Boswell Symposium 2007

The Boswell Symposium will be the first all-campus event of the semester to highlight DePauw's year-long focus on sustainability. Our theme is "Grassroots Environmental Activism." The symposium will run from September 23-24, 2007.

Keynote Address

Majora Carter will open the Symposium with her keynote address at 7:30 p.m. on Sunday night, September 23, in the Walden Inn Social Center.

Majora Carter has received a number of honors for her work with Sustainable South Bronx, including a 2005 MacArthur "genius grant." Sustainable South Bronx is dedicated to environmental justice though innovative, economically sustainable projects informed by community needs among New York City's poorest and most environmentally oppressed citizens. Carter co-designed and implemented the Bronx Environmental Stewardship Training (B.E.S.T.) program to involve her fellow community members in all aspects of the environmental remediation and maintenance efforts afoot. She also spearheaded the development of the Hunts Point Riverside Park, the first waterfront park in the South Bronx in over sixty years.

Recently, Majora Carter has served on New York Governor Elliott Spitzer's Energy and Environment Transition Team, and on the Clinton Global Initiative’s Poverty Alleviation Panel. Earlier this year, she received New York University’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Award for Humanitarian Service. She was also the 2002 recipient of the NYC Council Women's History Month Pacesetter Award, the 2000 Environmental Advocate Award for Achievements in Community Development and the 1999 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Environmental Quality Award.

Carter earned her MFA from New York University and her BA from Wesleyan University.

Panel Discussion

A panel discussion will be held on Monday, September 24, in the Eugene S. Pulliam Center for Contemporary Media, Watson Forum, at 4:15 p.m.

The discussion will be moderated by Glen David Kuecker, Associate Professor of History at DePauw:

Dr. Kuecker conducts research on grassroots resistance to globalization in Latin Ameria. He has published on Latin American social movements, as well as community resistance to mining in Ecuador. He is a human rights activist who coordinates an international human rights program in Ecuador (this program is not sponsored by DePauw University). Professor Kuecker has also published on the topic of catastrophic systemic collapse of the current global system, an approach which questions the "sustainability" paradigm. He serves on the international advisory board of the Globalism Institute, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia, and understakes collaborative research and writing projects with them on sustainable communities in an era of systemic collapse. When he is an historian, Professor Kuecker publishes on the urban history of Tampico, Mexico during the late 19th Century.

The members of the panel are:

Cheryl Johnson is the Director of People for Community Recovery (PCR), a Chicago-based organization founded in 1982 by her mother, Hazel Johnson, to educate the public on the effects of environmental hazards on low-income and minority communities. PCR's mission is to enhance the quality of life for low-income residents living in communities affected by pollution. PCR educates, advocates policy and programs in an effort to coordinate local residents on issues of the environment, health, housing, neighborhood safety and economic equity. Read "The Story of Hazel Johnson" at http://www.geology.wisc.edu/~wang/EJBaldwin/PCR/pcrhazel2.htm.

 

Darci Thomas, a '95 graduate of DePauw, in Geology, who serves as Senior Technical Manager at August Mack Environmental, Inc., a full-service environmental, health and safety consulting firm in Indianapolis. She is responsible for providing technical and regulatory oversight on a variety of projects, quality assurance and control review of reports, and new business development and client services. Since joining August Mack in 2004, Thomas has served as a staff geologist and project manager.

 

Meredith Williams is a project manager at the San Francisco Estuary Institute (SFEI) where she works on a range of wetlands and watershed projects. SFEI conducts monitoring and research to fill the niche between environmental science and environmental management and policy for San Francisco Estuary and its watershed. SFEI provides a holistic integration of information from many disciplines to support management activities or demonstrate the potential implications of different management scenarios to environmental management agencies and other stakeholders. SFEI’s research areas include industrial and municipal discharge, non-point source pollution, biological invasions, and watershed and wetlands restoration. Prior to SFEI, Meredith worked for more than fifteen years at such companies as Applied Materials and 3M in semiconductor research, product development, and product management. She holds a Ph.D. in physics from North Carolina State University where her research focused on photovoltaic solar cell materials and a bachelor’s degree from Yale University. She has participated in and led several sustainability initiatives around technology and the environment. Most recently she designed and delivered a Sustainability Starter Kit for finalists in the 2007 California Clean Tech Open.

 

If you have any questions, please contact:
Yvonne C. Williams
Hampton and Esther Boswell Distinguished University Professor of Black Studies