International Symposium on Energy and Environment

Back in October of last year (think St. Louis Cardinals World Series Championship) I wrote a piece called, Environmentally Friendly Universities, that focused the energy-related efforts of Washington University in St. Louis, one of my alma maters. Well, now the University is hosting the International Symposium on Energy and Environment.

The Symposium, which will be held May 4-7 at Washington University, will be the first of its kind in the U.S.  At the Symposium, the “leaders of 12 premier universities in Asia and the Middle East, along with Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton, will discuss ways their institutions are addressing global energy and environmental concerns. These institutions include Fudan, National Taiwan, Tsinghua and Yonsei universities and the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay.” That’s some heavy firepower. The specific goals of the Symposium are to:

• identify specific areas of research and education of global importance in energy and environment;
• communicate areas of strength at each partner university;
• develop ideas for future collaboration that builds on the synergies at each university.

This level of teamwork, if fruitful, has the potential to yield tremendous progress. I’m also surprised its taken so long for the heads of international universities to come together. Hell, if oil companies can be calling for caps on carbon emissions and major universities have yet to open their mouths you know something is wrong. The world has been spinning backward since November of 2000 but last time I checked hadn’t entered another dimension.

“A novel concept of collecting educational materials from the 20 Partner Universities is being planned. In addition to compiling such information — much of which is available at eeed.wustl.edu — the McDonnell Academy will explore technological tools that will allow faculty at the Partner Universities to communicate more easily with each other.”

I checked out the site and the list of courses offered are impressive. The site says all the information will be available to anyone and everyone free of charge but I couldn’t access anything yet. Perhaps everything will be uploaded post Symposium.

I hope this meeting of the minds will lead to some innovative ideas which are practical, affordable and easy to implement. It’s time for tangible solutions to the world’s energy and environmental problems and higher education needs to play its part.