Why should I attend this workshop? If you are interested in energy and environmental research, this could be a useful investment of your time. A campus-wide program that supported this area of scholarship could benefit multiple faculty and multiple divisions. Such a program has to be built by enthusiastic faculty leaders, and with broad engagement of all researchers active in the area. This workshop will provide a chance to start this process, and provide a forum (Friday night) to debate its overall merits.
Who should participate in this workshop? If you have a strong existing or emerging interest in energy research then your input would be valuable to the institution.
Can non-Rice faculty or researchers attend? No, the planning team decided that for our first workshop we would have an entirely internal group. The thought is that we can broaden participation in our second workshop to include non-Rice collaborators and possible supporters.
Can researchers (non-tenure track) participate? Possibly, on a case-by-case basis. If you have researchers who are advanced and you think would benefit from attending please have them contact Carlos Garcia (chemcar@rice.edu). We are looking for people to help as scribes for the discussion, and this could be an excellent role for post-doctoral researchers for example.
I cannot attend an entire portion of a session. Should I still sign up? We are asking that if you do participate in one session that you stay through the break-out reports from the other meetings. So, it may be possible to be late; however we ask that you not leave a session early.
What do you mean by “energy and environment”? How “energy related” does an environmental topic have to be? This question may be part of the conversation Friday night. However, based on the task force report and past E&E efforts at Rice, the definition conventionally has encompassed that part of environmental research that is directly linked to energy issues.
How does this event relate to the provost’s task force report last year? You can check here for the task force report. Briefly, this workshop was inspired by the reactions, both positive and negative, to this report. It is hoped that this and the winter workshop will help address issues of concern to faculty; additionally, some aspects of the initiative report – most notably the structure proposed for a campus-wide program – will serve as a starting point for discussion.
I don’t think any of the topics for discussion are of interest to me. What do I need to do to propose my own more relevant topic? By November 11, let us know your topic title, and three or four faculty who will also attend your discussion. Then we will place it on the site and make the discussion available to attendees. Briefly, anyone can propose a topic. However, collaborative conversation is vital so several other (at least two) people have to be present to hold the discussion. We also prefer topics that do fall within the E&E umbrella as it is construed (see above).
How does this event relate to the provost’s task force report last year (December 2010)? You can check here for the task force report. And here are the responses provided