Jim Hornig can be considered the soul of the environmental studies program at Dartmouth. Instrumental in its creation and chair of the program from 1978 to 1992, his legacy was solidified with the opening of the Hornig Environmental Studies Library in the spring of 2001. Whether or not it was the homage intended for him, we environmental studies geeks have a cult of sorts that occupies Hornig every afternoon and evening. For a man as caring and dedicated as he, I’m sure Jim would appreciate that a whole new generation of environmentalists are being raised in a room that bears his name.

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In the late sixties, a group of faculty and students wanted to get a curriculum set up around environment. At first Jim was primarily involved as an administrative facilitator. As Dean of Graduate Studies and Associate Dean of Faculty for the Sciences, Jim helped set up a committee to discuss the possibility of an academic program. “To me this didn’t mean anything. I wasn’t an environmentalist or an ecologist. There were just some people on campus trying to do something interesting, so I did my best to support them.”

Approved for the fall of 1970, the program began on a shoestring, with volunteer acting chairmen, borrowed faculty, and a modest three-course offering. As student interest increased, Jim and his colleagues decided to go outside of Dartmouth and hire a leader to get some visibility for the program. So in the fall of 1972, they brought in Gordon MacDonald, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Council on Environmental Quality, to direct the program. “I convinced the dean… that we really had to give Gordon a grubstake of faculty resources.” Fortunately for the program, this was happening at the same time as coeducation. The College faculty was being expanded and the program took advantage by hiring three more full-time equivalents, including the iconic Dana Meadows.

Slowly Jim became a convert. “I was gradually getting more interested in it rather than just as an administrative facilitator. I began to identify with some of their goals.” MacDonald’s preeminence as a scientist and Dana Meadows, whom he calls “a key, central titan of a person to have,” convinced him that environmentalism was a legitimate intellectual undertaking instead of mere flaky activism. He had always considered himself a generalist, so making the conversion from abstract chemical physics of organic semi-conductors to environmental chemistry came without much professional sacrifice. In the winter of 1974, Jim taught his first environmental studies course, ENVS 2: Earth as an Ecosystem. He also created a new course, Environmental Chemistry, in his home department and took on graduate students studying acid rain and woodstove smoke. “It was wide-open. It was the most fun I’ve ever had teaching.”

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Jim was born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He credits his parents for encouraging him to try anything, to take risks. “It was a pretty big jump in the 1940s for a kid from Milwaukee to go to Harvard.” His cousin had gone through the same cycle ten years before, proving to be a role model for young Jim. “In high school I always enjoyed doing a bit of everything. My grades weren’t as good as they should have been.” Good enough to get into Harvard, though, and eventually come out with a degree in chemistry and physics.

He went on to earn a PhD from the University of Wisconsin, where he met fellow chemist and future wife, Evalyn. After a few years at DuPont, he got a position teaching at a brand new school, University of California-Riverside. Then fate played Jim a hand. His mentor at Wisconsin suggested that he apply for an opening at Dartmouth. “That was the best thing that ever happened to me.” He came to Dartmouth in 1962, when the College was all male and there were no stoplights in Hanover. After four quick years, he got full professorship. He became Associate Dean of the Science Faculty in 1964 and Dean of Graduate Studies in 1967. And it wasn’t long before he became chair of the program he helped create.

When MacDonald left in 1978, Jim took the program reigns, a culmination of years of behindthe-scenes string-pulling and steadily increasing dedication to the program. Gordon MacDonald et al had made a very conscious decision to design environmental studies to be attractive to students in all disciplines, instead of specializing in certain aspects of the field. They borrowed heavily from other departments to keep the emphasis on interdisciplinarity. They experimented with myriad seminar-level courses in the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities. To attract students, they got in on a trend that was taking hold across Dartmouth: the foreign study program. In 1974, they sent their first group of students to Lund, Sweden.

These were the tools Jim had to work with. Did he have any goals when he became chair? “No, I still felt myself pretty much a neophyte in the business. I took a heavy lead from Gordon MacDonald.” I get the feeling Jim was being modest - he had his work cut out for him, and a man without a vision would have been lost.

By the late seventies, the environmental studies fad was waning. Nationwide, programs were collapsing, and most that were surviving had only one or two faculty. Hal Ward started Brown’s Center for Environmental Studies during this tumultuous time. To support his fledgling undertaking, he organized the New England Environmental Studies Group. Jim says, “All of these programs were fighting an uphill battle to be accepted, and so NEES became a mutual support organization.” Jim networked, shared ideas, and gained extra-Dartmouth support for the program. “Jim was a major player in that. He was definitely one of the statesmen in the group,” says Ward. Internally, Jim worked diligently to expand mid-level course offerings, create the Environmental Measurements Lab, and get other departments to include environment in their curriculum. Most importantly, he strategically strengthened the faculty and harnessed the potential of foreign study.

