Sustainability Minor - PAST Speakers

November 1, 2002
Tom Gibson

"Brownfields: Their History, Legislative Mandates, and Future Challenges.”

Thomas J. Gibson has dual responsibility as counselor to EPA Administrator Christie Whitman and as the Agency's Associate Administrator for Policy, Economics and Innovation. He brings to the Agency experience in various environmental areas. Since 1995, Gibson served as the Majority Deputy Staff Director and Counsel for the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, where he was responsible for the overall team management on water, air, and transportation issues. From 1993 to 1995, Gibson was a Senior Associate at Don Clay and Associates, an environmental policy firm in Washington, D.C., where he analyzed and reported on judicial, regulatory, and legislative developments affecting areas involving hazardous and solid wastes as well as air pollution. From 1991 to 1993, he served in the first Bush Administration in EPA's Office of Congressional and Legislative Affairs as a liaison with Congress on RCRA and Superfund, oil pollution, energy conservation, and Clean Air Act Issues. From 1985 to 1990 Gibson was an engineer and program manager with the Raytheon Company in Portsmouth, R.I. Gibson also served in the U.S. Navy from 1979 to 1995. His civic activities from 1986 to 1990 include participating as a member of the Newport City (R.I.) Planning Board and a member of the Aquidneck Island (R.I.) Regional Planning Commission, where he coordinated planning activities for the regional water authority and the siting of waste disposal and energy facilities. Gibson received a Bachelor of Science in Naval Architecture in 1979 from the United States Naval Academy, a Masters of Marine Affairs from the University of Rhode Island in 1989, and graduated from the Georgetown University Law Center in 1994. Gibson resides in Alexandria, Va., with his wife and two children.

 

February 14, 2003
David Orr
Oberlin College

http://www.oberlin.edu/envs/ajlc/Design/Orr.htm

 

April 10, 2003
Gurdev Singh Khush of the International Rice Research Institute
"Biotechnology & the Green Revolution"

Dr. Khush and his team at the IRRI have introduced over 300 new grain varieties which triggered the Green Revolution in Asia in the 1960's. During the first 25 years of Dr. Khush's program, world rice production doubled, enabling an additional 700 million people to obtain adequate nutrition. He then went on to introduce IR36, the miracle rice which is one of the world's most widely grown food crop varieties. His pioneering research has won him many awards, the most notable being the World Food Prize in 1996, which he won for his contribution to advancing human development by improving the quality, quantity, and availability of the world's food supply. The prize, widely regarded as the equivalent of a Nobel Prize for agriculture, is awarded by the World Food Prize Foundation based in Des Moines. Khush is now working on new grain varieties designed to increase yields by another 25 percent.

 

April 25, 2003
Paul Gobster
Research Social Scientist with the USDA Forest Service's North Central Research Station in Chicago.

He is also co-director of the Station's integrated research program on Midwestern landscape change and co-leads a research team under the National Fire Plan looking at people's responses to fuel treatments to reduce wildland fire and restore the health to fire dependent ecosystems. Paul holds degrees in regional planning, landscape architecture, and environmental studies from the University of Wisconsin, and before joining the Forest Service in 1987 worked as a natural resource planner and an assistant professor of landscape architecture. His personal research interests focus on people's perceptions natural areas restoration and management, landscape aesthetics, and access and equity issues in urban parks.

 

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