CSN Subject Matter: Environmental Management Air date: Sunday, December 8 Welcome to this week’s edition of CSN Subject Matter, the College of Southern Nevada’s weekly radio program in conjunction with KNPR. I'm your host, Meghin Delaney from CSN’s communications office. CSN is Nevada's largest and most diverse higher education institution, so naturally, we have plenty of great stories to share. Today, we're talking about Environmental Management, I have with me Dr. Douglas Sims, the dean of the School of Science and Math here at CSN and Mr. Kirk Stowers, the principal geologist at Broadbent and Associates. The two of them have been working together to implement a new degree program at CSN focused on Environmental Management. We started with an associate degree and we'll be launching a bachelor of applied science in Environmental Management for the fall 2020 semester, we’ll chat a bit about what this degree does and what a career in Environmental Management might look like. Before we dive into all that though I want to remind you that you can learn more about CSN by visiting csn.edu, we look forward to helping you succeed. Meghin Delaney: Hi guys, thank you for being here with me today. I was hoping you could start with a brief introduction of who you are and what you do for CSN? Doug Sims: My name is Dr. Doug Sims, I’m the dean of math and science. I've been at the CSN since 2011 teaching courses in environmental science, geography, geochemistry and some other courses in. My job as the dean is to lead and direct the School of Math and Science to improve degrees, student lives, to help them achieve their greatest potential, which is an education and prosperity at the end of there at the end of their journey. Kirk Stowers: My name is Kirk Stowers, I’m a geologist by education but by vocation, I’m actually an environmental consultant in Las Vegas with a company called Broadbent and Associates. Meghin: And because CSN is an education institution, I always like to ask guests about their formal education experiences and their career trajectories. Kirk, could you go first, can you tell us a little bit about your formal education and how you got to where you are today in your career? Kirk: Sure, I grew up in Las Vegas, I’m a Las Vegas native, I went to Chaparral High School, I graduated in 1987 and then depending on how you look at it, I had the good fortune or the great misfortune to get accepted to an Ivy League school back in Cambridge, Massachusetts. So I went there for my undergraduate degree, and technically not undergraduate degree in geology because everything at Harvard has to be much more complicated, so I have a degree in earth and planetary science, which means I could tell you a little bit about the geology on Mars too. But I went straight from my college experience into the workforce back here in Las Vegas, so I've been with Broadbent Associates for just over 27 years now. Meghin: And I assume you maybe started at some sort of entry-level position and you worked your way up? Kirk: Oh yeah, it follows the traditional american dream. I was a staff geologist to start and now I’m one of the principles in our Las Vegas office and one of the owners of the company as well. Meghin: And we’ll have to talk when we're done too, because Massachusetts is my old stomping grounds. We both decided we didn't like the snow right and so you come back to Las Vegas? And Doug, how about you? I know you’ve done a lot of research in your career, but can you tell us how you got to this point? Doug: Yeah, I'm also a relatively native person, graduated from Basic High School in 1989 ,went off to UNLV down the street, basically, earned a bachelor's and master's in geological sciences and then later did a PhD at a school in England called Kingston University. During that process, I ended up opening a company after working for some major environmental firms that are still around such as Lockheed, ICF Kaiser Engineers, and more and then was hoping to make a living and ended up building a relatively large organization with the national footprint and offices across the country. When I started my career, very much like Kirk, I started as a technician, working in a laboratory scrubbing rocks as a geologist before I went to the field to dig the hole to collect rocks and then slowly progressed up toCEO of a small but national organization and it's a field that I am very passionate about, I like to get students and, you know, even early career people in my field excited because it is a very fast-paced organization when you're out there, when you're when you're working in consulting, you're generally working 100 percent, 365 days a year and it's a great career that can take you around the world working, or across the country and you can't engage all types of people, which is a great thing to interact with people as well and watch people grow in their career. Meghin: I think you've also done some pretty cool research right? You’ve had the opportunity to sort of dig into that more academic stuff, can you tell us a little bit about that? Doug: Sure, a lot of my research over the last 5 to 10 years has been paleohydrology, reconstructing past environments on dry Lake beds in Southern Nevada. The thought of paleohydrology is the reconstruction of past environments, what was going on at the end or the late plasticine into the early polis, which is what we're in now, which is very fascinating to me when you can take a dry lake bed that looks like a salt pan and recreate it with plants, animals and just the thought of what was there prior to us. I've also done research in illicit drugs and over-the-counter drugs in the Las Vegas wash and found quite a bit of information in the body of water as it runs down into Lake Mead. We've done research where we look