Date: 04.03.2008

Dr. Susan Power Bratton is the director of Environmental Studies at Baylor University. She is the author of three books on Christianity and environmental ethics. The most recent is Environmental Values in Christian Art (SUNY Press), which should appear in early 2008. She previously published: Six Billion and More: Human Population Regulation and Christian Ethics, and Christianity Wilderness and Wildlife: The Original Desert Solitaire. She teaches courses in environmental subfields such as conserving biodiversity, forest ecology, and environment and society. In addition to publishing numerous scientific articles on subjects ranging from fire management in parks, to the impacts of wild hogs, to restoration of disturbed high mountain floras, she has been writing and teaching in the field of environmental ethics. She also has recently published articles and book chapters on ecology and religion, Rachel Carson and ocean ethics, the ethics of commercial fishing, and Christian ecotheology and the Hebrew Scriptures. She also was the first graduate student to receive a certificate in Environmental Ethics.

Following her lecture, we'll celebrate the 25th anniversary of the EECP with a reception at the Founders Garden House, from 5:30 to 7:30 pm.

Date: 03.26.2008

Dr. Nalini Nadkarni is a Member of the Faculty at The Evergreen State College, in Olympia, Washington, where she teaches in the Environmental Studies program. She received her undergraduate degree in Biology from Brown University (1976) and her PhD in Forest Ecology from the University of Washington (1983). Her research is focused on the ecology of tropical and temperate forest canopies, particularly the role that canopy-dwelling plants play in forests at the ecosystem level. She carries out field research in Washington State and in Monteverde, Costa Rica with the support of the National Science Foundation and the National Geographic Society. She has published two books and over 55 scientific articles in scientific journals in the area of forest canopy ecology and forest ecosystem ecology. Nalini has presented a number of endowed lectures at academic institutions around the country.

In 1994, she co-founded and is President of the International Canopy Network, a non-profit organization that fosters communication among researchers, educators, and conservationists concerned with forest canopies. She spends a great deal of energy on public outreach to the general public, children, and policy-makers on matters concerning forest canopies and forest conservation. She has appeared in numerous television documentaries, and was most recently featured as a canopy scientist in the National Geographic television special on tropical forest canopies, titled "Heroes of the High Frontier", which won the Emmy Award for Best Documentary Film of 2001. A new project she initiated involves the creation of a multi-disciplinary Forest Canopy Walkway project on The Evergreen State College campus. In 2001, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship to pursue her interests in communication of forest canopy research results to non-scientists with collaborations of artists, musicians, physicians, sports figures, and religious leaders.

Date: 02.27.2008

Join the Athens community in celebrating the life and work of American conservationist Aldo Leopold. The EECP and a variety of Athens/Clarke County environmental groups will host a wide range of events, from live readings from "A Sand County Almanac" to nature walks to films to woodcraft demonstrations.

The EECP has a self-guided walk of the UGA Campus inspired by Aldo Leopold's writing. To download the materials, go to

http://www.uga-eecp.com/news_newsletter.php

and click on "Sand County on Campus" on the right hand column.




“Aldo in Athens”
ALDO LEOPOLD WEEKEND
February 27th – March 2nd, 2008

Schedule of events:

WEDNESDAY, 2/27
11AM: WUGA-FM 91.7 airs “Remembering Aldo Leopold”

THURSDAY, 2/28
7 PM: – Athens-Clarke County Library: Screening of “Aldo Leopold: Learning from the Land”

FRIDAY, 2/29
6:30PM: – Lyndon House Arts Center: Reception, Food provided by Dondero’s

7PM – 9 PM: Reading of Sand County Almanac – Part I, with nature photography exhibit by David Lindsay

SATURDAY, 3/1
8 AM: Birdwalk, State Botanical Gardens, led by Ed Maiorello, Oconee Rivers Audubon Society

9 – 11 AM: Reading of Sand County Almanac – Part II, Callaway Building, State Botanical Gardens

10:30 AM: – 1PM, Sandy Creek Park
Warnell School of Forestry & Natural Resource student ambassadors will lead wildlife games & activities for children ages 7 – 12

12:30 – 1:30PM: Guided walk of State Botanical Gardens trails led by Linda Chafin

12 – 1:30 Piedmont Prairie -- Sandy Creek Nature Center
Prescribed Burn (conditions permitting)
Talk by Shan Cammack
Walk/talk – prairie restoration by Elaine Nash

