Category: Distinguished Lecture Series

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Distinguished Lecture Series News Seminars, Workshops, Lectures

2019 Distinguished Lecture: Dr. Andrew Hoffman, Holcim (US) Professor of Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Michigan

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Andrew Hoffman, the Holcim Professor of Sustainable Enterprise for University of Michigan and author, will visit Virginia Tech on Friday, March 22.

Hoffman will give a 3:30 p.m. distinguished lecture titled “How Culture Shapes the Climate Change Debate” at the Lyric Theatre in downtown Blacksburg. The lecture will be followed by a question and answer session and book signing.

The event is coordinated by the Global Change Center at Virginia Tech, with funding from the Fralin Life Science Institute and the Virginia Tech Graduate School. It is free and open to the public.

Dr. Andrew Hoffman

Hoffman applies organizational behavioral models and theories to assess the cultural and institutional aspects behind environmental issues, including climate change. His work also addresses how environmental issues evolve socially, politically and managerially. Hoffman has published 14 books and more than 100 articles and book chapters on these topics, which have been translated into five languages. His 2015 book, How Culture Shapes the Climate Change Debate, garnered international media attention.

Hoffman’s work has resulted in a long list of honors, including the Aspen Institute’s Faculty Pioneer Award, the Maggie Award, an Aldo Leopold Fellowship, the Rachel Carson Book Prize, and the Klegerman Award.

In this lecture, Hoffman will discuss the sociology and psychology of why people reject climate change and how to address this issue. He offers suggestions for building trust and effectively communicating despite opposing viewpoints, arguing that culture is the barrier to acting on climate change.

“The current public and political debate over climate change in this country is not about carbon dioxide or climate models,” Hoffman said in a lecture at Yale University. “It’s about conflicting world views among people who feel their values are being threatened. We need to understand where they’re coming from.”

Top media outlets such as The New York Times, Scientific American, National Geographic, Atlantic, and National Public Radio have featured Hoffman’s work. He has also served on several prestigious research committees, including a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Committee.

Hoffman’s visit represents the sixth lecture in a public Distinguished Lecture Series sponsored by the Global Change Center at Virginia Tech. The lecture series brings some of the world’s leading scholars to the Blacksburg community to discuss critical environmental and societal issues in an open forum.

“Dr. Hoffman is a dynamic speaker with a strong interdisciplinary perspective on environmental issues.  His work has transformed the way we think about the critical leadership role of businesses in environmental sustainability, and on the way culture shapes the discussion around environmental issues.  We are extremely fortunate to have him join us in Blacksburg to discuss how factors other than scientific data, such as norms, values, and communication, influence people’s perceptions and beliefs about climate change,” said William Hopkins, director of the Global Change Center at Virginia Tech and professor of fish and wildlife conservation in the College of Natural Resources and Environment.

For more information about the event, please contact the Global Change Center at 540-231-5400 or via email to jcoker@vt.edu.

The Lyric Theatre is located at 135 College Ave. in Blacksburg. Doors will open at 2:30 p.m. Metered parking is available on the street as well as in the Kent Square garage. Anyone parking on the Virginia Tech campus before 5:00 pm will need a permit.

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Distinguished Lecture Series

2018 Distinguished Lecture: Dr. Kirk Johnson, Director of Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History

Kirk Johnson, a world-renowned paleontologist who focuses on fossil plants and the extinction of the dinosaurs, will visit Virginia Tech on Friday, February 16.

He will give a 4 p.m. distinguished lecture, “Natural History in the Age of Humans,” at the Lyric Theatre in downtown Blacksburg. The lecture is free and open to the public and will be followed by a book signing in the theatre’s main lobby.

Dr. Kirk Johnson

Dr. Kirk Johnson is the Sant Director of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. He oversees more than 440 employees and a collection of more than 145 million objects—the largest natural history collection in the world. The Museum hosts more than 7 million visitors annually and, in 2017, its scientists published over 760 scientific research papers and described more than 300 new species.

Johnson is a paleontologist who has led expeditions that have resulted in the discovery of more than 1,400 fossil sites. His research focuses on fossil plants and the extinction of the dinosaurs. He is known for his scientific articles, popular books, museum exhibitions, documentaries, and collaborations with artists. In 2010-11, he led the excavation of an ice age site near Snowmass Village, Colorado, that recovered more than 5,400 bones of mammoths, mastodons and other ice age animals. This dig was featured in the NOVA documentary, Ice Age Death Trap, and in Johnson’s book, Digging Snowmastodon, Discovering an Ice Age World in the Colorado Rockies. His recent documentaries include the three-part NOVA series Making North America, which aired on PBS networks in November 2015, and The Great Yellowstone Thaw which premiered on PBS in June 2017.

