The Baker Center Energy and Environment Forum is returning this Fall. We have an excellent line-up of speakers and will send an announcement about the dates and things for those soon.

As we have in past semesters, we will be running an interdisciplinary graduate student reading group / discussion class in conjunction with the forum.

***Graduate students - if you are interested in discussing energy and environment topics with students from other disciplines, we would really value your participation and perspectives. Last semester, students from five different Colleges took part in these highly interdisciplinary discussions and we would love to have such rich interdisciplinary discussions once more.***

The instructors for this semester's reading group / class will be Paul Armsworth ([log in to unmask]) in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Becky Jacobs ([log in to unmask]) in Law. Interested students can sign up for one credit hour under course number EEB 606 that is entitled in the catalogue Advanced Topics in Conservation Biology (although planned discussion range much more broadly than that).   Law students may take this 1-hour course or may enroll in a 3-hour course, which will require an expository writing.

In this discussion class, we operate a model such that in those weeks when the forum is meeting in the Baker Center, the meeting of the Forum itself takes the place of class. In the other weeks, we read and discuss papers together that have been identified by the speakers in the Forum sessions and others identified based on student interest.

The timing and location details in the catalogue for EEB 606 don't quite match those we will be operating. To allow us to meet jointly with students enrolling under a Law course number and to synch with the Forum timing itself, we are going to run class from 3.30 to 5 or so on Thursday afternoons and class will be meeting in Law School Classroom 241 (NOT 3.40 in Dabney 488 as listed on Banner). We will have our first meeting of class this coming Thursday 08/22, although it will likely be quite a short class that is intended to give an overview of the semester, how things will run and some introductions. The following week 08/29, we have a speaker in the Baker Center and so class will be meeting over in the Toyota Auditorium at 3.30.

If you have any questions about the reading group / discussion class and whether it is for you, please email one of the Instructors and/or grab one of the many students who have participated in past semesters.

Thank you.

Paul Armsworth and Becky Jacobs

PS. Those students interested in these topics, might also be interested in an outside speaker giving EEB's department seminar this Friday (08/23 at 3.30 in SERF 307). Becca Benner, Director of Science for The Nature Conservancy, North Carolina, will be talking about Water Funds, how they work and TNC's experience in setting them up. This talk is not associated with the above class, but any interested students or faculty would be welcome to come along.