Congratulations Sara Marks!

On Friday, February 10, Sara Marks successfully passed the oral defense of her dissertation entitled “Water System Sustainability in Rural Sub-Saharan Africa: Participation, Sense of Ownership, and Performance.” Sara began her PhD while I was a postdoc at Stanford University and following my relocation to Virginia Tech, I became a member of her doctoral committee. An innovative component of Sara’s research is how she adapted and applied the idea of psychological ownership in the rural water sector. Over the past two decades, many researchers have associated the performance of rural water supply systems with a community’s sense of ownership for their system, but no research has been undertaken to try and quantify this phenomenon. Sara’s research provides an important contribution in this area and lays the foundation for a productive research career. Her main research findings will be published in a series of papers that should be available later this year.

The photos of Sara (below) were taken in Senegal in 2009, when she was supporting a research project on the productive use of domestic water in rural communities.

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Textbook Makes Ralph Nader’s Holiday Reading List

In December 2011, Ralph Nader prepared a holiday reading list for the “caring, agitated mind.” The textbook written by Nicholas Ashford and I was listed among the 12 books discussed. Here is what Ralph Nader said about our work:

“5. Technology, Globalization, and Sustainable Development – Transforming the Industrial State by Nicholas A. Ashford and Ralph P. Hall (Yale University Press, New Haven, 2011). This is a big picture, big book integrating the design of multipurpose solutions to the sustainability challenge so that economics, employment, technology, environment, industrial development, national and international law, trade, finance, and public and worker health and safety are taken into account. If the piecemeal frustrates you, try this whole meal.”

Five New Tenure-Track Positions in SPIA

Virginia Tech’s School of Public and International Affairs has announced that it will be hiring five new tenure-track professors across its three academic programs.

Urban Affairs and Planning (UAP): We are looking for two tenure-track Assistant Professors with a strong record of scholarship and teaching in one or more of the following areas: international development, technology, urban design, sustainability, and comparative urbanization
Center for Public Administration and Policy (CPAP): We are looking for two tenure-track Assistant Professors with one or more of the following specializations: acquisitions management, homeland security policy, local government management and policy, quantitative and qualitative methods, network analysis, institutions, leadership, normative theory, financial management, and public law.
Government and International Affairs (GIA): We are looking for a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the area of systemic security challenges created by rapid globalization and geopolitical change – for US foreign policy and international networks of governance – as well as new institutional innovations that have been created in response to these challenges.

MIT ESD Celebrates its First 100 Doctoral Alumni

On September 16, I attended an alumni symposium at MIT to celebrate the “first 100 doctors” from the Engineering Systems Division (ESD). The news report on the event can be accessed via this link: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/esd-doctoral-alumni-celebration.html.

The purpose of ESD is to provide students with the skills to address the fundamental limitations of the field of engineering science and enable them to tackle the critical contemporary issues facing society.

The alumni symposium also announced the new MIT Press Engineering Systems book series that aims to advance research and education in engineering systems.

In the picture, I’m accompanied by Mark de Figueiredo, Marcus Sarofim, and Christine Ng, who graduated from the program in 2006/2007.

A Make-or-Break Moment for US Foreign Policy

William Anderson (a Visiting Professor of Practice in Virginia Tech’s School of Public and International Affairs) recently commented on the challenges posed by the budget cuts facing the USAID. With several decades of development experience (within USAID), Bill’s commentary on the make-or-break moment for U.S. foreign policy and foreign assistance is worth reading.

The World Sustainability Forum 2011 (WSF-2011)

For those of you who have an interest in sustainable development, you may want to take part in the World Sustainability Forum 2011 (WSF-2011) that will run from November 1-30, 2011. The conference is free of charge―both to attend and for authors to publish―and is sponsored by MDPI and the scientific journal Sustainability.