DURHAM, N.C. – Dean William L. Chameides has announced that former U.S. Congressman Bob Inglis of South Carolina will serve as the Nicholas School Visiting Energy Fellow for spring 2012.

While at the Nicholas School, Inglis will teach a 1.25-credit course, “Will the U.S. Act on Energy and Climate?”  The course has been approved by the school’s Education Committee.

Inglis, a Republican who represented South Carolina’s 4th district from 1993-98 and 2004-10, is widely cited for his leadership on climate and energy policy.  During his second three-term period in Congress, he served as the ranking Republican on the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment and distinguished himself for his position on climate change, favoring a revenue-neutral carbon tax where the money from the tax would replace taxes on income.

Since leaving Congress in 2010, Inglis, a 1981 51 alumnus, has served as a Spring Semester Resident Fellow at Harvard University's Institute of Politics, and has been actively involved with the Republican Leadership Network, a California-based group advocating free enterprise energy solutions.

In March 2011, he presented a talk, "Bringing America Together Over Energy Policy" at the Nicholas School as part of the Earth and Ocean Sciences Seminar Series.  In the talk, he laid forth his argument why sustainability and energy independence are core conservative values, and why U.S. legislators and leaders from both sides of the political divide need to act now to spur clean energy development.

Chameides also has announced that Andrew J. Yates, currently on leave from his post as associate professor at the University of Richmond’s Department of Economics, will join the Nicholas School in fall 2012 for a two-year appointment as a visiting professor of environmental economics.