2 – 4 PM: Guided Walk of Cook’s Trail & Oxbow Trail by Walt Cook, Sandy Creek Nature Center

2 – 4PM: Fly tying/fly fishing- Sandy Creek Nature Center, offered by Clyde Peek

SUNDAY, 3/2
2 – 3PM: Guided Walk - Birchmore Trail, Memorial Park, led by Connie Grey

3 – 5 PM: Ivy Pull (invasives removal) Birchmore Trail, Memorial Park, led by Sue Wilde and Dan Sullivan

For more information, Go to:

www.HANDSONNORTHEASTGEORGIA.ORG

Date: 02.26.2008

Doug Yarn is Executive Director of the Consortium on Negotiation and Conflict Resolution and Professor of Law at Georgia State University College of Law where he teaches conflict resolution and legal ethics. After private practice as a litigator, Professor Yarn served as in-house attorney, mediator, and trainer for the American Arbitration Association from 1987-1994. He has trained mediators and arbitrators nationwide and designed conflict management systems for private and public entities, domestic and international. His research interests include conflict in institutions of higher education, international environmental dispute resolution, dispute resolution ethics, dueling codes, apology and forgiveness, biological foundations of conflict resolution, and conciliatory behavior in non-human primates. He is a Gruter Institute Research Fellow and Salzburg Fellow. His degrees are from Duke University (B.A.), University of Georgia (J.D), and Cambridge University, England (M. Litt.).

Date: 01.31.2008

Writer, naturalist and activist Janisse Ray is author of three books of literary nonfiction. Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, a memoir about growing up on a junkyard in the ruined longleaf pine ecosystem of the Southeast, was published by Milkweed Editions in 1999. Besides being a plea to protect and restore the glorious pine flatwoods of the South, the book looks hard at family, mental illness, poverty, and fundamentalist religion.

Author Wendell Berry called the book “well done and deeply moving.” Anne Raver of The New York Times said of Janisse Ray, “The forests of the South find their Rachel Carson.” The book won the Southeastern Booksellers Award for Nonfiction 1999, an American Book Award 2000, the Southern Environmental Law Center 2000 Award for Outstanding Writing, and the Southern Book Critics Circle Award 2000. It was a New York Times Notable Book and was chosen as the Book All Georgians Should Read.

Ray’s second book, Wild Card Quilt: Taking a Chance on Home, about rural community, was published by Milkweed Editions in early 2003.

The third, Pinhook: Finding Wholeness in a Fragmented Land, is the story of a 750,000-acre wildland corridor between south Georgia and north Florida and was published by Chelsea Green in 2005. Ray co-edited Between Two Rivers: Stories from the Red Hills to the Gulf, out in 2004

Ray co-edited Between Two River: Stories from the Red Hills to the Gulf, with Susan Cerulean and Laura Newton. She edited Milton Hopkin's book of essays, In One Place: The Natural History of a Georgia Farmer. She has published essays and poems in such periodicals as Audubon, Gray’s Sporting Journal, Hope, Natural History, Oprah Magazine, Orion, Sierra and The Washington Post.

Janisse Ray is speaking as part of "Focus the Nation" at UGA. Please see http://athensfocusthenation.cfsites.org/

Her visit is co-sponsored by the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts.

Date: 01.30.2008

With global climate change as today’s pressing environmental issue, students at the University of Georgia are banding together to participate in Focus the Nation, a national teach-in on global warming solutions. The public event will kick off the night of Wed., Jan. 30 and end with a rally on Thurs., Jan. 31.

“This is an unprecedented opportunity for students and communities from across the country to learn about, discuss and voice opinions about the solutions to global climate change that will have major implications for the fate of our planet,” said Kelly Siragusa, Odum School of Ecology graduate student and Focus the Nation coordinator.

On Jan. 30, the national event will begin with the 2% Solution web cast at 7 p.m. in the Memorial Hall Ballroom, followed by a free dinner. Events will be held all day on Jan. 31, with seminar highlights including the 2 p.m. lecture by Ecology of a Cracker Childhood author Janisse Ray and the Charter Lecture presented by National Geographic executive editor Dennis Dimick at 3:30 p.m. Both lectures will be held in the Mahler Auditorium of the Georgia Center for Continuing Education Hotel and Conference Center and admission is free.

