Carnegie Mellon has established a "Center for the Study and Improvement of Regulation" to be housed in the Department of Engineering and Public Policy.  It will involve faculty from across the University and professionals at a number of other institutions including the School of Public Health at the University of Washington, in Seattle.
     In announcing the new Center, EPP Department Head Granger Morgan explained that "over the past four decades, regulation has done an impressive job of making the US a cleaner, healthier, and safer place. However, if there is one thing about regulation on which most people can agree today, it is that the strategies that we have used in the past are not likely to work as well in the future."  Morgan argues that we need to better understand the impacts of past regulations, and the advantages and disadvantages of alternative approaches to regulation.  Then he argued "we need to use that understanding to develop a menu of new ideas for how regulation can be improved so that when opportunities for change come along, people will have better approaches available."
     Dr. Scott Farrow has been named Director of the new Center.  Farrow is a resource economist who was on the faculty of EPP and the H. John Heinz School of Public Policy and Management from 1982 to 1994.  From 1990 to 1992 he was Associate Director for Pollution Control and Prevention and Senior Economist at the Council on Environmental Quality in the Executive Office of the President.  Since 1994 he has had his hands dirty at Dames and Moore working to solve tough problems in environmental management both in the US and around the world. 
     In describing his plans for the Center, Farrow explains that at its heart, the problem of improving regulation is a problem of devising new incentive structures and institutional arrangements that are: more democratic and transparent; draw fundamentalvalues
 

Nair Named Vice Provost for Education

     Indira Nair, who as Associate Head of the Department of Engineering and Public Policy has been a moving force in EPP's undergraduate program, has been appointed Vice Provost for Education.  She replaces Prof. Ed Ko who has left Carnegie Mellon to become vice president of the University of Hong Kong.
     "Indira's contributions to EPP have been enormous" said EPP head Granger Morgan.  "As with the appointment of Alex Hills to a Vice Provost position a few years ago, we view Indira's departure as a temporary loan to the wider University community, not as a permanent loss to the Department," Morgan said.
     Nair is widely regarded as one of the finest educators at Carnegie Mellon.  She is a popular teacher and has been awarded both the University's Doherty Prize for Excellence in Education and the Undergraduate Advising Award. In announcing her appointment, President Jared Cohon (C&EE/EPP) and Provost Paul Christiano noted her many contributions and described her as "an outstanding citizen of the University."
     In her research, Nair has addressed a variety of problems in environmental risk and green design.  She has also developed a large program of research on educational issues that range from the elementary to the post graduate level.  She recently supervised a thesis by Larisa Naples (EPP Ph.D. 1996) which defined and quantitatively evaluated the features of an engineering education desired by employers in the civil construction industry.  At the secondary school level she has argued that curricula should lead with technology and approach science indirectly through the study of artifacts and engineered systems.  She has developed curricular materials that support this approach, and with NSF and other support, run numerous teacher and student workshops to develop, test and disseminate these new ideas.
     Many of Prof. Nair's basic administrative responsibilities in EPP will be assumed by Scott Matthews (EPP/Computer Engineering BS 1992; Economics MS 1995) who will soon complete his Ph.D. in GSIA on a problem in Green Design