at trace metal contamination in surface settlements and how it impacts the environment in the greater wider environment that we live in. Meghin: I always think that background is helpful to set the stage for our conversations here. If you’re just tuning in, this is CSN Subject Matter, the College of Southern Nevada’s weekly radio program in conjunction with KNPR. I'm your host Meghin Delaney and today we're talking about Environmental Management. We just met our guests and we're about to dig into the subject. Doug, do you think you could give us a basic overview of what Environmental Management means? Doug: Yeah, environmental management is a very broad term that we use for consulting. When you look at it involves anyone from archaeologist, biologist, geologist like Kirk here, to water scientist and what we do is we're contracted by private firms, large government entities to clean up environmental contamination. And the environmental manager comes in and starts his tech like Kirk and I have and then move up into a level of supervising, overseeing and managing of big problems so that we can protect the environment and people’s health. That’s basically what it is, but it's more of what I would call the umbrella that takes care of all the disciplines within the sciences so that a project can move forward with minimal problems. Meghin: Great and then Kirk, can you tell us a little bit about why this Environmental Management Field is important here, particularly in Las Vegas? Kirk: Well it’s certainly important everywhere, I would say that that we have some specific challenges here in Las Vegas. As Doug mentioned that it would be a wide umbrella under which environmental work falls under. You know, air quality in the Las Vegas Valley is is a primary concern, I think the county's done a pretty good job of regulating that and our air quality is considerably better, so you know we live in the valley, we’re surrounded by mountains and while it seems sometimes like the wind is whipping through here pretty consistently, that's not always true, and that stuff will just settle and people that are sensitive populations can be exposed to carbon dioxide or particulates and it makes it hard to breathe, and it's not good for their health overall.l I think we can all agree that water is pretty precious resource in the Las Vegas Valley and even though we have a few different aquifers beneath the valley, there’s sort of this philosophy in the state of Nevada that that all water could potentially be used for drinking water so a lot of the work that we do at Broadbent and Associates is involved in cleaning up those aquifers as potential drinking water or other sources of water, so you know when water scarcity is a problem, you better keep it as clean as possible. Meghin: Oh, I didn’t know all of that, thanks for that contexts, so I wanted to take me back, because I know it's a long process to get a new degree program approved under our system but can one of you talk about when you realized we need at this degree and sort of what the process looks like to to get a new program up and running? Kirk: I actually realized that we needed a new system of education before I came to CSN. When I was out industry, hiring people right out of college, they had the textbook knowledge, but they didn't have the applied knowledge and that's the getting their hands dirty, so when I came to CSN, I kind of retired from my earlier career and came here and then I started to teach and realized that let's educate the next crop of scientist who will take my place and Kirk's place and at that point, I reached out to people like Kirk and many other firms in the valley and said let's put together a program that a student, upon graduation, has almost direct transfer of their knowledge to their employer, which would reduce the overhead and cost of training post baccalaureate degree, and that's kind of what we did and it started actually I believe in 2016 is when we started that process and it takes a lot of a lot of work, lot of patience, which is difficult for me to have coming from industry which is a high paced, high demand industry. Once we started it, we started to involve more and more companies and get their input because our job was to not just throw it out there “This is what I think Kirk needs” it was to bring Kirk and his colleagues in to tell us what they wanted. Again it took a good solid three years, three solid years did it to move it through the system for final approval this semester for the start of 2020 fall. Meghin: And I think you mentioned it a little bit there Doug, but Kirk can you talk about when you're first hiring employees what are some of the things that they're missing? Is it hands-on experience, do they need more textbook, do they need longer time in classrooms, internship, what need were you seeing from the industry side of this? Kirk: Well we draw primarily at least in the business that I'm in, from people with geology degrees, environmental science degrees, and there's a few other maybe perhaps engineering degrees as well, so those graduates all come in with a certain amount of experience in somewhat narrow confines and some of it is a little bit more research based, so back when I started college, geology was a pretty popular entry-level position for us, but I came in with no knowledge whatsoever of -- I had some knowledge of geology and hydrogeology and things of that nature which is sort of the basis -- but in terms of being able to have some understanding about how you might track some contaminants flowing through groundwater, there was nothing. No information about how to observe the drilling of a monitoring well, no information about chemicals that might conceivably be off-gas from an industrial facility, things of that nature. I