Contact
Dan Armstrong
darmstrong@dom.edu
(708) 524-6452
August 11, 2011
Sustainability leader Anthony D. Cortese to give Dominican’s McGreal Lecture
River Forest, IL — Dr. Anthony Cortese, principal founder of Boston-based Second Nature, will deliver Dominican University’s annual McGreal Lecture on “Higher Education’s Mission: A Healthy, Just and Sustainable Society” on Thursday, August 25, at 4:30 p.m. in Martin Recital Hall.
Second Nature was designed to accelerate the movement toward a sustainable future by working with college leaders to make healthy, just and sustainable action the foundation of all learning and practice in higher education. The nonprofit organization is the lead supporting group of the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment, which has been signed by 667 college and university presidents across the country who are committed to eliminating carbon emissions on their campuses and to training students to help society address the climate crisis.
Cortese, who previously served as Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection and as the first dean of environmental programs at Tufts University, is the co-founder of the Higher Education Associations Sustainability Consortium. He also the originator of the 1990 Talloires Declaration, a global action plan for incorporating sustainable and environmental literacy in teaching, research, operations and outreach at colleges and universities.
Cortese holds a master’s degree in environmental engineering at Tufts University and a doctorate in environmental health from Harvard University. He is a trustee of Green Mountain College, a fellow of the American Association of the Advancement of Science, and a Woodrow Wilson Fellow for Higher Education.
The annual McGreal Lecture honors Sister Nona McGreal, OP, former director of Project OPUS, a national program of research on the history of American Dominicans.
Founded in 1901, Dominican University is a comprehensive, coeducational Catholic institution offering 50 undergraduate academic programs and 34 graduate programs through the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, the Brennan School of Business, the School of Education, the Graduate School of Social Work, and the School of Leadership and Continuing Studies, as well as a doctorate in library science. In the 2011 issue of America’s Best Colleges, U.S. News & World Report ranked Dominican University in the top 20 Midwest master’s level universities and one of the Midwest’s “Great Schools at a Great Price.”
