It’s Not theoretical Anymore
Students Put Themselves on the Line to Deliver Products for Real-World Clients
by Tim Lucas
Like a growing number of Nicholas School students, Gary Morris hopes to capitalize on the recent rise in demand for environmental managers in the corporate world. He’s pursuing dual degrees—a Master of Environmental Management (MEM) from the Nicholas School and an MBA from Duke’s Fuqua School of Business—to give himself a leg up in the job market when he graduates in 2010.
But he’s aware that employers, hard-pressed by rising energy costs and concerns about climate change and sustainability, are looking for managers who bring more to the table than just first-rate academic pedigrees.
“Classroom learning is important,” Morris says, “but you need to know how to apply what you’ve learned to real-life situations.”
An intensive, hands-on course offered by the Nicholas School in Spring 2008 gave aspiring environmental managers like Morris an opportunity to hone those practical skills.
Students in the one-credit course, “ENV 301.06: Energy and the Campus,” worked in teams to conduct applied energy cost analyses for clients in the local corporate and nonprofit communities. To complete the projects, they had to deal with the same kind of workplace challenges—incomplete data sets, unresponsive contractors, deadlines set in stone—faced by professional environmental managers. And they worked under similar economic and engineering constraints.
At the end of the semester, each team prepared a detailed report to share with the class, and a concise, clearly written two-page executive summary to present to the client.
“If there’s one thing students learned in this class, it’s how to take an openended problem in a limited amount of time with a limited amount of data and turn in a useful analysis,” says Joe DeCarolis, an environmental scientist at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency who has taught the course as an adjunct instructor three times since 2005.
“The idea,” DeCarolis says, “was to push them to do things they might never have been called upon to do in class and ultimately help them develop the kind of real-life, problem-solving skills employers are looking for.”
In past years, student projects were limited to Duke’s campus (hence, the name of the course). But for 2008, DeCarolis expanded the scope by challenging his teams to conduct analyses for high-profile, off-campus clients.
photo captions: Legacy Tower Team Members: Julie Burlage, Nick Donowitz, Gary Morris and Brandon Little in front of the Legacy Tower in Durham; Carbon Offsets Catalog Team Members: Tim Chung, Amy Dao and Brent Wanner; Downtown Durham; Burts Bees Project Team Members: Carl Chamberlin and David Palange with Tom Fitz (left), vice president of sustainable engineering. All photos by Les Todd