Professor C. John Suen, chairman of the Earth and Environmental Sciences department at California State University, Fresno, and Peter Diage, assistant to the chairman of the department of Environmental Sciences at UC Riverside, say the program should benefit the respective regions and students.

To qualify, students will have to meet UC's higher entrance requirements. Once admitted, they may attend UC Riverside courses in person and by computer and video connections, asking questions and filing papers and research long-distance. Students will face a minimum living requirement: Fresno State students must spend some time in the Riverside area, and Riverside students will spend time in Fresno.

Diage, who is also a lecturer at UC Riverside, said that decisions on most academic offerings in the UC system originate among the faculty. In this case, the idea originated in 1996 during discussions between Fresno State President John Welty and Raymond Orbach, who was then chancellor at UC Riverside.

UC Riverside has offered an environmental science degree since 1970, and the university has resources that Fresno wanted to mobilize, Diage said.

Welty and Orbach had faculty members pursue a relationship. Diage served on a team that looked into "what was in this for UC Riverside."

"I looked at what Fresno had," he said. "They have a well-developed agriculture program. Riverside has agriculture and citrus, nematology, entomology but not a lot of in-the-field agriculture."

Fresno offers a more expansive agricultural environment. Riverside is more urban. Both suffer significant pollution of air, water and soil.

"We are in the same boat," Suen said.

The state budget crisis poses potential funding problems, but Suen and Diage think that years-long planning will mature into actual class credits in the fall.

"I'm excited," Suen said. "This is quite a deal. ... We haven't designed the diploma yet, but it will carry the names of both universities."

The universities' environmental programs are structured differently. Fresno State offers three tracks: earth science, life science and a behavioral-policy-health option. UC Riverside has five tracks: environmental education (for future teachers), natural science, social science (for students planning to enter management and planning and environmental law), environmental toxicology (pollutants' toxic effects) and soil science.

Diage expects that only 10% to 15% of the cooperative program's students will enter from the Riverside campus, owing to the area's urban environment and other environmental study options.

Suen hopes the program becomes a model for other universities, and stresses that the new degree will not be conferred in "environmental studies."

"This is hard science," he said. "We train scientists: chemists, biologists, geologists and mathematicians."

Beyond the science, Suen hopes the program will nurture an environmental culture in the San Joaquin Valley and reduce a "brain drain."

"If we give them this education here," he said, "there is a greater chance they will stay."

The reporter can be reached at

jsteinberg@fresnobee.com or 441-6311.