Another aspect of the event is the Choose Your Future vote, where students, faculty and the community-at-large will choose their top five global climate change solutions from a list of approximately 15. The ballot will be available Jan. 21 at www.focusthenation.org. Paper ballots will also be available at the Georgia Center, with drop-off locations there and in downtown Athens.

“Based on the national top five votes, Dr. Goodstein will travel to Washington to ask Congress for a solution,” said Siragusa. “Focus the Nation believes that addressing global warming requires political participation, but it is a non-partisan, non-profit initiative.”

The event will conclude with a Power Hour Rally featuring Athens mayor Heidi Davison at 7 p.m. at the 40 Watt (located at 285 W. Washington St. in Athens), followed by performances from locally favorite bands. In addition to support from the Athens-Clarke County Unified Government, local business, non-profits and UGA are also supporting the event.

Over 1,000 universities and colleges in all 50 states will participate in Focus the Nation, making it the largest teach-in in U.S. history.

“The University of Georgia is a leader in the national Focus the Nation effort,” said Eban Goodstein, project director. “Georgia students are showing how young people are facing up to the challenge of their generation.”

For more information including the full schedule and sponsors, please see the UGA Focus the Nation web site at www.athensfocusthenation.cfsites.org. National information is located at www.focusthenation.org.

Date: 01.24.2008

Every year, the UGA Alumni Association and the UGA Emeriti Scholars sponsor the Founders' Day Lecture to celebrate the University of Georgia's birthday which is January 27. Celebrate the 223rd anniversary of the University with alumni, students, faculty, esteemed guests and members of the community Jan. 24, 2008 at 3 p.m. at the University Chapel. For the first time, an UGA alum will be the speaker at the lecture. Dorinda Dallmeyer '73, '77, '84, director of Environmental Ethics Certificate Program will present the lecture, "Turning the Tide: Saving the Seas" which will cover the topic of marine environmental issues at stake in today's world.

Date: 11.12.2007

Holmes Rolston is University Distinguished Professor of philosophy at Colorado State University. He has written six books, acclaimed in critical notice in both professional journals and the national press. The more recent are: Genes, Genesis and God (Cambridge University Press, 1999), Science and Religion: A Critical Survey (Random House, McGraw Hill, Harcourt Brace), Philosophy Gone Wild (Prometheus Books) Environmental Ethics (Temple University Press), and Conserving Natural Value (Columbia University Press). He has edited Biology, Ethics, and the Origins of Life (Jones and Bartlett, Wadsworth). He has written chapters in eighty other books and over one hundred articles.

Scholars have cited and discussed in print Rolston's work over two thousand times. His articles have been reprinted and anthologized one hundred times. (See publications lists on home-page). His books have been used as texts in a hundred and fifty colleges and universities. See list. His work is published in Australian, Canadian, British, German, Scandinavian, Slovenian, South African, Indian, Japanese, Chinese, and Russian presses and journals, translated, reviewed, or cited in journals and books in French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Finnish, Danish, Czechoslovakian, Polish, Hungarian, Romanian, Slovenian, Russian, Japanese, and Chinese. Environmental Ethics, Philosophy Gone Wild, and Genes, Genesis and God are in Chinese translation.

Rolston was awarded the Templeton Prize in Religion in 2003, awarded by H.R.H. Prince Philip in Buckingham Palace. He was awarded the Mendel Medal by Villanova University in 2005. Rolston has spoken as distinguished lecturer on all seven continents. He gave the opening conference address to the Royal Institute of Philosophy annual conference, Cardiff, Wales, 1993. He was Distinguished Lecturer in Beijing, China, at the invitation of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Institute of Philosophy. He participated by invitation in pre-conferences and the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, 1992, where he was an official observer. He spoke at the World Congress of Philosophy, Moscow, 1993, and again in Boston, 1998. He was distinguished Visiting Professor of Bioethics, Yale University, 2005-2006.

Rolston was distinguished lecturer at the 28th Nobel Conference, 1992, at Gustavus Adolphus College, Minnesota, authorized by the Nobel Foundation, Stockholm. The American Philosophical Association named him a distinguished speaker at their Pacific Division, with a three hour panel devoted to his work. He was awarded the Distinguished Visiting Russell Fellow at the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley. In 1991, a research conference was held in Berkeley devoted to his work, and the results have been published. He was Distinguished Scholar leading a National Endowment for the Humanities colloquium at North Idaho College. He delivered the Gifford Lectures, University of Edinburgh, 1997/1998. He was awarded a Doctor of Letters (D. Litt.), Davidson College, 2002.

