiring a mar-keter, whose job would be totell the public why soils are sovital to our existence and cant

be taken or granted.

I any one group can makeprogress on these issues, its SSSA,Baldwin says, with its nationalreputation, resources, and largemembership base. Speaking o thosemembers, however, Ferris hopes

they recognize that, in the end, nobetter champions or soil science ex-ist than soil scientists themselves.

We need to put ourselves outthere and reclaim our tur, no punintended, she says. Thats what Iwant to help people do.

M. Fisher, CSA Newsmagazinecontributing writer; sciencewriter@

sciencesocieties.org

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