Rocking the system
Sacramento Bee 1/8/07
Moores, as a young Davis professor, helped pioneer the then-controversial theory of plate tectonics for how continents could drift across the Earth's surface.
Today, more than 35 years later and retired as "distinguished professor emeritus," Moores is spearheading another revolution. This time, his hammer is trained on the University of California. This time, the wall shows no signs of cracking.
Moores wants the university to change its time-honored admission requirements to promote earth and space sciences in California high schools.
Fewer than 10 percent of the state's high school students take classes in geology, meteorology or other studies on Earth, the solar system and their histories, state education officials say.
That's a worrisome if not ironic statistic in a state that rocks with geologic activity, be it earthquakes, landslides, floods or volcanic eruptions, said Moores and many other educators supporting his campaign.
Add global warming to the mix, they said, and Californians' scientific literacy becomes even more crucial.
Climate experts forecast bigger and more frequent floods, wildfires and water shortages in this century.
As Moores and his supporters see it, the 10-campus university could jump-start a renaissance of earth sciences in the state's high schools and elementary schools.
"It's UC that drives the high school curriculum in California by its admission standards," Moores said in a recent interview at his home, a century-old farmhouse beside experimental crop fields of the University of California, Davis, where he taught for 36 years.
The universitywide entrance requirements for science, set generations ago, require a minimum of two years "in at least two of the fundamental disciplines of biology, chemistry and/or physics."
Moores and his supporters, who include the current and immediate past presidents of the National Academy of Sciences, want the university regulations to explicitly state that earth and space sciences also count as "fundamental disciplines" meeting the science entrance requirement.
University officials say it already is possible for sciences outside the traditional three core disciplines to meet its admission standards.
At university headquarters in Oakland, officials approve those exceptions on a case-by-case basis.
In reality, however, most high schools -- particularly those in poorer districts -- won't add classes in oceanography or paleontology without recognition by the university that such studies are no less fundamental or rigorous than biology, chemistry and physics.
"If UC made this change, we would see a tremendous growth in the number of earth science teachers, student enrollments, and scientific literacy," said Richard Filson, a science teacher for 40 years in the Stockton Unified School District.
The debate, now in its third year, appears to have reached a standstill. Neither side sees hope of reconciling differences.
The committees of professors that regulate admissions have reviewed Moores' proposal twice. And the universitywide Academic Senate that passes final judgment has let the committees' rejection stand.
Key decision-makers gave Moores' proposal extraordinary consideration, said Mark Rashid, a UC Davis engineering professor who heads the university's Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools, composed of professors in the letters, arts and sciences.
"Our response has been very vigorous, largely out of respect for Eldridge and his passion for his discipline," Rashid said.
Moores is best known for his early 1990s discovery of evidence that Antarctica and North America were once linked, some 750 million years ago.
But he's more likely to confide in his fondness for the cello than his string of academic accomplishments: past president of the Geological Society of America, with 20,500 members from 85 countries; current vice president of the prestigious International Union of Geological Sciences; co-author of two widely used geology textbooks.
New Yorker magazine writer John McPhee accompanied Moores on numerous field trips spanning 15 years. The result was McPhee's 1993 best-selling book "Assembling California," an account of the geologic evolution of the Golden State, with Moores as the central figure.
Now 68, Moores continues to pursue field trips "like a mountain goat," said Judith Moores, his wife of 42 years.
The couple offer geology tours in Northern California that include a stop in an alley of downtown Winters to view cracks in old brick buildings -- the likely signature of the April 19, 1892, magnitude-6.6 Vacaville-Winters earthquake.
Moores' reasons for changing the university's entrance standards for science are to lure more high school students into the earth and space sciences so they'll be more environmentally astute as future California citizens and leaders.
"I really admire his efforts to find a way to bring more students into earth sciences," Rashid said, "but this isn't the way to go about it."
Moores and his supporters beg to differ.
"I urge you to recognize the strong likelihood that (the admissions board) has painted itself into an intellectually indefensible corner that is truly detrimental to the state of California and its citizens," UC Berkeley geologist Walter Alvarez said in a letter to Rashid.
Moores, the sole geology major in the California Institute of Technology class of 1959, said he hadn't given much thought about the relatively low popularity of his field until McPhee pressed him for an explanation.
"The short answer is that it's not well-represented in the education system," Moores said.
Digging deeper into the question, Moores and his peers say too many educators perceive high school-level geology as "rocks for jocks" for students who are not college-bound.
The reality is that earth and planetary sciences are highly complex and demanding because they integrate the laws of physics, chemistry and biology.
For many students, science doesn't begin to come alive until they see how the abstract concepts apply to their observations of the concrete world.
"People always have had a hunger for understanding their surroundings," Moores said. "If you give them something tangible, they get hooked."
Rashid maintains that students must first master the fundamentals of science before integrating observations from the field.
"I'm not very hopeful there is ever going to be a meeting of the
minds," he said.