Date: 10.23.2007

Please join Paul Sutter, Peter Hartel and other EECP faculty in a roundtable discussion on the continuing impact of Silent Spring. Seminar attendance is required for studentes registered for credit in EETH 4000/6000. All faculty, students, and Friends are encouraged to attend.

photo of bald eagle over Blackbeard Island, Georgia by James Holland

Date: 10.06.2007

Details on speakers and times will be forthcoming from the Odum School of Ecology. The program will begin Friday evening, October 5, and will run all day Saturday, October 6.

Moderator - Becky Sharitz, Savannah River Ecology Laboratory and The International Association for Ecology

Liz Blood, Alumna and National Science Foundation

Betty Jean Craige, Director of UGA Center for Humanities and Arts

Carl Jordan, Professor, UGA Odum School of Ecology

John Leffler, Alumnus and former Ferrum College Dean

Vince Nabholz, Alumnus and Environmental Protection Agency

After the panel, there will be a catered lunch in Ecology to be followed by a slide show. The audience will have the opportunity at that time to reminisce about Frank's many contributions to science, his views on the community of scholars, his efforts in environmental ethics and landscape design, and especially, the impact he had on all of us.

Date: 10.05.2007

Peter Hartel led a Philosophers Walk from the Golley home at 517 Hampton Court to the Institute of Ecology. The Walk lasted approximately one-half hour, with stops along the way to talk about Frank's environmental ethic.

Date: 09.25.2007

With a passion for nature instilled in her at an early age, writer and biologist Rachel Carson became a fearless champion for the environment. She had been a biologist for the federal government when she first took note of the effects of the unregulated use of pesticides and herbicides. Carson's great love of the natural world drove her to write an expose of the chemical industry, specifically its unregulated use of DDT. Defying her failing health and risking her reputation, Carson published her controversial work, Silent Spring, in 1962. She was viciously attacked, called "an ignorant and hysterical woman." But her warning sparked a revolution in environmental policy and created a new ecological consciousness. Silent Spring, which became an instant bestseller, was translated into 22 languages and changed the way we think about the natural world.

All students registered for the EETH 4000 and EETH 6000 must attend; all EECP faculty, students and friends are welcome.

Date: 09.04.2007

To mark the centennial of the birth of Rachel Carson, the EECP seminar series will start with all students and faculty reading "Silent Spring," the book credited with starting the modern environmental movement in America. Undergraduate and graduate students registered for credit in EETH 4000 and EETH 6000 will meet this evening at 5:30 to discuss the plans for the entire fall seminar series and to receive questions to guide their reading. Inexpensive used copies of the book may be obtained from booksellers online; multiple copies are available for checkout from the UGA Science Library.

Date: 04.17.2007

The mountains of Appalachia are home to one of the great forests of the world--they predate the Ice Age and scientists refer to them as the "rainforests" of North America for their remarkable species diversity. These mountains also hold the mother lode of American coal, and the coal-mining industry has long been the economic backbone for families in a region hard-pressed for other job opportunities. But recently, a new type of mining has been introduced--"radical strip mining," also known as "mountaintop removal"--in which a team employing no more than ten men and some heavy machinery literally blast off the top of a mountain, dump it in the valley below, and scoop out the coal.

Erik Reece chronicled the year he spent witnessing the systematic decimation of a single mountain, aptly named "Lost Mountain: A Year in the Vanishing Wilderness." A native Kentuckian and the son of a coal worker, Reece makes it clear that strip mining is neither a local concern nor a radical contention, but a mainstream crisis that encompasses every hot-button issue-from corporate hubris and government neglect, to class conflict and poisoned groundwater, to irrevocable species extinction and landscape destruction.

Date: 03.27.2007

David R. Keller is Director of the Center for the Study of Ethics at Utah Valley State College (UVSC), Associate Professor of Philosophy, and Chair of the Environmental Studies Program. After receiving a double-major baccalaureate degree in English and Philosophy from Franklin and Marshall College and a masters degree in Philosophy from Boston College, David earned a doctorate in Philosophy at the University of Georgia. His dissertation, written under the direction of Frederick Ferré, addressed environmental philosophy. At Georgia, he also completed the interdisciplinary graduate Environmental Ethics Certificate Program. His first book, “The Philosophy of Ecology: From Science to Synthesis” (co-authored with ecologist Frank Golley), was published in 2000 by the University of Georgia Press, and earned him the Dean’s Scholarship Award for the 2000-2001 academic year. Dr. Keller is presenting this seminar in memory of the late Frank Golley.

