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CCCESD/CDDGC
Council of Chairs of Canadian Earth Science Departments
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CCCESD/CDDGC
Council of Chairs of Canadian Earth Science Departments
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This page reports the survey of Canadian Earth Science departments from the calendar year 2009. In total, 31 schools responded for some part of this time frame. No data were received from Dalhousie, St. Mary's, Laurentian, Waterloo, York, and UBC-Okanagan, and for them data from the last year of reporting were carried forward. Full details of the response rate can be found on the page listing responses.
Figure 1 shows total undergraduate and graduate student enrolment. The steady rise in undergraduate program registrations from 2003 continues in the full set of data, although the Geology+Geophysics subset has seen a slight decline in numbers in 2009. This appears to be due in large part to one Ontario university shifting the identification of its graduates from Geology to a combination of Geology and Environmental Science. Nationally, Canada has experienced an overall increase in undergraduate enrolments over the past 7 years, with a notable surge of Geology enrolments in southwestern Ontario universities and Environmental Science enrolments in Quebec universities this year. Enrolment in undergraduate programs has doubled since 2003 in both Ontario and the West. The overall increase in enrolment from 2002-2008 is now clearly recorded in the graduation numbers, which have been maintained at over 800 again last year (Figure 3).
Numbers of first year and service course registrations, Figure 2, which increased dramatically from 2000-2005, leveled off for 4 years at around 41000, but have risen again in the past year by another 2800 - 75% of this increase was produced by three large universities in the West.
The number of registrations for graduate work (Figure 1) continues to climb steadily. The total number of students enrolled in MSc programs increased by nearly 10% this year and has surpassed 1000 for the first time, following a decline around 2006, although the number of students enrolled in the MSc programs in Geology + Geophysics subset appears to have leveled off.
Figure 4 presents an analysis of the gender distributions over the past six years (data are not available for earlier timeframes) for undergraduate, masters and doctoral level graduate students and faculty cohorts. Women comprise approximately 45% of the MSc level, but the fraction has declined in the BSc programs over the past 3 years from 45% to 41%. At the PhD level, the fraction of women is slightly up from last year to 33% and in faculty positions, it is holding at 18%, a gain of 3% over the period covered by the data.
Numbers of faculty, Post-Doctoral Associates/Fellows, and support staff are shown on Figure 5
and Figure 6. Faculty numbers continue to
rise, now only 5 short of the all-time high in 1993. Faculty
numbers have now climbed 20% since 2000, likely primarily the result of CRC appointments. The steady decline of support staff
from 1988 to 2000 appears to have leveled off. The ratio
of support staff to faculty has returned to the steady decadal decline mainly as
a result of the continuing decrease in support staff in Ontario and the West. The number of post doctoral assistants,
however, has surged ahead this year, and is now more than double that of 10
years ago.
Regional analysis by year:
