Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering records

Record Group

Identifier: RG-06-070

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

The records of the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering span the years 1915 to 1988, although they are concentrated in the 1950s to the 1980s. The record group consists of student and employment records, correspondence, and financial records concerning grants and other externally- funded projects of the department. The record group is divided into three series: (1) Student Records, 1938-1987; (2) Faculty, Visiting Faculty, Associates and Fellows, 1944-1988; and (3) Administrative Records, 1915-1988.

Dates

Creation: 1915-1988

Creator

G.W.C. Whiting School of Engineering. Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering (Organization)

Conditions Governing Access

Administrative records in series 3 are restricted for twenty-five years from their date of creation. Education records in series 1, as defined by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, as well as employment records in series 2, are also restricted.

Biographical / Historical

The Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering (DOGEE) was formed through a merger of the Department of Geography and the Department of Environmental Engineering Science. Geography was taught sporadically from 1890 until the Second World War, when instruction was expanded under the auspices of the Army Specialized Training Program. The Department of Geography was established in 1943. In 1948 the department's endowment was increased and it was renamed the Isaiah Bowman School of Geography in honor of President Bowman, who had retired from the Hopkins presidency the previous year. The school's advisory committee, however, was discontinued in 1951, and thereafter the school became known as the Isaiah Bowman Department of Geography. The department's primary areas of concentration were climatology, economic and political geography, and human geography.

The engineering history of DOGEE originated in the field of sanitary engineering. Instruction in sanitary engineering was offered from 1916 within civil engineering, and from 1920 in the School of Hygiene and Public Health. Professor Abel Wolman figures prominently in the development of sanitary engineering at Hopkins. The first graduate of the School of Engineering, Wolman earned international recognition for his research on chlorine absorption in water and its application in the chlorination of public water sources. He founded the Graduate Department of Sanitary Engineering in 1946, which incorporated professors from the Department of Civil Engineering and the School of Hygiene and Public Health. The department's name was changed in the 1950s to the Department of Sanitary Engineering and Water Resources, and was changed again in 1965 to the Department of Environmental Engineering Science. The department's major fields of interest were water resources, properties of water, water supply and pollution control, and public health.

The two departments merged in 1968 to form DOGEE. DOGEE now deals with environmental engineering and chemistry, environmental science and earth processes, environmental planning and decision making, and the urban environment. John C. Geyer served as chair from the time of the merger until 1971, when he was succeeded by M. Gordon "Reds" Wolman, son of Abel Wolman. "Reds" Wolman served as chair until 1990.