Date: 03.06.2007

In 2001, David McDuffie graduated from the University of Georgia with a Bachelor's degree in Political Science and an undergraduate minor in English. He returned to Georgia in the fall of 2004 and graduated in December 2006 with a Master's degree in Religion and a graduate certificate in Environmental Ethics. His primary areas of graduate research are in the areas of inter-religious dialogue between Christian and non-Christian traditions and the relationship between theology and science (particularly ecological science). Currently, David is finalizing application materials for admission into a Ph.D. program in Religious Studies to pursue more extensive examinations of the dialogue between religious and environmental studies. David is a recipient of the Margaret Shippen Kleiner Graduate Student Support Award and is show receiving his graduate certificate from donor Scott Kleiner.

Date: 02.20.2007

(co-sponsored with UGA History Dept.)

Brian Donahue is Associate Professor of American Environmental Studies on the Jack Meyerhoff Fund, and among the core faculty in the Brandeis Environmental Studies Program. He teaches courses on environmental issues, environmental history, and sustainable farming and forestry. He holds a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from the Brandeis program in the History of American Civilization. He co-founded and for 12 years directed Land's Sake, a non-profit community farm in Weston, Massachusetts, and was Director of Education at The Land Institute in Salina, Kansas. He is the author of “Reclaiming the Commons: Community Farms and Forests in a New England Town”(1999), which won the 2000 Book Prize from the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, and “The Great Meadow: Farmers and the Land in Colonial Concord”(2004), which won the 2004 Marsh Prize from the American Society for Environmental History, the 2005 Saloutos Prize from the Agricultural History Society, and the 2004 Best Book Prize from the New England Historical Association. His primary interest is the history and prospect of human engagement with the land. Brian also works as an environmental historian for Harvard Forest.

Date: 02.06.2007

The Honorable Lindsay Thomas
Senior Vice President, Governmental Relations, AGL Resources

Lindsay Thomas was named senior vice president, governmental relations, for AGL Resources in May 2002. In his role, Thomas manages the federal, state, and local governmental affairs for the company in six states where AGL Resources owns and operates natural gas utilities well as other energy and infrastructure holdings. Prior to joining AGL Resources, Thomas served for six years as president and chief executive officer of the Georgia Chamber of Commerce. In 2001, Thomas’ Georgia Chamber of Commerce efforts were rewarded when Georgia Trend magazine named Thomas the state’s most respected CEO. Prior to his work for the chamber, Thomas represented the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games as the director of state governmental affairs. Thomas’ professional career also includes service as U.S. Congressman from Georgia’s first district from 1982 to 1993. In 1998, President Bill Clinton named Thomas as the Federal Commissioner of the Georgia, Florida, and Alabama Tri-State Water Compacts where he served in this role from June 1998 until October 2002.

Date: 01.23.2007

Chandra Brown, Riverkeeper and Executive Director, Ogeechee-Canoochee River Keeper.

Ever wanted to know what you can do with an Environmental Ethics Certificate other than frame it and hang it on the wall? Join us for our first “report from the field” with Certificate recipient Chandra Brown. Chandra Brown graduated from the University of Georgia with a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and an Environmental Ethics Certificate in 1998. She then attended Georgia Southern University in her hometown of Statesboro. There she conducted her thesis research on nitrogen pollution in the Canoochee River and received a Master of Technology degree in Environmental Studies. She presented the results of her research at the Geological Society of America Southeast Conference in 2001. As Riverkeeper, Ms. Brown actively monitors the rivers and streams for pollution, responds to citizen complaints, and works to educate people on the importance of river preservation.

Date: 11.14.2006

Dr. Todd Rasmussen
Warnell School of Forest Resources, UGA

Social half-hour with refreshments 5:00-5:30 p.m., seminar follows at 5:30-6:30 p.m.

Date: 11.11.2006

Because of the distance of the drive, we have scheduled this Philosophers Walk for a Saturday (NOT a home football game day). Vans will be available for car-pooling. More details will follow.

