Pinar Batur: Using Regulating Carbon Emissions in Killing Fog: Coal, Energy and Pollution at Vassar College
The course that I taught, 281-Killing Fog: Coal, Energy and Pollution, is a half-credit course, cross-listed between Environmental Studies, International Studies and Sociology. Open to all students, it was attended by 30-37 students, some 16 of them formally registered for a grade and others for pass-fail, or auditing. I organized he course into two sessions per week: two-hour Monday lectures were complemented by one-hour discussion or project sessions on Friday. Some of the Friday sessions were designed for one-on-one consultation with me as an advisor on the students' research. As a multidisciplinary course, the focus was to connect scientific knowledge to public policy making, to explore the boundaries of civic responsibility, and the communication of risk.