Celebration of International Education Week An annual event spotlighting a theme celebrating cultural diversity and enhance students’ knowledge of international affairs. For 2008-2009 the evening will include a key note speaker who will address the topic "Exploring International Cultures and How We All Fit Together" and four student groups will showcase musical performances from around the world. Contact edu@wachouston.org to learn more about this event. 2007 Speaker Fuel & Energy in the Future Vijay Vaitheeswaran What will cars look like in the future? How will the Earth be affected by today's environmental problems? Vijay Vaitheeswaran will explore these questions by taking you inside the global race to build the car of the future.  Pioneers in Japan, India, China, and the USA are tackling the challenge of creating automobiles that will run on cleaner energy sources. What are the oil companies doing about it? Vijay will discuss what he observed in the boardrooms of oil companies and shows how some are boldly exploring new energy sources while others deny the dangers posed by oil and risk extinction. He addresses what may be the most important challenge facing the industrial world: How to make the transition from the "Age of Petroleum" to a cleaner and better future. Vijay Vaitheeswaran is the co-author of ZOOM and a global correspondent for The Economist. As the newspaper's global environment & energy correspondent, he covered the politics, economics, business and technology involved in those topics from 1998 to 2006. He wrote about political, financial and cultural developments in Latin America from 1992 to 1997. Vijay is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He has lectured at Stanford, Yale and Oxford, and is an adjunct faculty member at New York University. He is a commentator on NPR and Marketplace radio, and a regular guest on the BBC, PBS's NewsHour, ABC's Nightline and other television programs. He holds a degree in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.