Date: 11.01.2006

Eugene Odum Environmental Ethics Lecture
presented by
Dr. Carl Safina, Blue Ocean Institute

Carl Safina has worked to put ocean fish conservation issues into the wildlife conservation mainstream. He helped lead campaigns to ban high-seas driftnets, re-write and reform federal fisheries law in the U. S., use international agreements toward restoring depleted populations of tunas, sharks, and other fishes, and achieve passage of a United Nations global fisheries treaty.

Safina is author of more than a hundred scientific and popular publications on ecology and oceans, including a new Foreword to Rachel Carson's The Sea Around Us. His first book, Song for the Blue Ocean, was chosen a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, a Los Angeles Times Best Nonfiction selection, and a Library Journal Best Science Book selection; it won him the Lannan Literary Award for nonfiction. He is also author of Eye of the Albatross, which won the John Burroughs Medal for nature writing and was chosen by the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine as the year's best book for communicating science.

Cosponsored with the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts.
4 p.m., Student Learning Center Room 148; reception and book-signing to follow in the North Tower, 3d Floor, Student Learning Center.

Date: 10.24.2006

Mr. Ray Anderson, president of Interface, Inc., presents the keynote speech ?Sustainability? for the Academy of the Environment conference at the Georgia Center for Continuing Education. To accommodate high demand by faculty and students, admission will be free for Mr. Anderson?s speech which begins at 12:45 p.m., a regular class period. [If you wish to register for the entire conference or to attend the luncheon (11:45-12:45) prior to his speech, please contact Susan Varlamoff, varlamof@uga.edu or 706-542-2151].

Date: 10.10.2006

Craig Barrow III

Mr. Barrow is the current master of Wormsloe Plantation near Savannah, a place which has been in his family?s hands for nearly 275 years. Wormsloe also played host to figures such as William Bartram and other early naturalists in the southeast.

Reception to follow at 6:30 p.m., Student Learning Center, North Tower (3d Floor)

Date: 09.26.2006

Dr. John Bergstrom
Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics, UGA

Social half-hour with refreshments 5:00-5:30 p.m., seminar follows at 5:30-6:30 p.m.

Dr. John Bergstrom is a full Professor in the Department of Agriculture and Applied Economics of the University of Georgia, where he has been teaching and doing research since 1987. He also is a member of the EECP faculty.

He received his Ph.D. from Texas A&M University in 1986. Throughout his career, John has focused on research relating to the economic valuation of land, habitats, groundwater, wildlife and various other natural resources with consumptive and/or recreational uses. His research has received funding from many sources, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency, the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the University of Georgia and a number of U.S. state agencies. John has had more than 120 papers published as book chapters, edited proceedings and in journals.

In addition to his research and publication efforts, John has been recognized for his teaching excellence at the University of Georgia and has received various awards including, most recently, the 2003 Senior Faculty Award, Gamma Sigma Delta Honor Society.

Date: 09.12.2006

Dr. Ann K. Buchholtz
Department of Management
Terry College of Business, UGA

Ann Buchholtz is a member of the strategic management faculty at the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia. She received her Ph.D. in strategic management from the Stern School of Business at New York University. Dr. Buchholtz, who joined the faculty in 1997, teaches courses at both the graduate and undergraduate level, including strategic management, business policy, managerial ethics, and management and organizational behavior. Her research interests center around corporate governance, specifically executive compensation, the top management team, the board of directors, and ethical issues. Her work has been published in a variety of outlets including the Academy of Management Journal, the Academy of Management Review, the Journal of General Management, Business Horizons, and the Journal of Case Research. She is the co-author of the business textbook Business and Society: Ethics and Stakeholder Management.

For students and faculty interested in measuring corporate social performance are directed to the website "Socrates: The Corporate Social Ratings Monitor" available through Galileo at the UGa Libraries website.

OUTLINE OF REMARKS SEPTEMBER 12, 2006
Business and the Environment: The Controversies and Challenges
by Ann Buchholtz

1. Corporate Social Responsibility
The concept of CSR began in the ?50s
-Prompted by the size and power of corporations
-Grew in the 60s and 70s as awareness of social problems increased
Debate rages
-To whom is the corporation responsible?
-To what extent is the corporation responsible?

