Ecologist Joins DIS in Special Provost's Appointment

Sandra Steingraber

Sandra Steingraber, formerly a faculty member at Cornell University's Center for the Environment, has joined Ithaca College in the Division of Interdisciplinary and International Studies as a Visiting Distinguished Scholar for 2003-4 and 2004-5.

Steingraber is an internationally known ecologist and author of the widely respected book Living Down-stream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer and the Environment. Her second book, Having Faith: An Ecologist's Journey to Motherhood, was reissued this spring in paperback.

"Living Downstream," says Provost Peter Bardaglio, "has established Sandra Steingraber as one of the most powerful and eloquent writers on environment/health issues of her generation. She's one of those very rare people who bridges the worlds of science and the humanities. She personifies the idea of interdisciplinarity, and her appointment underscores the College's move in this direction. I'm thrilled to have her join the IC community, and I am sure that her presence on campus will heat up the intellectual
climate here."

Steingraber, who is also a poet, was one of the first speakers in an ongoing series called "Engaging Democracy: Troubling the Water," which, says Bardaglio, was established to encourage members of the College and the surrounding community to revisit fundamental democratic values, to connect college-level learning to civic responsibility and the public good, and to provide opportunities to rethink the responsibilities of citizenship and service in a global community.

The series, cosponsored by the provost's office and several other campus offices (with support from a National Science Foundation Applying Science to Sustainability grant), also included talks by Paul Loeb, author of Soul of a Citizen: Living with Conviction in a Cynical Time; environmental consultant Edward Quevedo, who spoke on "Activism, Democracy, and the Role of the University in Troubled Times"; and filmmakers Chea Prince and Constance Curry, who screened and discussed their work The Intolerable Burden, about what happened in 1965 when an African American tried to enroll her children in a mostly-white public school in Mississippi.

Photo courtesy of Frank DiMeo/Cornell University Photography