From Vision to Reality
In 1969 a group of academics from different departments on the UC Berkeley campus started gathering on Wednesdays to discuss interdisciplinary problems and theorize new educational forms to study them. A small group, led by Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences Professor Charles (Ned) Birdsall, worked to make one of these theoretical educational forms a reality: they envisioned an interdisciplinary graduate group with its own faculty that conferred graduate degrees. After 4 years of campaigning in the face of entrenched status quo for the approval of more than 9 committees their new vision became a reality in spring 1975 with the creation of the Energy and Resources Group.
Early faculty such as John Holdren, John Harte, and Dick Norgaard observed, nurtured, and protected the ‘keys’ to ERG’s success, which included: commonality from a few key ERG courses combined with the freedom to roam widely in the Berkeley catalog; optimizing size, structure, and space for peer learning and community; a focus on scholar-activist problem solving more than particular methods and disciplines; giving students the freedom to shape their own projects and dissertations, rather than labor on a faculty member’s project. From the beginning, the ‘students were the draw’ – pulling in affiliates eager to recruit them to their labs, inspiring the core faculty, and attracting fresh cohorts of remarkable students who wanted to join them.
50 years later ERG has grown and evolved, as all living things must. With 10 core faculty in 4 disciplines, 65 graduate students and over 600 alumni, and a robust ERG undergraduate minor and Sustainability summer minor, ERG continues its mission of research and education for a sustainable environment and a just society. But just as in the beginning, the commitment to the fundamental ingredients of ‘ERGie-ness’ remains. And just as in 1975, the world still needs flexible, creative, well-trained thinkers to tackle problems that span disciplines and affect us deeply.