Nature & Nurture | Giving News
Energizing Environmental Education
Gendell Gift Sparks Expanded Energy and Environment Program—One of the Nation’s First to Approach Energy from a Multidisciplinary Perspective p.2
A new concentration; a broad understanding
Work is under way to make the program a full-fledged Energy and
Environment concentration in the graduate professional program—making
it the eighth track available to MEM students at Duke—and to extend
it to undergraduates. The concentration will give students a broad understanding
of the science and technology of energy, the environmental impacts of
energy, and the economic, policy and legal structures that govern the
way we use and create energy. Classes will cover topics such as supply
and demand for energy in the modern world; resource options, from conventional
fuels to renewable and alternative energy sources; environmental impacts
of different forms of energy; and the design of optimal policies and
regulations to protect the environment while supplying energy to society.
While a number of other universities offer advanced degrees in energy, the graduates of those programs by and large pursue technical or academic careers. By contrast, the Nicholas School’s program aims to prepare students to become leaders and innovators in industry, government and nonprofit agencies with an interest in energy.
The new concentration will tap into faculty expertise at the Nicholas School, the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions and across Duke’s campus to provide students with an intensive two-year course of interdisciplinary study with a practical, real-world perspective. The Energy and Environment Program has the potential to become the most interdisciplinary of the concentrations offered to MEM and MF students, encompassing physical science, economics and policy, and reaching out to the Duke Law School, the Fuqua School of Business, the Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy and the Pratt School of Engineering. For undergraduates, efforts have begun to create 100—level courses in energy and to develop a formal academic track focusing on energy and the environment.
Gendell, who graduated from Duke University with a degree in economics in 1981, is a general partner of Tontine Associates LLC, an investment firm based in Greenwich, Conn. He and his wife have made gifts to the university for years— among them, the modems that enable students camping in Krzyzewskiville (the tent village that pops up for weeks before each big Blue Devil basketball game) to stay connected to their schoolwork—but he was looking for an opportunity to make a bigger impact.
“We tend to donate things to people where there’s not a natural constituency to donate,” he says. “For example, many Master of the Environment Management degree graduates don’t make enough money to give large gifts to the school. Plus, while many law and business schools draw corporations to interview and talk with students and provide financial support, environmental programs have a more difficult time, because they inherently are advocates, and they kind of scare away corporations.”
In these challenges, Gendell saw an opportunity.