High School Program
33rd Annual Engineers Week Dinner
The Ultimate Engineering Challenge:
Sustainability, Biomimicry, and Ecological DesignProfessor Harold Glasser
February 21, 2012
Fetzer CenterEvent Schedule
February 21, 2011, Fetzer Center
Social Hour 5:30-6:30
Dinner/Awards 6:30-7:30
Speaker 7:30-8:30Synopsis
With global population surpassing seven billion people, meeting the needs of all of the world’s citizens without further degrading the life support systems that we depend on for our sustenance has become the ultimate engineering challenge. A new approach to engineering, engineering for people and the planet, is needed to create the conditions that will allow for continuous improvements in quality of life for all of the world’s citizens. Designing sustainable strategies for providing energy, water, food, fiber, transport, shelter, goods and services, etc. represent new and unprecedented opportunities for young people interested in engineering. This presentation will outline some of the challenges ahead and highlight several promising approaches for meeting these challenges, biomimicry and ecological design.Biography
Harold Glasser, Executive Director for Campus Sustainability, Professor in Environmental Studies, and Chair of the President’s Universitywide Sustainability Committee at Western Michigan University, explores how individuals, organizations, and societies— from pre-agricultural to contemporary— make choices that affect the environment, which, in turn, affects them. He focuses on why—and how— some individuals, organizations, and societies work to monitor, understand, and reduce ecocultural impacts (and are successful at becoming more ecoculturally sustainable—thus improving quality of life for all) and others do not.
Professor Glasser has been instrumental in creating and directing the first United Nations University Regional Center of Expertise in Education for Sustainable Development in the US; Chair of the Performance Measurement Working Group of the EPA’s Colleges and Universities Sector Assessment Project; a Mesa Refuge Writers Retreat Fellow; a visiting Senior Fulbright Scholar at the Center for Development and Environment and Department of Philosophy, University of Oslo; a lecturer at Schumacher College, UK; and a visiting researcher at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Vienna.
Dr. Glasser has written numerous articles on deep ecology; environmental values, policy, and planning; multi-criteria analysis and product/policy evaluation; campus sustainability assessment; social learning; and education for ecocultural sustainability. Glasser was Series Editor of the Selected Works of Arne Naess. He has lectured widely in Japan, Norway, the Netherlands, Taiwan, the U.K., and throughout the U.S.
Please contact Dr. Jorge Rodriguez at jorge.rodriguez@wmich.edu or (269) 276-3374) to confirm space availability for the event. Registering with the "Buy Now" option does not guarantee space availability. Thank you for your interest in SW MI Engineers Week celebration
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For mail-in registration, please print the 2012 E-Week Dinner Flyer.