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St. Olaf continues focus on sustainability

By Tom Vogel
February 27, 2006

As St. Olaf College enters into the second semester of its Sustainability Year, it continues to offer a wide array of events, speakers and discussions dealing with themes of sustainability and conservation.

Beginning Feb. 20-25, Frances Seymour, from the World Resources Institute, will be on campus as the Woodrow Wilson Visiting Scholar. She'll be sitting in on classes and meeting with students, staff and faculty throughout the week. Seymour also will be one of the headliners for the St. Olaf Globalization Conference Feb. 23-25 that will focus on the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals.

On March 10-11, the annual Peace Prize Forum will take place at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, featuring Wangari Maathai, the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate; Christine Todd Whitman, former governor of New Jersey and chief of the Environmental Protection Agency under George H.W. Bush; and Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy.

Following spring break, Brown University environmental historian Drew Isenberg '86 will be at St. Olaf to talk about "Gambling on the Grassland: Kinship, Cattle and Ecology in Southern California." His lecture will be April 3 at 7 p.m. in Holland Hall 501.

Daniel Bromley, the Anderson-Bascom Professor of Agriculture and Applied Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and editor of Land Economics, will come to St. Olaf April 6 as part of the college's yearlong lecture series "Economics, the Environmental and Sustainability." Bromley's address "The Idea and the Practice of Sustainability: Can Economics Offer Clarity?" examines economic contributions to considerations of sustainability as a social and environmental goal.

Pi Sigma Alpha, the Political Science honorary society, will sponsor a panel April 10 titled "Fueling Sustainability: Environmental Ethics and Energy Resources Today."

St. Olaf will commemorate Earth Week, April 18-21, with a number of different events, including a visit by John Tallmadge, professor of literature and the environment at the Union Institute in Cincinnati. Tallmadge is the author of The Cincinnati Arch: Learning from Nature in the City, and will speak on issues of urban ecology April 18.

On April 27, Alison Hawthorne Deming -- a descendant of Nathaniel Hawthorne -- will be on campus to talk about "The Colors of Nature" and "Writing the Sacred into the Real." Deming is a professor of creative writing at the University of Arizona and an accomplished poet and nature writer.

The St. Olaf Science Symposium May 5-6 will also take up issues of sustainability and environment. Speakers will include Dan Kammen from the University of California, Berkeley on energy issues, Nancy Grimm from the University of Arizona on urban ecology and Robin Rodgers from the University of Alabama on green chemistry.

Contact David Gonnerman at 507-786-3315 or gonnermd@stolaf.edu.