Jim continued MacDonald’s interdisciplinarity emphasis in earnest by bringing in outside professionals to teach. “I think we had the feeling that what was going on in environmental matters was very close to something that was going on in society rather than more abstract academic research, so we concentrated a lot on using adjuncts, part-time people who were professionals.” A quick scan of the all-stars brought in during Jim’s tenure illustrates his point: Konrad von Moltke, Richard Brooks, Norman Miller, Jean Hennessey and Jack Shepherd, to name a few.
But academia, apparently, likes to have full-time faculty with PhDs researching in a specific field, so Jim’s strategy caught some flak from administrators. During the 1980s, large state universities were expanding by using graduate students and faculty spouses as lecturers. Jim says, “The use of adjuncts got a bad name. We spent a lot of time convincing the administration our adjuncts were not there because we couldn’t find full-time people, but that they were professional people with skills that we really needed to teach this discipline.”

Jim also strengthened the program by emphasizing foreign study. The year Jim became chair, the program stopped sending students to Sweden. It had been only moderately successful, with cold weather and an awkward language barrier eventually spelling its demise. Jim knew the importance of an FSP in attracting students, however, so he started work on a program to Africa, obtaining $100,000 in grants and visiting the continent twice with Norman Miller. Started in 1983, the Africa FSP was an instant hit; there have always been twice as many applicants as the program can take. Africa seemed to fit better than Sweden, as developing nations, population growth and resource allocation were emerging as important global environmental issues in the eighties. Sunny weather and exoticism didn’t hurt either.

So was Jim being modest when he claimed having no goals? Upon further prodding, he admits, “From my personal point of view, I did have the goal to get the program accepted by other departments.” He can’t point to any particular moment when this ultimate goal was realized. It may have been the move to Steele. It may have been the approval of a major in environmental studies in 1996. Or when, he says, “every department wanted to put ‘environment’ as a prefix to a course… We had to catch ourselves sometimes for suddenly feeling proprietary about the name.” All these add up, in his mind, to the impression that environmental studies had finally become part of the fabric of Dartmouth College.

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It took countless hours of dedication from faculty, administrators and students to build the environmental studies program from scratch. Their contributions cannot be understated, and I don’t think Jim would ever try to take credit away from any of his colleagues. But it is true that Jim was the guy, the keel, the constant to see the program through all its stages of development.

Jim credits his success and endurance to a handsoff approach to administration. “It was a feeling that colleagues had new things that I didn’t know and had visions that I hadn’t had.” People I’ve talked to call Jim patient, trustworthy, charismatic, an eternal optimist, an effortless administrator, a true gentleman. From the short time I’ve known Jim, I can attest to these claims. He wears a grin very naturally, is cordial, and displays a Midwestern humility. In meetings, he sits quietly, letting others have a say, and chimes in gracefully when he does have something to add. “Some administrators do their own thing, and that can be very successful at building empires. But I never felt comfortable in that role,” he says. Current chair of the program, Andy Friedland, notes, “Jim is a master of organizations… it seems effortless, though I know first-hand how much work he puts in.” I respect Jim for balancing his tremendous dedication and work ethic with his ability to know when to step aside for the good of the program.

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In 1992, Jim brought in Ross Virginia to guide his program. Ross recalls, “When I came here, I inherited a wonderful set of opportunities. Jim had all the ingredients in place,” ingredients that allowed him to double the core faculty, orchestrate the move into Steele and Fairchild Halls, and create the environmental studies major.

A simple twist of fate brought Professor Virginia to Jim. Dartmouth’s own Bill Schlesinger ‘72 had declined the job when he and Ross got to talking about it during field research in New Mexico. Ross wasn’t looking for a job, and Dartmouth was the only one he applied for in all his time at San Diego State. “Meeting Jim made a huge difference… He was truly, completely committed to this program. You see someone who cares for it that much, it sets the standard for anyone else.”

During his interview, Virginia took a tour of the Africa FSP photomontages while waiting for Jim. There were a lot of pictures of Jim in his classic bowtie, Ross recalls, “then there’s Jim in the Masi Mara with a bowl of cattle blood and milk he’s about to chug… it made me instantly realize that this place was a lot different than where I was coming from. I just needed to be prepared for almost anything.” Years later, the Hornig library cult tries not to spill our cow’s blood on the library couches while we study for midterms.

Jeffrey Kemnitz ‘03 founded The Green Magazine. He’s moving to California, where he plans to live in a tree.