Teaching ECOLOGY DURING THE ENVIRONMENTAL AGE, 1965-1980

The period 1965-1980 was a time of dramatic change in the academic discipline of ecology. Membership in the Ecological Society of America more than doubled. This growth was accompanied by spirited debate over fundamental concepts and the intellectual boundaries of ecology. As public awareness of environmental problems grew, ecologists struggled to define their professional identity and their public role in the burgeoning popular environmental movement. The resulting tensions within professional ecology were strikingly evident in the way different ecologists presented the conceptual framework, norms, and goals of their discipline to students through competing college textbooks. This paper explores how the dominant textbook of the 1960s, Eugene Odum's Fundamentals of Ecology, was challenged by a new breed of textbooks, beginning in the early 1970s. Odum's textbook was notable for its emphasis on applied ecology and its presentation of ecologists as expert environmental problem-solvers. The newer textbooks differed from Fundamentals of Ecology both in their strong evolutionary perspectives and their ambivalence toward environmental biology. Ironically, as environmentalism gained increasing public support during the 1970s, many ecologists turned away from teaching environmental issues.