Lawrence S. Bacow, the Lee and Geraldine Martin Professor of Environmental Studies, was named the Chancellor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on August 1, 1998. The Chancellor and the Provost are the Institute's two most senior academic officers.
As Chancellor, Professor Bacow has oversight responsibility for graduate and undergraduate education at MIT, student life, student services, research policy, strategic planning, campus development, international initiatives, and the management of MIT's large scale institutional partnerships. He chairs the MIT Council on the Environment.
During this past year, Professor Bacow has played a major role in the development of the Cambridge-MIT Institute, MIT's innovative partnership with the University of Cambridge. Professor Bacow also serves on the Board of the newly formed Media Lab Europe as well as the Cambridge-MIT Institute.
A member of the MIT faculty since 1977, Professor Bacow's teaching and research span a number of fields including environmental economics and policy, regulation of the development process, bargaining and negotiation theory, and risk assessment.
From June 1995 through June of 1997, Professor Bacow served as Chairman of the MIT Faculty. He has held numerous other administrative positions at MIT including Associate Director of MIT's Center for Environmental Initiatives, co-director of the Consortium on Global Environmental Challenges, and co-founder and Director of the MIT Center for Real Estate.
Professor Bacow is the author of four books and numerous articles. Best known for his work on public opposition to large scale public facilities, his book, Environmental Dispute Resolution, co-authored with Michael Wheeler, was honored by the Center for Public Resources as the outstanding publication of the year in the field of alternative dispute resolution.
His current research explores how financial institutions underwrite and price environmental risk in their lending practices.
Professor Bacow has lectured extensively in the U.S. and abroad. He spent academic year 1993-94 as a Visiting Professor at the University of Amsterdam and as a Research Fellow of the Tinbergen Institute of Economics. He has also been a Visiting Professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Politecnico di Torino (Italy), the University of Bari (Italy), and Gabriela Mistral University (Chile). He is a former member of the Program on Negotiation of the Harvard Law School.
Professor Bacow has consulted widely for both government and industry. He has served as an advisor to the Ministry of the Environment for the State of Israel as well as the Cross Israel Highway Commission. He chaired the Citizens Advisory Committee for the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority and served a term as a Gubernatorial Appointee to the Massachusetts Hazardous Waste Facility Site Safety Council.
While on leave from MIT from 1985 to 1987, he served as chief operating officer of the Spaulding Investment Company, a privately held investment firm. He is a director of the LaSalle Real Estate Securities Fund and the Jewish Community Housing for the Elderly, and is a trustee of Wheaton College and Hebrew College.
Professor Bacow received his S.B. in Economics from MIT, his J.D. from Harvard Law School, and his M.P.P and Ph.D. from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He was awarded an honorary doctorate in civil engineering from the Politecnico di Bari (Italy) in March of 2001.
He resides in Newton, MA with his wife and two sons. He is an avid sailor, skier and runner. In 1997 he completed the Bay State Marathon, finishing in 3 hours and 58 minutes.
Online: http://www.tufts.edu/communications/printerversion/050901BacowBio