This event is part of the annual Distinguished Lecture Series hosted by the Global Change Center at Virginia Tech, with funding from the Fralin Life Sciences Institute and the Virginia Tech Graduate School.

For more information about the event, please contact the Global Change Center at 231-5400 or by email at schoeng@vt.edu.

The Lyric Theatre is located at 135 College Ave. in Blacksburg. Doors will open at 3 p.m. Metered parking is available on the street as well as in the Kent Square garage. Anyone parking on the Virginia Tech campus before 5:00 pm will need a permit.

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Distinguished Lecture Series Water

Distinguished Lecture Series: Brian Richter- Chasing Water in a Dynamically Changing World

The Global Change Center Distinguished Lecture Series welcomes
BRIAN RICHTER
Chief Scientist, Global Water Program of The Nature Conservancy
President, Sustainable Waters

“Chasing Water in a Dynamically Changing World”
Friday, April 7, 2017, 4:00-5:00 p.m.
The Lyric Theatre

Brian Richter has been a global leader in water science and conservation for more than 25 years.  He is the Chief Scientist for the Global Water Program of The Nature Conservancy, an international conservation organization, where he promotes sustainable water use and management with governments, corporations, and local communities.  He is also the President of Sustainable Waters, a global water education organization.  Brian has consulted on more than 150 water projects worldwide.  He serves as a water advisor to some of the world’s largest corporations, investment banks, and the United Nations, and has testified before the U.S. Congress on multiple occasions.  He also teaches a course on Water Sustainability at the University of Virginia.

Brian has developed numerous scientific tools and methods to support river protection and restoration efforts, including the Indicators of Hydrologic Alteration software that is being used by water managers and scientists worldwide. He has published many scientific papers on the importance of ecologically sustainable water management in international science journals, and co-authored a book with Sandra Postel entitled Rivers for Life: Managing Water for People and Nature (Island Press, 2003). His new book, Chasing Water: A Guide for Moving from Scarcity to Sustainability, has now been published in six languages.

A book-signing event will be held immediately following the public lecture.

DOWNLOAD THE FLYER (PDF)

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LECTURE ABSTRACT:

Chasing Water in a Rapidly Changing World

Brian Richter

Water shortages are now affecting half the world’s population, disrupting food and energy security as well as urban water supplies in many cities.  The overuse of water and associated drying of rivers, lakes, and aquifers has become a leading cause of freshwater species imperilment.  Climate change forecasts foretell even greater challenges in many water-scarce regions.  These threats to our water future can be ameliorated, but it will require bold and concerted action on the part of governments, city leaders, and farmers.  This presentation will highlight the key solutions that must be implemented.

More Information:

Sustainable Waters

National Geographic Voices

Interview: Chasing Water

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Distinguished Lecture Series Seminars, Workshops, Lectures

Dr. Josh Tewksbury to visit Virginia Tech April 21st

From VT News
Ecologist Josh Tewksbury to visit Virginia Tech and Lyric Theatre
Dr. Josh Tewksbury
Dr. Josh Tewksbury

Josh Tewksbury, an ecologist and director of the Colorado Global Hub at Future Earth, will visit Virginia Tech next week.

He will give a 4:45 p.m. lecture on April 21 at the Lyric Theatre entitled “Living in the Anthropocene: Science, Sustainability and Society.”

The event, sponsored by the Global Change Center at Virginia Tech, is free and open to the public.

Tewksbury is an ecologist, conservation biologist, and planetary health scientist with experience both in academia and in civil society. In addition to his appointment at Future Earth, Tewksbury is also a research professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and a senior scholar in the School of Global Environmental Sustainability at Colorado State University.

During his visit, Tewksbury will meet with students in the Interfaces of Global Change Interdisciplinary Graduate Education Program.

“Dr. Tewksbury is leading the charge to advance conservation and sustainability initiatives on a global scale,” said William A. Hopkins, director of the Global Change Center. “As director of the U.S. office of Future Earth, he is working with a broad international coalition of groups like the United Nations to pursue what has been called ‘possibly the largest, most ambitious international research program ever undertaken.’ As Virginia Tech is poised to advance its collective strengths in the environmental sciences, we are thrilled to have such an outstanding leader visit Blacksburg to engage in a community-wide discussion about critical issues facing our planet.”

Tewksbury was previously the Walker Professor of Natural History at the University of Washington, with appointments both in the department of biology and the College of the Environment, where his work focused on major global change issues, including the impacts of climate change on biodiversity, the potential of landscape connectivity to mitigate the impacts of climate change, and the impacts of species loss on ecosystem function.

