Community Learning Day
Wednesday, October 17, 2001

For more information, contact Gem Perkins at 609-771-3112 or perkinsg@tcnj.edu.

Organized by the Community Learning Day Planning Committee

Sponsored by the Committee on Cultural and Intellectual Community (CCIC) and the Department of Political Science/International Studies

Back to the College of New Jersey Homepage

Speaker Biographies

Dr. Wangari Maathai is founder and coordinator of the Green Belt Movement in Kenya. Founded in 1977, the Movement operates over three thousand tree nurseries, issuing millions of seedlings yearly to small-scale farmers, schools, and churches. By growing and planting trees, the Movement raises public awareness of the relationship between environmental degradation in East Africa and the fuel wood crisis. It also provides a forum where rural women can actively participate in public policy decision-making. The Movement's methods have been applied in numerous other African countries, in Haiti, and in the United States.  The Movement's agenda has often brought Maathai into conflict with Kenya's government. In 1989, government authorities and international financiers planned to build a sixty story high-rise building in the large public park just outside Nairobi. Maathai mobilized thousands of Kenyans to protest what they called the "Park Monster." She and her colleagues were beaten and arrested, but the building project was stopped. More recently, the Movement has been working to draw international attention to the corrupt seizure of public lands by government bureaucrats in Kenya. Over the past two years, Maathai and other activists have been arrested at least ten times while protesting at a housing development cut into the heart of an old-growth forest outside Nairobi.  Wangari Maathai was the first woman in East Africa to earn a doctoral degree. She is an internationally recognized advocate for women's rights, a member of the United Nations Council on Disarmament, and a former presidential candidate in Kenya. She holds numerous international awards, including the United Nations' Africa Prize for Leadership and the Right Livelihood Award, called the alternative Nobel Prize.

President of the Population Institute, Mr. Werner Fornos, has been described as the foremost spokesman on global population issues.  A distinguished administrator, having held high national and state office, he has also served four years as a Maryland State Legislator. Fornos has addressed virtually all major international gatherings on population, dating back to 1974. He continually appears before many other groups around the world, including extensive presentations in China where he is an Honorary Professor of International Relations at Sichuan University.  Werner Fornos makes frequent national television and radio appearances and contributes newspaper and magazine articles that appear in such publications as The New York Times, Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle and Kansas City Star. He is the author of the book, "Gaining People; Losing Ground."  Named one of the 100 most influential persons in development and environment by the New York based Earth Times newspaper for the third consecutive year, Mr. Fornos is also a multiple Rotary International Paul Harris Fellow; a recipient of the Humanist of the Year Award; recipient of the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the University of Maryland and most recently recipient of the Order of Merit from Germany, the highest distinction granted to a non-German citizen in recognition of humanitarian efforts. Mr. Fornos is a member of the Washington, DC Rotary Club and a life member of the Rotary Fellowship on Population and Development. He is also an elected member of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population, Silver Owl member of the National Press Club and member of the National committee of the United Nations Association.  He has dedicated his energies and talents to speaking to diverse audiences, from college students and civic organizations, to U.S. and UN officials --- pressing for "rational solutions to the population problem."

Back to the Top

Panels

"Environmental and Societal Tradeoffs in Meeting Society's Demand for Electrical Power"
Brower Student Center 202 East
2 - 3:30 p.m.

Moderators:
Patrick Tebbe, Assistant Professor, Department of Engineering
Joseph Sullivan, Director of Facilities

This panel will discuss the balancing act that must occur to satisfy society’s need for power. The discussion will center around the question; What decisions and factors are taken into consideration when setting both energy and environmental policy and to what extent do these factors overlap or conflict with each other? Several different power generation viewpoints will be presented along with their associated engineering, economic, and political aspects.

Panelists

Eric Larson, Research Engineer, Center for Energy and Environmental Studies, Princeton University
Eric Larson's principal research interests include technical, economic, and policy-related analysis of advanced clean-energy systems. He currently leads the biomass research program of the Center's Energy Technology Assessment/Energy Policy Analysis group at Princeton University. This program focuses on analysis of production and conversion systems for modernizing renewable-biomass as an energy source. Larson periodically assists governments in developing proposals to the Global Environment Facility for reducing greenhouse gas emissions through the development of national energy efficiency and renewable energy programs or through projects designed to accelerate the development of advanced clean-energy technologies.

Cassandra Kling, Acting Director, New Jersey Office of Sustainable Business, New Jersey Commerce and Economic Growth Commission
Cassandra Kling is the Acting Director of the New Jersey Office of Sustainable Business, a division of the New Jersey Commerce and Economic Growth Commission. In this position Cassandra is responsible for promoting and supporting sustainable businesses and business actions. Over the past four years, her work is focused on accelerating markets for energy efficiency and renewable energy products and the use of sustainable building techniques and materials. Prior to her work with the Office of Sustainable Business, Cassandra worked for the Alliance to Save Energy on a project that advocated the use of energy-efficient technologies for industrial, commercial and residential construction projects

Dennis Zannoni, Supervising Nuclear Engineer, New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, Bureau of Nuclear Engineering
Dennis Zannoni currently supervises the Nuclear Engineering Section NJ DEP. In charge of State oversight of nuclear power plants, which include technical assessments, inspections, and emergency preparedness. Prior to working for the State of New Jersey, he worked for a company that built and designed nuclear power plants. Dennis the Chair of the Conference of Radiation Control Program Directors Decommissioning and Decontamination Committee and a member of the American Nuclear Society.

Mark Brownstein, Director of Environmental Strategy and Policy, Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG)
Mark Brownstein is responsible for identifying and acting on opportunities where environmental leadership yields tangible improvements in the company’s bottom line. In addition, Mark is responsible for anticipating changes in environmental laws and regulations and initiating corporate strategies and policies that enable affected PSEG companies to comply with these changes and succeed. 

