The Baker Center will host a panel discussing careers in public service as part of the Leadership & Governance Program. 

Panelists will include, Lola Alapo, Public Information Office, UT Police Department; Amy Fitzgerald, Government Affairs and Information Services Director, City of Oak Ridge; David Folz, Professor of Political Science; William Lyons, Chief Policy Officer and Deputy to the Mayor, City of Knoxville; Patricia Inés Robledo, Business Liaison, City of Knoxville; John Scheb, Professor of Political Science and Baker Center Fellow. 

This event will take place on Friday, September 7, 2018 from 2:00 to 4:00pm in the Toyota Auditorium. Free and open to the public. 

As a part of our Baker Cafe series, the Baker Center will host Dr. David Greene, Senior Fellow for the Energy & Environment Program, for coffee and a light discussion.

Dr. Greene will review the recent progress of zero emission vehicles and their charging/refueling infrastructure, their sales in the US and abroad, and consider future projections of battery costs and market success. This event will take place on Friday, September 7, 2018 from 10:00 to 11:00am in Reading Room 123. Free and open to the public. 

The Baker Center will be hosting Dr. Amy Rose as part of the Energy & Environment Forum. Dr. Rose is the Team Lead for Population Distribution and Dynamics in the Geographic Information Science and Technology group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Her discussion titled "Multidisciplinary Science for Understanding Human Activity at Scale" will include the ongoing research of geoscience, computer science, and social science to foster the development of models to produce high resolution estimates of population in space and time. This event will take place on Thursday, September 13, 2018 from 1:00 to 2:30 pm in the Toyota Auditorium. Free and open to the public. 

In honor of Constitution Day, the Leadership & Governance Program at the Baker Center will host Dr. Keith Bybee, College of Law and Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.

Dr. Bybee speak on the relationship between politics and civility, and will discuss one of his many books, How Civility Works (Stanford Univ. Press 2018). Books will be available to purchase and a book signing will occur after the lecture. 

This event will take place on Thursday, September 20, 2018 from 5:00 to 6:00pm in the Toyota Auditorium. 

As a part of our Baker Cafe series, the Baker Center will welcome Dr. Charles Sims, Director of the Energy & Environment Program.

He will discuss recent proposed changes to the Endangered Species Act as well as other ways to improve the efficiency of the program while also preventing species extinctions. 

This event will take place on Friday, September 21, 2018 from 10:00 to 11:00 am in Reading Room 123. 

The Leadership & Goveranance Program at the Baker Center is partnering with a campus-wide coalition of academic units, student organizations, and administrators at the University of Tennessee.

There will be a series of events aimed to improve voter registration, education, and participation in the upcoming 2018 midterm elections. The coalition is partnering with nonprofit and nonpartisan organizations to help with the movement. 

More information on the complete list of coalition partners and scheduled events, see here.

As a part of the #VolsVote campus-wide movement, the Leadership & Governace Program at the Baker Center will host  a screening of the documentary "One Vote" and a a discussion with the film's director, Christine Goeg. This documentary captures the stories of diverse voters on Election Day 2016 and eschews partisan politics in favor of an honest portrayal. 

This event will take place on Tuesday, September 25, 2018. Location and time TBD.

Dr. Krista Wiegand, Director of the Global Security Program, and Dr. Brandon Prins, a Global Security Fellow, have been named co-editor-in-chief of the International Studies Quarterly.

As the flagship journal of the International Studies Association, the journal seeks to publish leading scholarship that engages with significant theoretical, empirical, and normative subjects in international studies. The journal receives up to 700 manuscript submissions per year, making it one of the most sought after publishings and one of the top journals in international relations.

The administrative offices of the International Studies Quarterly will be housed in the Baker Center, in partnership with the Department of Political Science.
...read more. 

Global Security Fellows, Dr. Brandon Prins and Dr. Wonjae Hwang, had the opportunity to visit South Korea in July. While abroad, they attended roundtable discussions at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul where they discussed many issues including the North Korean Nuclear crisis and South Korea- India Relations.

Dr. Krista Wiegand, Director of the Global Security Program, was just awarded a National Science Foundation grant for $239,684 with colleague Dr. Eric Keels. This two year project will assess the issues with civil war data and attempt to collect database on rebel grievances in civil wars around the world. 

Students in the University of Tennessee Masters in Public Policy and Administration program, which is housed in the Baker Center, analyze five political issues that the Tennessee state government is facing. These types of policy briefs are critical for understanding every side of an issue for policymakers and voters. 
These issues include: Criminal Justice: Drug-Free School Zones, The Opioid Crisis in Tennessee, Medical Marijuana in Tennessee, In-State Tuition for Undocumented Students in Tennessee, and Short Term Rentals.

Avanti Rangnekar, an Economics major, Public Policy Analytics minor, and Baker Scholar, has received a Fulbright U.S. Student Program award to India in health economics from the U.S. Department of State and the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board. Rangnekar will conduct research in Karnataka as part of a project to examine the demand for informal healthcare providers in India. Dr. Katie Cahill, Associate Director of the Baker Center, will supervise her research.

Rangnekar is one of over 1,900 U.S. citizens who will conduct research, teach English, and provide expertise abroad for the 2018-2019 academic year through the Fulbright U.S. Student Program.

....read more.

Howard H. Baker Jr Center for Public Policy
1640 Cumberland Avenue
Knoxville, TN 37996
Phone: 865-974-0931
Email: bakercenter@utk.edu
Online: bakercenter.utk.edu