An agreement signed last week between the Thayer School of Engineering and the Vermont Law School will soon allow students at either institution to take courses in environmental issues at the other school.
Thayer School Dean Elsa Garmire said the agreement, which begins with the 1997-98 academic year, will continue for five years.
Vermont Law School Dean Kinvin Wroth said he anticipates more law schools entering into such exchange agreements "as resources grow tighter for every institution and subjects become more specialized."
The two schools expect students to take an average of three courses at the other institution, but no one is permitted to take more than three courses at the other school over a two-year period, Garmire said.
Not every student interested in taking classes at the other school will have the opportunity to enroll -- students must apply to a committee of administrators and faculty from both schools and receive permission to enroll in the courses, Garmire said.
"We want to make sure the students that take courses here are qualified and will pass," she said. "We want people to be successful."
Garmire said there is currently no formal limit on the number of students who may enroll, but if there are too many applicants, the committee is empowered to set a limit.
"At this point we don't know how many people will sign up," Wroth said. "This is a trial run because we don't know how much interest there is."
According to a College press release, Vermont Law School students may choose from among five courses at Thayer -- environmental economics, environmental issues in the firm, environmentally conscious manufacturing and design, industrial ecology and topics in environmental science and engineering.
Thayer students have a choice of seven courses at the Vermont Law School -- administrative law, environmental law, federal natural resources law, international comparative environmental law, international environmental law, law of toxic and hazardous pollutants and occupational safety and health law.
Garmire said the agreement was inspired by and put together by Thayer professor Daniel Lynch.
"We felt this was a niche that needed to be filled educationally," Lynch said. "There is a need for professional education in environmental matters. The people who are going to be effective doers are going to be confronted with fundamentally interdisciplinary topics."
Lynch said there is more and more demand for individuals who are effective in both the engineering and legal aspects of environmental issues.
Garmire said when the emphasis is on environmental issues, then legal issues become important in terms of what can and cannot be done to resolve environmental problems.
"For students to be trained to understand environmental management, they need to understand environmental law," she said. "We don't have those courses here."
Wroth said master's degree coursework at Vermont Law School involves specialization. Some students may specialize in specific environmental law areas and the courses offered by the Thayer School are the topics underlying the issues students talk about in their legal programs.
Courses like those offered by the Thayer School will give the students "better grounding in issues they're dealing with as lawyers," Wroth said. "A lot of them go into the public sector and the planning and engineering work can help them work effectively with the legal principles they are taught here."
While environmental management has developed as a specialty, it is a specialty which has become very interdisciplinary, Garmire said.
"To understand environmental issues means understanding what all the issues -- chemicals, magnetic waves and so on-- do in the environment and the laws surrounding those issues," Garmire said.
Jason Romeo '95, an environmental engineer who will receive his master's degree from Thayer in June, said the basis of environmental engineering is the laws that are already in effect.
"If an engineer knows what laws are already there, it's a really huge help," Romeo said.
Romeo said if the agreement had been completed last fall, he would have been very interested in taking some of the courses at Vermont Law School.
