About the Programs & Activities

About the Speakers

Eric C. Botts is an Adjunct Professor in International Studies at the University of St. Thomas and the University of Houston Downtown, where he teaches cybercrimes and computer forensics. In addition to being an adjunct professor, Mr. Botts works as a Project Manager for Swailes & Company where he conducts investigations and coordinates with client investigative and corporate security counterparts to analyze and detect intellectual property misuse and theft. Mr. Botts research and expertise focuses around cybercrime and computer forensics. Mr. Botts was a Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. Department of State from 1983-1993 and worked in other roles in the State Department until 2014. Mr. Botts served 31 years with the U.S. Dept. of State as a Foreign Service Officer and civil servant. In the Foreign Service, he served in four overseas posts: Consul, U.S. Embassy Nassau, Bahamas: Consul, U.S. Embassy Dublin; Deputy Chief of Nonimmigrant and Immigrant Visas, and Anti-Fraud Officer, U.S. Embassy Seoul: Assistant Administrative Officer, U.S. Embassy Santo Domingo. He later transferred to the civil service, becoming the Assistant Director/Information Systems Security Officer (ISSO) of the Houston Passport Agency.

Dr. Steven W. Lewis, Ph.D., is the C.V. Starr Transnational China Fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute and faculty advisor for the Jesse Jones Leadership Center Summer in D.C. Policy Research Internship Program. He is also a professor in the practice and associate director of the Chao Center for Asian Studies, which he helped found in 2008. His research explores the growth of a transnational Chinese middle class; the influence of advertisements in new public spaces in Chinese cities; the development of privatization experiments in China’s localities; and the reform of China’s energy policies, national oil companies and international energy relations. Through the Transnational China Project, Lewis has organized research conferences with the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. He also has worked with the Energy Forum as the organizing researcher for the Northeast Asia Energy Cooperation Workshops, the Coastal Cities Summit surveys and U.S.-China-Middle East energy relations conferences. He received his doctorate in political science from Washington University in St. Louis.

Dr. Jon Taylor is a Professor of Political Science, Chair of the Department of Political Science, and Director of the Master of Public Policy and Administration Program at the University of St. Thomas. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Oklahoma and has been at the University of St. Thomas since 1998. His areas of academic specialty are in Chinese and U.S. public administration, Chinese and U.S. urbanization, and public administration ethics. His current research focuses on urban development in Western China, the Communist Party’s online accountability system, measuring public corruption in China, and the role that indigenous Chinese political science plays within the global discipline. His most recent scholarly journal articles include “Between Sinification and Internationalization: Chinese Political Science in the Post-Reform Era” and “The China Dream is an Urban Dream: Assessing the CPC’s National New-Type Urbanization Plan.” He regularly contributes opinion and analysis pieces to both Chinese and U.S. media. He is a member of the Association of Chinese Political Studies, the American Political Science Association, the Chinese Public Administration Society, and the American Society for Public Administration.