INSTITUTE OFFERS A NEW PATH TO SUSTAINABILITY
She was known as the kid who had the mix tapes and would share them with friends. But Wilson never wanted to be a rapper and didn’t expect to make a career with hip-hop. She discovered this surprising path in her early 20s. She was teaching algebra at a Los Angeles high school in 1997, trying to find a way to manage the classroom and connect with her students. They knew she was from Atlanta, and Outkast was the biggest act around. So Wilson used her love of math and the popularity of the rap duo to create an engaging learning environment. That classroom experience opened her eyes to new pedagogical possibilities. She went back to school to earn a Ph.D. and wrote her dissertation on Southern hip-hop, looking at what the genre had to say about school—specifically, issues surrounding curriculum, teachers and desegregation. “Embedded in hip-hop is technological innovation,” Wilson says. “It takes something and completely turns it into something else. That’s innovation and technology.” Hip-hop’s history is based on sampling, remixing and turning the turntable into an instrument, she says. “Hip-hop is building something new. You see that at places like Georgia Tech, which has a strong liberal arts focus as well as technology,” she says. “We are building something here with our research and with our classes and with our students. We just have to show people how to do it.”
GEORGIA TECH is set to launch a new Master of Science in Sustainable Energy and Environmental Management (MSEEM) program this fall—the only graduate degree in Georgia fully dedicated to sustainability issues. The highly technical, sciencebased, and interdisciplinary program— approved by the Board of Regents in February—will prepare students to deliver fact-based policy expertise through robust analytical techniques and a deep understanding of energy and environmental issues and sustainability practices. “This professionally focused degree will allow Georgia Tech to educate the next generation of sustainability leaders in corporate, government and non-governmental organizations,” says Rafael L. Bras, provost and executive vice president for Academic Affairs and K. Harrison Brown Family Chair. “Georgia Tech is proud to deliver innovative, affordable and top-quality education in high-demand areas such as sustainability to meet the needs of our evolving workforce.” When the program begins in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts’ School of Public Policy this coming August, MSEEM students will study topics such as sustainable energy and voluntary
environmental commitments, costbenefit analysis, utility regulation and policy, Earth systems, economics of environmental policy, big data and policy analytics, climate policy and environmental management. They also will learn analytical techniques used to estimate and evaluate sustainability metrics, be able to expertly assess the context of energy and environmental problems, and understand environmental ethics and its implications for sustainability practice. The program will combine professional instruction from the nationally ranked School of Public Policy with Georgia Tech’s world-ranked engineering, business and planning faculties to educate professionals who can lead organizations toward policies consistent with a sustainable future. Applications are being accepted through June 15 for the inaugural class of MSEEM students. For more information on the program, visit https://spp.gatech.edu/masters/ mseem. A ge n e ro u s p h i l a n t h ro p i c g i f t has enabled Georgia Tech to offer five fully funded MSEEM fellowships to the program each year for the first three years of the program. —MICHAEL PEARSON
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