As an undergraduate, David Courard-Hauri studied chemistry and government at Georgetown University. He received a Masters of Public Affairs from Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School, and a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Stanford, where he worked to investigate and model dynamic systems with complex feedbacks. His post-doc at UNC Chapel Hill involved refining reaction chemistry in the air pollution model CAMx, which was most recently used by the EPA in their major new rulemaking on greenhouse gas emissions from coal plants.
Courard-Hauri has been at Drake since the fall of 2000, and currently serves as Director of the Environmental Science and Policy Program. He has co-authored a series of three environmental science textbooks, and has published modeling work in fields as diverse as carbon sequestration, butterfly movement, cell-signaling, and the psychological drivers of overconsumption. His current research focus is in the field of ecological economics, where he has challenged conventional metrics in benefit-cost analysis using agent-based modeling, monte carlo simulations and survey instruments.
He teaches a range of courses at Drake, including introductory environmental science, climate change, quantitative methods in environmental choice, environmental modeling, and ecological economics. He has led Drake seminars on economic development and environmental sustainability in Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Ecuador, and has spent the last two J-term sessions leading service-learning seminars in the Galapagos Islands. An avid gardener and arborist, he worked with students to create the Sprout garden, where Drake students work with urban youth to grow a variety of fruits and vegetables and work through a curriculum that we hope to stimulate interest in science and environmental areas.