took a tiny environmental law class that's really just a structure, you can learn to Clean Air Act all you want, but if you’re going to put into some sort of implementation you need to have a little more in-depth. So I certainly realized that we had this need for incoming students to a company of my sort, it just so happened that Doug had taken the initiative to actually make that a reality and his experience in industry was tremendously helpful. If we can actually have students that come in basically read to go, boy that saves me a tremendous amount of time, it saves them a certain amount of frustration and so it's really sort of the perfect marriage of those two things and I give Doug a lot of credit for bringing in a bunch of consultants to sit in a room and and throw out our hackneyed ideas at him a few times for which he generously compensated us with Subway sandwiches, but to his credit, he was willing to listen. He basically knew the industry himself, but I like to think we have a few ideas that might have helped steer that future curriculum. But from my standpoint this is a tremendous degree, the associate part of it and in and of course the undergraduate four-year degree as well, I mean we would love to draw from the local community, and we sometimes go as far away is Chicago to pick up entry-level positions and if we can kind of cultivate that here in southern Nevada, it's just easier for everybody. Some people want to stay here and I'm one of them, so I assume others do as well. So I’m really in favor of this program, I’m really excited about that first graduating class that will come out, I'd love to talk to him. Doug: And Kirk brought up a good point. They’re going as far as Chicago to pick up people to come here, that's very expensive, not only to go and recruit, but to bring them back. This program is designed to get local people into the field, who will stay here, be employed here, they're going to contribute to the economy here, they're going to grow their families, and so forth and make Nevada as a whole a better place. And that was the design was to keep folks home drawn in the valley. Meghin: Right and we love programs that can do that and then the students can fill a workforce need in the valley which I'm hearing it sounds like we have. So we're going to formally have our first students in the program this fall, so if I'm a student coming in, can you tell me a little bit about what this program would look like, what would I be what would I be doing as a student? Doug: The program is designed as a cohort, that means the group comes in, they stay together, they go to the same classes at the same time, so when they come in they’re going to make that connection among the 20 to 25 students, which will also benefit when they get out because they’ll have those connections to help draw on for additional information, as well as possible jobs, so as you go through it you're going to be starting generally I think about 4:30 at night is when the courses do start because it's designed for a working student is huge because I think 70 percent of CSN students do have employment, so again we have a non-traditional population there. So they're going to go to school generally from 4:30 to about 9/9:30 and a couple days up to 10 at night, very similar to my graduate program that I started at I think it 5 and went to 10 because I had to work as well when I went to grad school, so that's kind of how the program designed. So once they get out, they’ll all graduate at the same time, the entry to the program is always in the fall only, so we're not doing rolling entry, so fall entry only, so again our first class will start in Fall of 2021 -- I’m sorry, fall of 2020 -- so our first graduating class will be spring of 2022. Meghin: I was going to say, we don’t want to wait any longer! Doug: No, no, I’ve waited three years to get this going and I know so have people like Kirk. We’re waiting, it’s moving. This has actually been very fast, to get it from from conception to completion and in beginning implementation three years is pretty quick. Meghin: Well I think that’s a testament to you, for putting the work together and for having industry there behind you to say this is something we really need. So you mentioned there, that the classes are going to be in the evening a lot of our students do you have to work, what kind of student would be interested in this kind of field? Is it someone who is super into science and math kind of things, or you know what? Doug: An ideal student enjoys being outside, likes a high-paced environment, they enjoy science of course, there’s a lot of science in this program. I would say if you look at CSN as a whole that is our population that we're going to target and it's the most diverse institution in Nevada, so our program will probably one of the most diverse programs in Nevada as well. Meghin: What are some of the most important courses that the students are going to take or some of the most important skills you hope they’re able to walk away with from this program so that they're able to to jump right into the industry and right into the workforce and be sort of that that valuable, ready to go employee from the start. Kirk, maybe you can answer my question? Kirk: Sure, I think what are the biggest challenges perhaps someone coming from a science background from anywhere is the quality of the writing. If you're in environmental consulting, generally your end product to record what you did is some type of report, right we're all out in the field or doing certain things and that's important as well, but if you can't convey all the work that you did and why it has been squared away or resolved, it doesn't really matter. We’re not producing widgets here, we’re producing information. Legal