Hopkins-Nanjing Center

I flew from Florence to Nanjing, to take up my new role as Resident Professor at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center (HNC) – and began teaching less than 48 hours later. I’m teaching two new courses – one on air pollution control and the other on global energy fundamentals — and thus have a 90 minute lecture every day (for four days), and Master’s thesis advising on the fifth. So you can imagine that I’ve been very, very busy, & putting in lots of prep time…. but these courses address some really fascinating (and rapidly changing!) topics.

I’ve been extremely fortunate as well that Professor Debbie Bleviss from the SAIS DC campus has been such a tremendous help on the energy course. She’s allowed me to tap into the materials and lectures – as well as her own considerable expertise! — from a very similar course she’s offered in DC and in Bologna.

You can see one of the main buildings at HNC – the Samuel Pollard Building–in the nearby photo. My classroom (for both courses) is on the second floor; the library is on the third & fourth floors; and I live in an apartment suite up on the seventh floor, in the middle of the building and overlooking this same courtyard. My office is in the smaller two-story building on the right hand side, on the ground floor…. so you can see that my commute every day isn’t too bad at all!

During the first week we also had a session to kick off our new Energy, Resources and Environment (ERE) program at HNC, and I was honored to share the stage with Professor Bi Jun, Dean of the School of Environment at Nanjing University. Professor Bi gave a presentation that outlined some of China’s major environmental challenges, and my own focused on the role of economic mechanisms to address such challenges – much as China is currently doing with its seven emissions trading pilot projects for GHG control.

So please check out my new SAIS faculty website…. & there’s more to come!