In addition to more than a decade of academic work, Tewksbury also served as the founding director of the Luc Hoffmann Institute at WWF, a global research center based in Switzerland focused on the co-creation of multi-disciplinary research. As director, Tewksbury launched over a dozen research projects, including work on the Food-Energy-Water nexus in South-East Asia, development corridors in East Africa, global mapping of threats to biodiversity, and the development of regionally-appropriate low-carbon sustainability targets for urban areas.

Tewksbury’s current research interests include studies of direct and indirect effects of climate change on food security at large spatial scales, the potential of large-scale restoration to serve multiple human and biodiversity goals, and the contribution of science to large scale planetary health issues.

“Josh’s work lies at the critical nexus between conserving Earth’s biodiversity and meeting the needs of a growing population,” said David Haak, an assistant professor of plant pathology, physiology and weed science in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and a Fralin Life Science Institute affiliate. “To do this well requires a distinct capacity for thinking broadly and acting globally, and Josh does both of these exceptionally well. So, it is not surprising that he is emerging as a leader in global sustainable development.”

Chartered in 2015, the Global Change Center at Virginia Tech seeks to generate scholarship that leads to solutions to global problems such as climate change, pollution, and invasive species that threaten the environment and society.

For information on the event, email Gloria Schoenholtz, Global Change Center coordinator.

FUTURE EARTH BROCHURE (PDF)

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Story by Lindsay Key

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Update: Below is the videotape of Dr. Tewksbury’s lecture on April 21, 2016 at the Lyric Theatre in Blacksburg.

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Categories
Distinguished Lecture Series News Seminars, Workshops, Lectures

GCC Distinguished Lecture Series welcomes Dr. Josh Tewksbury at the Lyric Theatre April 21st

SAVE THE DATE!

The Global Change Center at Virginia Tech is pleased to welcome:

DR. JOSH TEWKSBURY
Director, Colorado Global Hub, Future Earth

LIVING IN THE ANTHROPOCENE
Science, Sustainability and Society

Thursday, April 21, 2016 | 4:45-5:45 p.m. | The Lyric Theatre

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Dr. Josh Tewksbury
Dr. Josh Tewksbury

Dr. Josh Tewksbury is an ecologist, conservation biologist, and planetary health scientist with experience both in academia and in civil society.  He is currently the Director of the Colorado Global Hub, at Future Earth; Research Professor, University of Colorado, Boulder; and Senior Scholar, School of Global Environmental Sustainability, Colorado State University.

Josh was the Walker Professor of Natural History at the University of Washington, with appointments both in the department of Biology and the College of the Environment, where his work focused on major global change issues, including the impacts of climate change on biodiversity, the potential of landscape connectivity to mitigate the impacts of climate change, and the impacts of species loss on ecosystem function.

In addition to his decade+ of academic work Josh also served as the founding director of the Luc Hoffmann Institute at WWF, a global research center based in Switzerland focused on the co-creation of multi-disciplinary research. As director, Josh launched over a dozen research projects, including work on the Food-Energy-Water nexus in South-East Asia, Development corridors in East Africa, global mapping of threats to biodiversity, and the development of regionally-appropriate low-carbon sustainability targets for urban areas.

Josh’s current research interests include studies of direct and indirect effects of climate change on food security at large spatial scales, the potential of large-scale restoration to serve multiple human and biodiversity goals, and the contribution of science to large scale planetary health issues.

MORE ABOUT FUTURE EARTH (PDF)

DOWNLOAD THE TEWKSBURY LECTURE FLYER

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Additional Resources

Editorial by Johan Rockström, Future Earth, 2016. (PDF)
Science: Vol.351, Issue 6271, pp319, DOI: 10.1126/science.aaf2138

futureWebsites:

 

 

 

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Climate Change Distinguished Lecture Series Educational Outreach Global Change Interfaces of Global Change IGEP News Outreach Seminars, Workshops, Lectures Special Events

Dr. Naomi Oreskes, Harvard historian and author, to give 2015 Distinguished Lecture

From VT News:

Dr. Naomi Oreskes
Dr. Naomi Oreskes

BLACKSBURG, Va., Aug. 25, 2015 – Naomi Oreskes, a world-renowned science historian who focuses on understanding scientific consensus and dissent in relation to environmental science, will visit Virginia Tech on Wednesday, Sept. 2.

She will give a 4 p.m. distinguished lecture entitled “Should We Trust Science? Perspectives from the History and Philosophy of Science” at the Lyric Theatre, followed by a question and answer period and book signing.

The event, coordinated by the Global Change Center at Virginia Tech and the Interfaces of Global Change Interdisciplinary Graduate Education Program, is free and open to the public.

