The Nelson Institute Blog

Congratulations to Professor Dan Anderson (business/environmental studies), who has won a $10,000 stipend for a paper on risk management as it relates to global warming an climate change. Read more.

Jose Drummond, an alumnus of the Nelson Institute, received his Ph. D. in Land Resources in 1999, with a dissertation on the environmental and social impacts of mining in the Brazilian state of Amapá. His major professor and chair of his committee was Archibald O. Haller, from the Department of Rural Sociology. Recently, his dissertation was published in Brazil. Its Portuguese title is “O Amapa nos tempos do manganês — um estudo sobre o desenvolvimento de um estado amazônico,” which translates as “Amapá during the era of manganese — a study about the development of an Amazonian state.” It was published by Editora Garamond.

Drummond’s book explores a 50-year (1948-1998) manganese extraction effort in the state of Amapá–the Serra do Navio mine–which was the first large-scale, modern, corporate mining venture in the Brazilian Amazon. His focus is the mine’s developmental and environmental impacts and his findings show that Amapá was not underdeveloped by the mining venture, and that environmental impacts were quite limited. The book is co-authored by Mariângela Pereira, whose research added a valuable chapter on the related matter of the mine´s company town which was transformed into a new municipality during the closing years of mining activities.

Jose Drummond is currently professor at the Universidade de Brasília, in Brazil´s capital. He is based at the Center for Sustainable Development where he serves as the Graduate Studies Director. He can be reached via email.

The PVL for the Nelson Institute Director search has been posted:

http://www.ohr.wisc.edu/pvl/pv_056659.html

A recently completed survey of wildlife in Southern Sudan, the first since 1982, has found large populations of animals that have survived the wars of the last quarter-century, including species that were thought to have been wiped out.

Read the coverage from National Geographic and the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Following the lead of the primary investigator on the project, J. Michael Fay, coverage and an editorial in the New York Times urges active natural resources management and the development of eco-tourism as a way to counterbalance the current Sudanese oil rush and “allow humans and animals to thrive.”

The Search Committee met on Tuesday and is now open for business. Two points in particular that I have gleaned from conversations with members of the committee are the following:

• Members of the committee have been given a clear charge that they represent the Nelson Institute and the University and that their job is to find the best director possible for the Institute as a whole.
• The boundaries of the Committee are to be quite porous. While members of the committee have committed to putting in a lot of hours in the search, they are expecting and ready to receive input from the broad community that makes up the Institute.

With respect to the latter point, one of the first actions of the committee will be the development an exhaustive list of potential candidates. (Each of the committee members is charged with generating 20 names.) And this of course presents an opportunity for input.

Who do you think would be a great director? Ken Potter (kwpotter”at”wisc.edu) has asked that you please send him your ideas regarding who should be on our nominations list. This input is important as we want to cast the widest possible net.

I am pleased to announce that the search process for Eileen Hanneman’s replacement has been completed, and that Hope Simon has accepted our offer to become the next assistant director for administration in the Nelson Institute. We will have a period of transition over the next four months before Eileen officially retires in early November. Beginning July 1, Hope will assume the duties of assistant director from Eileen, and I would ask all of you to make Hope your point of contact from July 1 forward. We are all aware that Hope will not be able to answer all of your questions immediately, but finding out what the various issues are will be important as she gets accustomed to her new role.

Contact information for Hope will be:

email: hksimon@wisc.edu
office phone:
262-9864 (through July)
262-6435 (beginning August 1)
office address: 122D Science Hall

By the time you are reading this, the first meeting of the Nelson Institute Director search & screen committee will have been set. Among the objectives in that first meeting will be to finalize and approve the Position Vacancy Listing. With that approval, the job can officially be posted and we can begin to collect applications. I will post the PVL here when it becomes available.

The position will remain officially open for 60 days; which will put us in mid-August. That timing should make it possible to host initial visits for candidates in the early to mid-Fall. Final visits could happen before the Holidays and the negotiations could be completed early in 2008. With that timing the new Director could arrive on campus in the summer of 2008.

The members of the Committee are:

Ken Potter – Chair
Molly Jahn
Lew Posekany
Jon Foley
Linda Graham
Teri Balser
Emily Stanley
Eileen Hanneman
Nikita Exterovich
Holly Gibbs
Kurt Brown
Leann Tigges
Jonathan Patz
Volker Radeloff