2. Defining CSR
Defining CSR
Economic Return (profit) the core or foundational activity, followed by Legal Requirements, Ethical Responsibilities, and Philanthropic Activities. Envisioned either as a series of concentric circles or as a pyramid, but in either case, profit is the fundamental concern from which all others emanate.

To Whom is Business Responsible?
Shareholders?
-Prevailed prior to 1950
-Still widely held (particularly by economists
-Termed the ?Classical View?
-Belief that the primary responsibility of business is to increase profits
-Most well-known advocate is Milton Friedman

Stakeholders?
-Entered public consciousness with the concept of CSR
-Expectation that corporations will go beyond their economic and legal responsibilities to assume social responsibilities
Termed the ?Stakeholder view
-Most well-known advocate is Edward Freeman

3. The Classical View
Milton Friedman is famous for saying:
-the only social responsibility of business is to increase profits.
-For example, corporations should not make investments in reducing pollution beyond those that are in the corporation?s best interests (includes obeying law and reducing negative externalities)
Arguments in support of this view
-Shareholders provide capital and bear the residual risk
This gives them a claim on management?s allegiance
Resulting in fiduciary duty of management to operate the corporation in their best interests (maximizing shareholder wealth)
-Corporations would be spending someone else?s money (in effect, they become civil servants with the ability to tax)
-Going beyond economics may increase business?s power and influence in society
-Business is not prepared to deal with societal needs
-Proponents of this view still expect corporations to be honest, ethical and responsible - to not do harm


4. The Stakeholder View
Stakeholder view can be descriptive, instrumental or normative
Business has power and influence over society, with power comes responsibility
Shareholder primacy can invite actions that impose costs on other stakeholders (e.g., pollution, subsidiaries in countries with lesser regulations)
The explicit contract with shareholders does not obviate the implicit contract that firms hold with other stakeholders
Shareholders are not alone in bearing risk
-Highly skilled employees develop firm-specific capital
-Communities entrust their resources
-Society is at risk (e.g., Enron)

5. Pressures on Managers
Hypercompetitive environments
-Constant pressure to increase profits
Increase revenues or
Cut costs
-Competitors will cut corners
Then they offer products and services at a better price
Customers then flock to them
Pressure to keep stock price up
-Boards of directors are expected to show improvements in the stock price
-Money managers are judged on short term results
Cognitive limitations of all parties involved
-Availability heuristic
?Certain? short term consequences can?t compete with uncertain long term consequences in our minds
-Self-serving Bias
The short term benefits and costs impact managers most directly


6. What to do?
Treat recalcitrant business like a child in terms of moral development
-How will the business benefit by being environmentally responsible?
-How might the business lose if it isn?t
Does it matter if business?s interest in the environment is genuine? Yes and No
-Yes because insincere efforts carry costs
Danger of greenwashing
Time and effort expended to make sure it isn?t greenwashing could be better spent elsewhere.
-Philip Morris spend $60M on philanthropy and $108M advertising it.
-ExxonMobil gave $100M to Global Climate project at Stanford - that?s .0028% of their profit last year
-No because the most important thing is that the environment be respected and, if they actually do that, it matters far less why

Date: 01.30.2006
Availability: DVDand VHS available for loan from the EECP Library, Founders House

Laura Kissel is a media artist who works in film and the electronic and digital arts. She is co-founder of the Orphan Film Symposium at the University of South Carolina, where she is Associate Professor of Media Arts. Kissel?s documentary work explores social and political issues surrounding landscape and land use, the representation of place and history, and the use of orphan films.

"Cabin Field" explores a mile-long stretch of land in Crisp County, Georgia through the memories of landowners, farmers, and agricultural laborers past and present. On the surface of this landscape, there is profound evidence of collective history and a revealing portrait of our current values.

Date: 04.20.2005

This conference, the second installment of the Southern Nature Project, combined major lectures from the fields of art history, environmental history, conservation biology, and film criticism to yield an exciting and fascinating exploration of the Chattooga River in all its manifestations.



On the evening of Thursday, April 21, at the Seney-Stovall Chapel, noted environmental historian Jack Temple Kirby offered the keynote address ?Wilderness and the Southern Mind.? A nationally recognized scholar, Dr. Kirby?s books include Media-Made Dixie: The South in the American Imagination (1978); Rural Worlds Lost: The American South, 1920-1960 (1987); Poquosin: A Study of Rural Landscape and Society (1987); and The Countercultural South (1995).