Oreskes is a professor of the history of science at Harvard University.  She has received international acclaim for her 2010 book, “Merchants of Doubt, How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco to Global Warming,” co-authored with Erik M. Conway, which was shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Priced, received the 2011 Watson-Davis Prize from the History of Science Society, and was recently adapted into a documentary film.

Her 2014 book, The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future, also co-written with Conway, looks back at the present from the year 2093.

For her 2004 essay in the journal Science, “The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change,” Oreskes analyzed nearly 1,000 scientific journals to assess the level of consensus around climate change.  The paper has been widely cited, both in the United States and abroad, including in the Royal Society’s publication, “A Guide to Facts and Factors about Climate Change,” in the Academy-award winning film, An Inconvenient Truth, and in Ian McEwan’s novel, Solar.

Oreskes’ visit represents the second in a public Distinguished Lecture Series sponsored by the Global Change Center at Virginia Tech.  The lecture series brings some of the world’s leading scholars to the Blacksburg community to discuss critical environmental and societal issues in an open forum.

”We are extremely excited to welcome such an outstanding and respected scholar to the Blacksburg community,” said William A. Hopkins, director of the Global Change Center at Virginia Tech and professor of fish and wildlife conservation in the College of Natural Resources and Environment. “Dr. Oreskes’ work emphasizes the critical role that science plays in maintaining our quality of life, and reveals the disparity that sometimes exists between the state of the science and public perceptions about critical scientific issues.  Her lecture will discuss why these disparities exist, and demystify the process of scientific debate that can lead to scientific consensus.”

View the lecture and see photos from the Oreskes event here.

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Event co-sponsors include:

  • The Office for Undergraduate Research
  • The History Department
  • Women in Leadership and Philanthropy Endowed Lecture Fund
  • Fralin Life Science Institute
  • The Virginia Tech Graduate School
  • Interfaces of Global Change IGEP
  • Sustainable Nanotechnology IGEP
  • Water INTERface IGEP

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Climate Change Distinguished Lecture Series Global Change Interfaces of Global Change IGEP June Newsletter News Seminars, Workshops, Lectures Special Events Video

Climate change scientist Michael Mann visits Virginia Tech

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[vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_column_text]Michael Mann, a climate scientist and central figure in the political debate over climate change, visited Virginia Tech on March 20, 2015.
His 4 p.m. lecture at the Lyric Theatre was followed by a brief question and answer session and signing of his book, “The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines.”
The free event was sponsored by the Global Change Center at Virginia Tech and the Interfaces of Global Change Interdisciplinary Graduate Education Program.

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View the full lecture here
Dr. Michael E. Mann

Michael Mann is a distinguished professor of meteorology at Penn State University, with joint appointments in the departments of geosciences and the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute. He is also director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center. His research involves the use of theoretical models and observational data to better understand earth’s climate system.

During his visit, Mann also co-lead a science communication workshop for doctoral students with Susan Hassol, director of Climate Communication and a leading expert on effective techniques for communicating science.

“We are thrilled to welcome Dr. Mann to Virginia Tech,” said William Hopkins, director of the Global Change Center and professor of fish and wildlife conservation in the College of Natural Resources and Environment.  “A major part of the Global Change Center’s mission is to provide unique training opportunities to Virginia Tech faculty and graduate students. The all-day workshop led by Mann and Sue Hassol will allow the students to learn effective techniques for communicating science to the public and policy makers, and will enable them to spend intimate time learning from leading authorities on climate change and science communication.”

Mann has received a number of honors and awards including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) outstanding publication award in 2002, and selection by Scientific American as one of the fifty leading visionaries in science and technology in 2002.  He was awarded the Hans Oeschger Medal of the European Geosciences Union in 2012 and the National Conservation Achievement Award for science by the National Wildlife Federation in 2013.

Mann made Bloomberg News’ list of fifty most influential people in 2013. In 2014, he was named a Highly Cited Researcher by the Institute for Scientific Information and received the Friend of the Planet Award from the National Center for Science Education. He is a Fellow of both the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society.

“Dr. Mann’s visit to campus is an exciting opportunity to learn from a world-renowned scientist at the front line of both research and public engagement,” said Quinn Thomas, an assistant professor of forest resources and environmental conservation in the College of Natural Resources and Environment, who teaches courses in climate science on campus. “Through his peer-reviewed research, which provides historical context for recent temperature changes, and his writings, which are more geared toward a general audience, Dr. Mann’s work challenges us to think critically about our changing planet while not losing sight of the larger picture.”

Chartered earlier this year, the Global Change Center at Virginia Tech seeks to raise awareness about climate change and other global problems such as pollution and invasive species that threaten the environment and society.

Story by Lindsay Taylor Key, Communications Officer at Fralin Life Science Institute[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]