In January 1969, Santa Barbara faced one of the worst environmental disasters up to that point in American history. An oil well thousands of feet deep blew out,  resulting in an estimated 4.2 million gallons of oil spilling out into the ocean and onto the beaches of the Santa Barbara coast.

The disaster led to the establishment of the nation’s first environmental studies program at UC Santa Barbara, founded in 1970 by a group of faculty members from varying fields of study who wanted to promote environmental education.

“It started off very small. The first graduating class was in 1972 with 12 students,” Eric Zimmerman, the program’s academic advisor and student services manager, said. “Then, a lot of new environmental laws were being passed in response to all these disasters that were happening and the Environmental Protection Agency was created. All of a sudden, people who could understand these policies were needed.”

Today, UCSB’s environmental studies program enrolls over 1,110 students and has over 9,000 alums, and is one of the oldest and largest environmental studies programs in the nation. Zimmerman, a graduate of the program, says that its interdisciplinary nature is what makes it special.

“Through the decades, now going on 55 years, we still are today one of the prominent interdisciplinary environmental programs in the country,” he said. “Since then, a lot of other schools have adapted environmental programs, but very few programs really came out with the intent of being social sciences, humanities and the physical and natural sciences.”

Since it was founded, the program has grown and changed. When the department was created, there were only 20 classes covering very specific subject matter. Today, the department offers around 100 different classes covering a wide range of topics, some of which are taught by industry professionals such as waste managers, consultants and air pollution control officers.

The program facilitates opportunities including internships, fieldwork and research for students to gain experience in addition to learning in the classroom. According to Zimmerman, students can earn university credits while pursuing internship opportunities ranging from Los Padres National Forest headquarters and Channel Islands National Park headquarters to the Environmental Defense Center and private sector consulting firms.

Beyond these various opportunities, some environmental studies majors are involved in environmental activism. UCSB’s chapter of the California Public Interest Research Group (CALPIRG) has been active in promoting sustainability and environmentalism in the community, through advocacy and lobbying on-campus, at local town halls and at the state capital.

Lily Kupferschmid, a first-year environmental studies major, attended a trip to UC Davis and Sacramento with CALPIRG, where she and other attendees lobbied state officials on environmental issues, including the expansion of marine protected areas, clean water protections and providing subsidies for Californians buying solar panels.

“So much of our governmental processes have become corrupted through the reliance on external funding from corporations,” Kupferschmid said. “What motivated me to join CALPIRG was the fact that they wanted to take corporate interests out of politics. I stayed because I saw that they were doing that and making active changes that I just wasn’t seeing with other organizations on campus.”

Kupferschmid said that she looks forward to pursuing research opportunities in the future.

“The professors within the environmental studies program here are very passionate about their research,” she said. “And it’s very diverse with concentrations like geology, chemistry, sociology of environmental science and current environmental issues. There’s really a wide variety of research opportunities for students to pursue.”

Professor Lisa Stratton, the director of ecosystem management at the Cheadle Center for Biodiversity and Ecological Restoration, who teaches a course covering ecological restoration field skills, discussed the wide range of research conducted by environmental studies students and faculty. Research projects have included soil analysis, biodiversity mapping and studies of endangered plants.

“Students help with long-term monitoring of herps — frogs, snakes and lizards,” Stratton said. “They also work on bird surveys [and] aquatic invertebrate studies to see if insects return after wetland restoration as well as research on endangered plants by analyzing soil, salinity, nitrogen, reproduction and groundwater patterns.”

While the program continues to grow, recent federal policies may affect its research. The Trump administration has recently pushed policies and cut funding that has affected environmental organizations and regulations. This includes a series of actions aimed at expanding fossil fuel production, weakening climate regulations and rolling back environmental protections.

According to Time magazine, several environmental governmental agencies have been impacted. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced policies that would reconsider significant environmental regulations including vehicle emissions standards and power plant carbon dioxide emissions. Agencies facing funding cuts have had to lay off hundreds of employees, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Park Service.

These cuts could have a trickle-down effect for university research, according to Stratton.

“Career paths and the opportunities for many of the environmental studies faculty are very applied and work with governmental agency partners,” Stratton said. “If they don’t have their U.S. Fish and Wildlife partner or their National Park Service partner, they may not be able to [continue].”

“And then they have that side effect where, as those projects get cut by the Trump administration, the nonprofits that might also fund these people’s research direct their funds to these other things that are losing, and they don’t have funds for environmental work,” Stratton continued. “So yeah, there’s a cascading set of impacts that could impact our students.”

Now, as the program approaches its 55th anniversary, which will be commemorated on May 23, 2025, its students and faculty all have a shared goal of protecting the environment.

“Even back when environmental studies started, you kind of felt like you were going up against the world,” Zimmerman said. “I’ve always said environmental studies feels more like a family than a department, because we’re all in this together. No matter what our students go on to do, they always carry that fundamental understanding of the environment and why we’re fighting this fight to make the world a better place.”