defensibility and that's important as well. So if you have someone come in the program and I’m not sure what's going on at colleges and this is not a criticism, but I'm not sure that geology courses have a technical writing class as a general rule. And that's really important for us, because if a student gets to us and and that's on us to do, that process can take quite some time. I mean if their first drafts are a pretty choppy and then five years later you still making adjustments then that's not a time-saver at all. So if there was a class dedicated to technical writing, which this curriculum does, be spectacular. And I think being able to write, not only is applicable to everyone’s job but their day-to-day life. Meghin: Yeah, you're talking to a writer by trade so I'm a hundred percent with you there. Doug: I would say with Kirk, he is so right, because writing isn’t being taught in the level that we do an industry or even academia. That's generally what grad school does, teaches you how to write in a certain flow using the right two verbs to describe, but it can take up to a good solid two years to train someone how to write legally so that if a project ends up in court they can actually follow what you did. If they can't, then the client will will lose out on that and then the company will get into trouble because you’ve paid a company to do something that they could not articulate what they did for you. Meghin: So it sounds like you've heard this before and you've taken this into consideration for the program, so are our students going to be taking some writing-intensive courses while they're here, they should be prepared for that? Kirk: They should be prepared because there's actually one class designed on teaching how to write industry-level reports from phase one site assessments to phase two investigations, how to use the legal word so that when you write someone read such as an attorney, you're going to be covered. Meghin: Oh that’s great so it’s not just a general writing course, it’s specific to what they’re going to be writing to the industry. I think that’s sort of how you capture folks who maybe don’t like writing, or haven’t realized that they do like writing. Kirk: If you’re not willing to write, environmental consulting may not be for you, you might want to follow that geology path a little further down the road, because we do a tremendous amount of writing. Meghin: Right, so at some point, if you don’t have the writing skills or you’re not willing to do the writing, it’s probably going to stop you on a career trajectory or maybe limit where you would go in a company, so it’s important that we get it to them early in this phase. One of the other things I wanted to ask you is why this is so important to train students in this kind of program? Doug: Yeah, I have a couple wonderful stories. We have students that have graduated and we have hired them and one time we hired a geologist that just showed up looking like me in a suit and a tie and we said that young guy, what are you doing, what are you doing in a suit? He said, well I'm a geologist. Well that's awesome but you’re going to be very uncomfortable in the back of that truck in your suit and that new hire said, well I’m a geologist, I graduated, I don't go to the field now. So we said well you have a few choices you can change your clothes or you can find another employer. That is the job for the first two to four years, logging soils, drilling holes, doing fieldwork. I think that's kind of where there's something there's a disconnect between higher edu and industry. Higher ed creates great researchers but they're not necessarily doing the applied portion to create a good employee in a sense of knowing their job. A lot of students don't want to get a grad degree, I don't blame them. It took me ten year to go through my graduate education, it's a long time. They want a job, to support their family, have a family and prosper and that's the American dream, to prosper. I think that is one of my biggest light bulbs was probably about 10 years ago before I retired and came to academia. Kirk, do you have any great examples of that as well or? Kirk: I don't have a good example is that is that, but I do think that you make a good point, that that sort of environmental consulting jobs were talking about are by and large blue collar jobs when you arrive and students should be ready for that. I mean they're there is a certain point at which you can rise up to project management and continue your career, but anyone who feels like you're not going to be out in the field to start, had somewhat been led down the wrong path. And I think that’s part of the beauty of the job too, we have a number of really talented people that work with me that really wanted to be hands-on and be out in the field and can even make that choice later in their career to continue to do those things. And one one of the regrets I have 27 years with the same company is that I infrequently get to go out in the field nowadays, that's the nature of you know where I got to and trust me, I had plenty of time in furtherance of that work, but it doesn’t happen much anymore. Meghin: Yeah, feel a little stuck in an office now, you’ve risen too high. Kirk: Yeah I’ve risen too high and I’m too expensive now to send out in the field. Dough: I think when people enter the field with a degree, sometimes I think they think they’re going to be at the top immediately, but it takes about five years of time doing that grunt work to get to a level of project manager, where you're competent to run project and then another five years to get to an upper-level. So you are looking at ten years of experience in the field and in the office managing minor projects before you become a top-level manager but once you hit