Uploaded May 2026 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Eric Rice joined the Johns Hopkins faculty over 15 years ago to help build the Entrepreneurship and Management minor. Before that, he worked in private industry, managing engineering and education divisions at firms in the civil and environmental engineering arenas, and later his own consulting firm. He brought experience and training in competencies appropriate to the new courses and programs in development at the Center for Leadership Education.
During his time at Johns Hopkins, Rice has served as the first CLE director of the Master of Science of Engineering Management program; a member and officer of the inaugural Whiting School Faculty Senate; the developer of the Professional Development program for graduate students; a contributor to the development of minors in entrepreneurship and management, leadership, and professional communication; and now the director of sustainability.
In this new role, he is helping to embed leadership and sustainability topics more broadly in the curriculum and build a community of practice around sustainability within and beyond the academy.
Rice holds both a master’s and a PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Description of "A Report Card on the Growth of Sustainability as a Discipline":
In the 50 years since the beginning of the environmental movement in the United States, some institutions, organizations, and even individuals have begun treating sustainability as a serious subject—a topic for training, research, and even a basis for building an entire instructional program. However, as disciplines grow, sustainability is very young. Its life arc is somewhere in the range of middle school in terms of maturity, and it seems time to issue a report card on its progress toward growing into a serious adult discipline.
This lecture imagines the fanciful report card that the parent of sustainability might receive on the progress it has made in various school subjects as it moves toward becoming a mature discipline. We even imagine its progress toward both differentiating itself and integrating itself as a field of inquiry, teaching, and scholarship.
Eric Rice joined the Johns Hopkins faculty over 15 years ago to help build the Entrepreneurship and Management minor. Before that, he worked in private industry, managing engineering and education divisions at firms in the civil and environmental engineering arenas, and later his own consulting firm. He brought experience and training in competencies appropriate to the new courses and programs in development at the Center for Leadership Education.
During his time at Johns Hopkins, Rice has served as the first CLE director of the Master of Science of Engineering Management program; a member and officer of the inaugural Whiting School Faculty Senate; the developer of the Professional Development program for graduate students; a contributor to the development of minors in entrepreneurship and management, leadership, and professional communication; and now the director of sustainability.
In this new role, he is helping to embed leadership and sustainability topics more broadly in the curriculum and build a community of practice around sustainability within and beyond the academy.
Rice holds both a master’s and a PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Description of "A Report Card on the Growth of Sustainability as a Discipline":
In the 50 years since the beginning of the environmental movement in the United States, some institutions, organizations, and even individuals have begun treating sustainability as a serious subject—a topic for training, research, and even a basis for building an entire instructional program. However, as disciplines grow, sustainability is very young. Its life arc is somewhere in the range of middle school in terms of maturity, and it seems time to issue a report card on its progress toward growing into a serious adult discipline.
This lecture imagines the fanciful report card that the parent of sustainability might receive on the progress it has made in various school subjects as it moves toward becoming a mature discipline. We even imagine its progress toward both differentiating itself and integrating itself as a field of inquiry, teaching, and scholarship.
