Baltimore, Annapolis, Chesapeake Bay wetlands and other low-lying regions flood. Malaria and yellow fever abound. Plants and animals die.
To train people how to tackle these problems and others, University of Maryland, University College, has launched one of the nation?s first concentrations in global warming.
“More people are needing to have that academic background as we plan for our future,” said Susan Aldridge, president of UMUC, a school with 90,000 students worldwide that caters mostly to working professionals through online courses and 21 branch campuses across the Baltimore and Washington areas.
The school wants to train the private workers and public policy-makers who will be on the forefront of dealing with climate change, much in the same way it cashed in on another hot field when it unveiled a homeland security major.
University System of Maryland Chancellor William Kirwan said combating climate change is one of his priorities.
Maryland is particularly vulnerable, he said, because the Chesapeake Bay is its most dominant feature.
“We need to help the state think through some of these issues,” he said.
A “huge need” exists in both the public and private sectors for global warming experts as regulations and concerns related to the environment grow, said James Hambright, vice president of marketing, communications and enrollment management at UMUC.
With more high-profile reports calling for world leaders to address climate change, such as the one released earlier this year by the United Nations, environmental management experts are becoming more in demand, Hambright said.
Growth industries include those fields in which workers are trained to prevent and not just react to problems, according to Fortune magazine.
The school has offered an environmental management program for several years but unveiled courses this year that focus solely on climate change, including the Science of Global Warming and Climate Change and Introduction to Watersheds, Assistant Dean Kathy Warner said.
“Students will learn how climates will be affected in 20, 50 and 100 years, whether man changes his behavior or not,” she said.
