Environmental policy leader to headline MSU lecture series

Contact: Maridith Geuder

The president of the H.J. Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment speaks Wednesday [April 21] at Mississippi State as part of the university's annual Carlton N. Owens Lecture Series.

Thomas E. Lovejoy's 1:30 p.m. public presentation in Thompson Hall's Tully Auditorium will be followed by a reception in the same location.

The Owens Lecture Series was established in the College of Forest Resources in 1992 by the Greenville, S.C., resident and 1974 MSU graduate for whom it is named. Lectures are designated on forest resources stewardship issues.

Lovejoy has been president of the Washington, D.C.-based Heinz Center since 2002. He earlier served as the World Bank's chief biodiversity adviser and senior adviser to the president of the United Nations Foundation.

Lovejoy, who holds bachelor's and doctoral degrees from Yale University, also has held positions as assistant secretary and counselor to the secretary at the Smithsonian Institution, science adviser to the Office of the U.S. Secretary of the Interior and executive vice president of the World Wildlife Fund-U.S.

He led in founding the highly regarded public television series, "Nature," and in 2001 received the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement.

Established in 1995 to honor the late Pennsylvania Sen. H. John Heinz III, the nonprofit, nonpartisan institution focuses on environmental issues likely to confront policymakers within two-five years. Heinz, an environmental advocate, was killed in a 1991 airplane crash.

For more information on the MSU program, telephone (662) 325-2953.