Winter quarter is here, which, of course, means that today was the first day of classes. Today covered PBAF 594 and IMT 580, two very distinct courses.

PBAF 594, otherwise known as Economics of Environmental Management, is shaping up to be quite an interesting course, although the textbook reading is a bit dense. This course focuses on the idea that environmental resources can be evaluated under an economic system. This will be an interesting exercise, since I am certainly not used to the idea of the environment being reducible to a number or a set of numbers. However, Maria Damon, the faculty member teaching the course, seems to know quite a bit about the subject and is quite knowledgeable. This course should not require any mathematics at the calculus level, however, a glance at the textbook makes clear that some mathematical knowledge is definitely going to come in handy. This includes quite a bit of information about being able to actually interpret graphs properly. Normally, this is not something that I’ve actually had a problem with, but it is certainly something that I am a bit rusty at. There will be a lot of reading for this particular course, and a lot of it will be stuff that I am not used to actually reviewing. We’ll see how it goes.

IMT 580, otherwise known as Management of Information Organizations, was taught today by Mike Crandall, the head of the MSIM program. The normal instructor, Jochen Scholl, is currently in Hawaii attending a major conference there. However, since Mike has taught the course before, it really wasn’t that much of a problem — it will be interesting to see the differences between the two teaching styles. This course mostly focuses on the idea of — of all things — management, and how management can effectively change the way the information is handled within an organization. There really isn’t that much to say here, since we didn’t get very in depth. Most of today was simply an introduction to the course. We did get into some of the ideas behind management — such as the basic definition of management — but we didn’t get into anything the text did not cover.

It is becoming quite clear to me that, even though I haven’t had INFO 498 or IMT 530 yet, the amount of reading this quarter may very well end up being ridiculous. Already, I have several readings for all these classes, and quite a hefty stack of papers. I have nothing for INFO 498, however, since nothing has actually been assigned yet. Well, as Mike Crandall made a point of saying in IMT 580 this afternoon, “Hey — welcome to graduate school.”