that ten years and you’ve got a really good career, you've done a lot of time in the field, you’ve got a lot of sunburns and we understand that. And it's a great career though, I loved my time in the field and managing large projects is incredible. Meghin: Well and it sounds like you've designed this program that they the education they're going to get here will help them whether they're in the field or whether they've moved past the field point, right? I think it sounds like you've been very intentional in that. Doug, I was hoping you could talk a little bit about you are the dean of the school now so can you talk a little bit about your school and maybe some other things in your school that maybe students aren't interested in this program but they're interested in sort of the science and math field, what else do we have to offer students who come to see CSN? Doug: In the school of math and science, we go between the second and third largest school within the college we have about 8,300 plus students, about 240 staff and faculty we have degrees in pre-engineering which cover your civil, environmental, construction engineering, mechanical electrical that you come to CSN you do your first two years, you go to UNLV finish the last two years and then you're out as an engineer. We also have geology program, that’s a two year and then go to UNLV and finish their geology degree if that's the route they want to take. We have chemistry, geography, physics, different fields of physics as well, astronomy. We’re actually probably one of the most intense colleges or schools within CSn and we have a great faculty and staff that support students, our students are wonderful, they’re very engaging with the faculty and vice versa. Within our school we promote a lot of research with students as well. I think one of the biggest problems that we've got an education is that we're moving away from the student engaged research with faculty, so we're bringing in more grants every year to help fund students so that they can go to school, they get paid, they get to work with the faculty member, they get to meet folks like Kirk here and another industry leaders that they can make those connections before they graduate so that they might have a job on the way out of UNLV or CSN. Meghin: Yeah and I think you and I have talked about it before. Your school within CSN, you've got a pretty high rate of students who transfer on, right, to go in as a 4-year degree but there are some programs you have where they could finish their associate and go work for a while, maybe before they decide they want to complete the bachelor and go back to school, right? Doug: Yes, on the EM program, they can come in and they can complete the associate level and get a job in a geotech lab doing geotech type work, pounding proctors and sifting dirt, they could do that. We also in our school we’re mainly focused on transfer degrees more to UNLV and help feed that pipeline so that they can get out and get a bachelor's. Kirk: And we would be interested in hiring people with the associate degree as well, we need technicians all the time and I'm sure we can work it out that if we had some at that level we could arrange for them to keep going to school and finish that degree. I think one of the things that Doug didn't mention with the cost of a four-year colleges being what they are, a nice you know two-year College of Southern Nevada associate degree that then goes into say UNLV degree would be optimal for some people as well. No one wants to end up after four-year degree being saddled with years of debt from one of your larger institutions. People are starting to make that calculation in their mind that that's not worth it in the end and if Doug has devised a program that you can come out and immediately get a job, and by the way the industry is only growing, then you know, you have you have a pretty good fail-safe there and you're also don't have a huge college loans that you're trying to pay off while you're trying to get your life started. Doug: Yeah and environmental sciences are the second fastest growing field only behind medical right now so as Kirk said, it's growing, it'll continue to grow. And one thing that we do at CSN in my school is we go out and find internship across the valley as well as up in central Nevada that if a student gets out and does internship they're going to have that connection that if they want to be a technician Kirk would probably be happy to bring them in and give them the time off to finish their education if chosen and a lot of companies have education reimbursement plans as well I don't know Broadbent does but they're big enough, I’m figuring they do. Kirk: Yeah, we do have a program for that as well because we do want people to have that degree. And we’re competing for employees at this point as well so we make a lot of concessions to making that job appeal. Meghin: Great, well I’m so thankful to you guys for joining me today to talk about this important program you know I think if there are students out there who are interested in this field this could be great for them to visit our website, explore more, learn about this and come join us at CSN, cause we love. Doug: They can shoot me an email, you can get that through the math and science page at csn.edu. Meghin: Well, great, I think that’s all the time we have for today, I just wanted to say thank you again for joining us Doug and Kirk, you've been listening to CSN subject matter the College of Southern Nevada’s weekly radio program in conjunction with KNPR. I’m Meghin Delaney from CSN’s Communications office, you can learn more about CSN by visiting csn.edu or finding CSN on any of your preferred social media websites. We look forward to helping you succeed and I'll see you next time