The conference continued the following day at The Tate Student Center with the opening lecture ?Wildness and the Portrayal of Southern Landscape,? delivered by UGA art historian Janice Simon. Buzz Williams of the Chattooga Conservancy and conservationist Butch Clay discussed the current environmental challenges the river faces. After lunch we moved from the real Chattooga to the imagined Chattooga with a screening of the movie Deliverance. The film was followed by Dickey scholar Bernie Dunlap and historian Annie ingram who analyzed shifting concepts of the importance of wild nature in the lives of men and women.



Friday?s events culminated at the Seney-Stovall Chapel with ?Reading the River,? which brought together a quartet of Southern nature writers and poets to read from their works inspired by the Chattooga. The evening featured poet John Lane, essayist Christopher Camuto, novelist Ron Rash, and poet Thorpe Moeckel. These readings were complemented with interludes of traditional music by the renowned banjo player Art Rosenbaum with Nat Gardiner. 

WUGA-FM, the National Public Radio affiliate in Athens, broadcast the Friday evening reading live.

Simultaneous with the conference, photographer Jay Kuhr had a one-man show of his large-format, black-and-white photos of the Chattooga on exhibit in the Gallery at the Tate Student Center on campus.



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Cecilia M. Herles received her B.A. in Philosophy and English from Clemson University (1993). She received her Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University Of Georgia (2006). Her areas of specialization are ethics, feminist philosophy and environmental ethics. She is currently teaching in the Department of Philosophy and the Institute of Women's Studies at the University Of Georgia. She is also a philosophy instructor for the Georgia Center For Continuing Education. Cecilia’s EECP graduate certificate paper was entitled “Muddying the Waters Does Not Have to Entail Erosion: An Examination of the Logic of Purity from an Ecological Feminist Perspective.”

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Dr. Charles Zerner is the Barbara B. and Bertram J. Cohn Professor of Environmental Studies at Sarah Lawrence College and the Director of Intersections: Boundary Work in Science, the Humanities and Arts, an interdisciplinary colloquium series on contemporary environmental issues.

Dr. Zerner's current research focuses on the emergence of a dimension of the environment he calls "stealth nature": the creation of forms of life, designed by biologists and engineers, containing electromechanical components. Stealth insects, for example, including Monarch butterflies with cybernetic components, or purely mechanical "warbots" in the form of dragonflies, are being designed and tested to assess their capacities to conduct surveillance operations. These creatures are designed to blend in with other living creatures and environmental ecologies, thus making stealth and surveillance possible. Zerner is engaged in asking several kinds of questions about these "vivisystems" including: What states of nature do we dream? What kinds of governance and powers over nature do we wish to legitimize, empower, and enact? How will the creation of machinic organisms -- cyborgian creatures -- be judged or regulated? Can we begin to create an ethical, moral, and political language that lays the groundwork for judging and critically assessing interventions in the structure of the organic world, while avoiding the pitfalls of a fantasized, green, sacralized pristine nature, on the one hand, or an uncritical celebration of polymorphous hybridity, on the other hand? These are questions about the history of our ideas of and attitudes toward nature. Crossing the boundaries of culture, biology, engineering, and ethics, Zerner’s research on military design and anticipated uses of vivisystems as potential tools for surveillance and attack, a process he calls the weaponization of life, poses unsettling questions in the humanities and the arts.

Trained as a lawyer (J.D.) and as an architect (M.Arch.), Zerner worked as a botanical artist drawing the "weeds of Cambridge, Massachusetts" as Artist-in Residence for Cambridge. He taught drawing to architects at the Massachusetts College of the Arts and the Boston Architectural Center. He conducted ethnographic fieldwork on environmental ritual and common property management of marine and forest environments in Sulawesi, Java, Sumatra, Kalimantan, and the Moluccan islands of Indonesia. Zerner has made a distinctive contribution to the international environmental justice field, linking issues of culture and rights to environmental policy. Charles Zerner is a contributing editor of Culture and the Question of Rights: Forest, Coasts, and Seas in Southeast Asia (2003), People, Plants, and Justice: The Politics of Nature Conservation (2000), co-editor of Communities and Conservation: Histories and Politics of Community-Based Resource Management (2005) and Making Threats: Biofears and Environmental Anxieties (2005).

This seminar is co-sponsored by the Center for Integrative Conservation Research and the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts.

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