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In response to increasing local, national and global interest in energy issues, Duquesne University is pooling resources and expertise across the University to create a research Institute for Energy and the Environment.
“As an institute, this new initiative is a University-wide effort to attract contributions from faculty across the University who have interest in the aspects of policy, economics, law and technology associated with energy and its impact on community and the environment,” said Dr. Alan W. Seadler, associate academic vice president for research, who will lead the efforts to organize and fund the institute.
“In the areas of law, policy, the environment and economics, Duquesne has some outstanding faculty who, through this institute, will allow us to bring together expertise to focus on the critical problems of energy and the impact of its use on the environment, which we face in the Pittsburgh region, the nation and across the world.”
The institute’s scholar in residence is Dr. Kent Moors, a political science professor in the McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts and well-known international energy consultant. “Energy—or lack of it—will produce some of the largest consequences imaginable around the world,” said Moors, who has served as an energy policy adviser to foreign ministries through the U.S. Department of State. “The institute at Duquesne will provide a needed source of serious research, a location for fair and impartial discussions of the issues and a unique opportunity for substantive policy recommendations and advisories.”
The institute will encompass several Duquesne schools of study, including the McAnulty College, the School of Law, the Schools of Business and the Bayer School of Natural and Environmental Sciences. The collaborative research, conducted in a think-tank-style setting, will provide a venue to launch broad symposia to discuss energy and environmental issues, Seadler said.
“It is important that we are providing a neutral space for dialogue,” he said, noting that industry and environmentalists both need to be at this table of ideas.
