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NCSE Releases Rita Colwell Lecture on Environmental Education and Science
September, 2003—NCSE has released the third annual John H. Chafee Memorial Lecture, delivered by Dr. Rita Colwell, Director of the National Science Foundation (NSF). Dr. Colwell presented the lecture, entitled "Obstinate Issues, Sophisticated Solutions," at NCSE's 2003 Education for a Sustainable and Secure Future conference.
In her talk, Dr. Colwell explained that scientific and technological progress is crucial to our environmental future, and that education is what enables scientific breakthroughs. "I will speak tonight about some emerging frontiers in research that are germane to our environmental future, and what we need to do to realize the promise they hold: a fresh and vigorous commitment to environmental education," she said. According to Dr. Colwell, nanoscale science and technology, molecular biology and genomics, and the study of human cognition are poised to push a new round of scientific discovery. She predicted that advances in these fields will have an impact comparable to the information and communication technologies that are now fueling new discoveries in a wide range of fields.
Many unanswered questions prevent us from fully understanding our environment, Dr. Colwell observed. She said, "These are questions of utmost importance for our environmental future. How vulnerable are natural systems to stress, and how resilient are they in the face of change? The answers bear directly on issues of great concern to all of us, from emerging infectious diseases to bioterrorism to the health of ecosystems, and from local contamination of soil and water to global climate change."
Protecting environmental health and stability, Dr. Colwell noted, is an important concern in today's society—a priority that science, facilitated by education, can address. She concluded her lecture saying, "Our collective concern and responsibility is to teach a new generation of citizens to understand our interdependence with all life on Earth—to recognize the evolutionary processes through which we arrived on the scene, to preserve the ecological balances that sustain us, and to see the vulnerability of the planet and our coinhabitants as our vulnerability."
Dr. Colwell became Director of the National Science Foundation in 1998, and from 1991 to 1998 she served as President of the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute. She remains Professor of Microbiology and Biotechnology at the University of Maryland (on leave). Dr. Colwell has co-authored 16 books and over 600 scientific publications, and has received many awards, including the Medal of Distinction from Columbia University; the Gold Medal of Charles University, Prague; the UCLA Medal from the University of California, Los Angelis; and the Alumna Summa Laude Dignata from the University of Washington, Seattle. She holds a B.S. in Bacteriology and an M.S. in Genetics from Purdue University, and a Ph.D. in Oceanography from the University of Washington.
Dr. Colwell's lecture can be accessed online at http://www.ncseonline.org/ewebeditpro/items/O62F2724.pdf.
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