Back to the Top

"And Environmental Justice for All...."
Brower Student Center 202 West
2 - 3:30 p.m.

Organizers:
Janet Morrison, Assistant Professor, Department of Biology
Nadine Stern, Associate Vice President for Information Technology and Student Services

Moderator:
Joan Mulhern, Senior Legislative Counsel, Earthjustice International

This panel discussion will examine how and why exposure to environmental contamination and degradation varies among communities and nations that differ in wealth, race, and geography.  One focus will be Camden Citizens in Action v. New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, which was a recent landmark legal case argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that tested the legal strategy of using the Civil Rights Act as a method to fight environmental inequity in the United States.

Panelists

Olga Pomar, Camden Regional Legal Services
Ms. Pomar is the lead attorney for Camden Citizens in Action v. New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.  

Prof. Wangari Maathai, Green Belt Movement of Kenya
Community Learning Day Keynote Speaker

Joan Mulhern, Senior Legislative Counsel, Earthjustice International
Earthjustice is the nonprofit law firm for the environment, representing—without charge—hundreds of public interest clients, large and small. Earthjustice works through the courts to safeguard public lands, national forests, parks, and wilderness areas to reduce air and water pollution, to prevent toxic contamination, to preserve endangered species and wildlife habitat, and to achieve environmental justice.

Ted Carrington, Field Organizer, New Jersey Work Environment Council
The New Jersey Work Environment Council (WEC) advocates for safe, secure jobs and a healthy, sustainable environment. To achieve these goals, WEC is organizing an alliance of working people, unions, environmental and community organizations. WEC provides technical assistance and training. WEC also supports and conducts grassroots organizing and political action campaigns.

Back to the Top

"The Sustainability Initiative in New Jersey"
Brower Student Center 202 East
3:45 - 5 p.m.

Moderators:
Donald Vandegrift, Associate Professor of Economics, School of Business
Janice Bossart, Assistant Professor, Department of Biology

In 1995, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection began the Sustainable State Project. The project produced a report card that attempts to assess the long-term trends that will enhance or degrade our
quality of life and that of future generations. To measure the trends, the DEP selected - and in some cases, created - 41 indicators.  Recently, the quantitative targets have been adopted by other state agencies through a public process. The targets serve as a point of departure for future deliberations. This session will consider:

§    the suitability of the indicators as measures of quality of life
§    the degree to which some of the goals/indicators conflict
§    the mechanism for balancing conflicting goals
§     the effectiveness of various government programs for increasing the quality of life. 

Panelists

Matthew Polsky, Project Leader of the Sustainable State Project Report, New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection;
The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection's mission is to assist the residents of New Jersey in preserving, restoring, sustaining, protecting, and enhancing the environment to ensure the integration of high environmental quality, public health, and economic vitality.  

James Quigley, Executive Director, New Jersey Higher Education Partnership for Sustainability
The New Jersey Higher Education Partnership for Sustainability's mission is to make our campuses become the models for sustainability which we believe they must ultimately become.  Mr. Quigley has a PhD in Environmental Science.  

Donald Liebowitz, former Vice President of Trigen Energy Corporation and Consultant on Energy issues

Back to the Top

"Why Care About Liberia?  War and Sustainability in West Africa and New Jersey"
Brower Student Center 202 West
3:45 - 5 p.m.

Moderator:
Derek Peterson, Assistant Professor, Department of History

The West African country of Liberia was from 1990 to 1997 gripped by a devastating civil war that left some 60,000 people dead, 40,000 from starvation. The repercussions of the war continue up to the present, with the ruling party regularly conducting campaigns against ethnic groups that it regards as its enemies. In the aftermath of the war, thousands of Liberians have immigrated to New Jersey, many of them settling with expatriate communities in Newark and Trenton. The Liberian diaspora is therefore one of the important, and little understood, challenges facing policy-makers and concerned citizens alike in central New Jersey.  This panel will explore the human, environmental and political consequences of the continuing unrest in Liberia. We'll learn about how ordinary Liberians experienced, and dealt with, environmental, military and political disaster. We'll also learn how exiled Liberians have worked to remake their lives by settling here in New Jersey. 

Panelists

Reg Hoyt is Senior Vice President for Conservation and Science at the Philadelphia Zoo, where he oversees the nearly thirty conservation programs that the Zoo operates. An advocate and facilitator for conservation action at home and around the globe, Mr. Hoyt's research has focused on Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Onesimus Gayemen is founder and coordinator of the African Immigrant Community All African Center of East Orange, New Jersey. Since 1996, he and other volunteers associated with the All African Center have helped to resettle Liberians and other African immigrants in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, offering legal advice, logistical assistance, and other aid to new arrivals. A native of Liberia, Mr. Gayemen is a graduate of the College of New Rochelle and a teacher in the Newark public school system.

Back to the Top

Student Organization Tables

• Amnesty International
  Amnesty International is a worldwide movement of people acting on the conviction that governments must not deny individuals their basic human rights. The organization was awarded the 1977 Nobel Peace Prize for its efforts to promote global observance of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

• Water Watch
  Water Watch is dedicated to improving the water quality in the Trenton area.

• Students Acting For the Environment (SAFE)
  The purpose of this organization is to increase environmental awareness through education, campaigning, and outdoor activities.

• Animal Rights New Jersey
  ARNJ is a group that educates people about the suffering and exploitation of animals through the means of extensive monthly tabling, protests, and leafleting.

Back to the Top

Community Learning Day Planning Committee

Back to the Top