John Doggett speaker for Nov. 12 program at Wofford

SPARTANBURG, S.C. – Sustainability through an “energy lens” will be the focus of the next lecture in the Santee Cooper Lecture Series on Sustainability & Energy, to be presented at 11 a.m. on Thursday, Nov. 12, at Wofford College by John Doggett, an expert in the field from the University of Texas-Austin.

The program will be held in Leonard Auditorium of Main Building on Wofford’s campus. It is free and open to the public.

Doggett’s is the second in the four-lecture series, presented by Wofford and Santee Cooper, South Carolina’s state-owned utility. The first was held in September at Opening Convocation, marking the beginning of the college’s academic year. Others are planned for February and March of 2010.

Doggett will help students “see the connection between energy and agribusiness, water use, the construction of buildings and the disposal of waste. We will look at how the conversation about fuel efficiency, alternative energy and greenhouse gas emissions are all energy and sustainability issues. We also will look at how new energy technologies can have a significant impact in helping to make businesses more sustainable.”

A senior lecturer in the Department of Management and Sustainability at the University of Texas-Austin, Doggett was presented with the Outstanding Professor Award from Texas Executive MBA students. The students selected one professor from the program who has made a lasting impact in their education at McCombs. Doggett teaches courses on global competition, entrepreneurship and sustainability. He also teaches seminars in Asia, Europe and Latin America. He was a legal aid lawyer for seven years and also has started two companies. Doggett spent the past 25 years helping companies and countries all over the world develop strategies to become more competitive.

The remaining lectures are:

Tuesday, Feb. 9, 2010
11 a.m., Leonard Auditorium, Main Building
Guest Speaker, Barry Lopez: “Sustainability and Justice”

Barry Lopez is the author of “Arctic Dreams,” for which he received the National Book Award; “Of Wolves and Men,” a National Book Award finalist for which he received the John Burroughs and Christopher medals; and eight works of fiction, including “Light Action in the Caribbean,” “Field Notes,” and “Resistance.” His essays are collected in two books, “Crossing Open Ground” and “About This Life.” He contributes regularly to Granta, The Georgia Review, Orion, Outside, The Paris Review, Manoa and other publications in the United States and abroad. His most recent book is “Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape,” a reader’s dictionary of regional landscape terms, which he edited with Debra Gwartney. In 2003, Lopez was appointed Texas Tech University’s first Visiting Distinguished Scholar, a position that formally recognized a variety of projects he had been working on at the university for two years. In 2001, he and E.O. Wilson, the Harvard biologist, designed a new undergraduate major for TTU’s Honors College. It combined study in the sciences and humanities into a single degree program, the B.A. in Natural History & the Humanities.

Tuesday, March 16, and Wednesday, March 17, 2010
“The Dam Symposium: Small Scale Dams & Hydro From Three Perspectives”
(Tuesday, 7:30 p.m., Leonard Auditorium; Wednesday, 2-4 p.m., Environmental Studies Center at Glendale Shoals)

Three experts on dams and small hydro will convene at Wofford College and the Environmental Studies Center at Glendale Shoals for a public discussion of the role on small-scale hydro in our energy future. The speakers will offer perspectives from the humanities, social sciences, and science. The speakers are John Seebech, director of Hydropower Reform Initiative, American Rivers; Ginger Strand, author of “Inventing Niagara;” and Dr. Dave Hargett, principal and senior consultant with the environmental consultancy HRI.