Thursday, January 12, 2012
8:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Clayton Hall, Newark, DE

This free symposium is open to the entire Delaware environmental
research community.

The program will focus on introducing faculty who are new to the
University of Delaware and DENIN.

Agenda
8:00 – 8:30  Registration and continental breakfast
8:30 – 8:45  Opening remarks — Don Sparks and Provost Tom Apple
8:45 – 10:05  Research presentations by new "environmental cluster hire" faculty:
      Angelia Seyfferth, Plant & Soil Sciences
      Rodrigo Vargas, Plant & Soil Sciences
      Cristina Archer, Marine Science & Policy
      Andrea Sarzynski, Public Policy & Administration
10:05 – 10:30 Networking break
10:30 – 11:15 Keynote speaker — "What's Gotten Into Us: Staying Healthy in a Toxic World,"
      McKay jenkins (pictured)
11:15 – 12:15  Panel discussion:
     "Getting to Know You: Why Environmental Scientists, Humanists, and Social Scientists Need Each Other and How
     They Can Join Forces to Save the Planet," moderated by Tom Powers, Center for Science, Ethics and Public Policy. Panelists include:
      McKay Jenkins, English
      Adam Rome, History
      Victor Perez, Sociology
      Andrea Sarzynski, Public Policy & Administration
      Holly Michael, Geological Sciences
12:30 – 2:00 Lunch and poster session

All DENIN-affiliated faculty and students are welcome to submit a research poster for the poster session. Please indicate the title of your poster on the registration form.

Register using the online form by Friday, January 6, 2012.
For more information, contact Amy Broadhurst at als@udel.edu or 302-831-4335.

About McKay Jenkins
McKay Jenkins has been writing about people and the natural world for 25 years. He is the author of What’s Gotten Into Us: Staying Healthy in a Toxic World (Random House, 2011), which chronicles his investigation into the myriad synthetic chemicals we encounter in our daily lives, and the growing body of evidence about the harm these chemicals do to our bodies and the environment.

His other books include Bloody Falls of the Coppermine: Madness and Murder in the Arctic Barren Lands (Random House, 2005), the true tale of a pair of French Catholic missionaries who were murdered in the Arctic by a pair of Inuit hunters, and the trial and troubling cultural consequencs of this strange and fascinating event. His book The Last Ridge: The Epic Story of the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division and the Assault on Hitler’s Europe (Random House, 2003) tells the story of America’s most famous mountain soldiers. It recounts the division’s exploits training at high altitudes in Colorado and its heroic missions in the mountains of Italy during World War Two.

The White Death: Tragedy and Heroism in an Avalanche Zone (Random House, 2000) is the true story of five young mountaineers who, after setting out to make the first winter ascent of the highest peak in Montana’s Glacier National Park, were killed in a massive avalanche that led to one of the country’s largest search and rescue missions. The South in Black and White: Race, Sex, and Literature in the 1940s (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1999) explores the influence of racial history and sexual mores on the literature of the American South in the decades immediately preceding the Civil Rights Movement.

Jenkins is also the editor of The Peter Matthiessen Reader (Vintage, 2000), an anthology of the American nature writer’s finest and most enduring nonfiction work.

Jenkins holds degrees from Amherst, Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, and Princeton, where he received a Ph.D. in English. A former staff writer for the Atlanta Constitution, he has also written for Outside, Orion, The New Republic, and many other publications. Jenkins is currently the Cornelius Tilghman Professor of English and Director of Journalism at the University of Delaware, where he has won the Excellence in Teaching Award.