Energy, Environment and Resources Center

Jack Barkenbus, Executive Director

Center For Clean Products and Clean Technologies

Gary A. Davis, Director

Office of Communications and Publications

David Brill, Director

Center for Geography and Environmental Education

Rosalyn McKeown-Ice, Director

Oak Ridge Technology Research and Development Program

Sheila Webster, Director

Systems Development Institute

Donald Alvic, Director

Pro-Dialogue

Mary R. English and David L. Feldman, Directors

Water Resources Research Center

Tim Gangaware, Associate Director

For more information call Gail Farris at 865-974-4251 or write to EERC, 311 Conference Center Building, Knoxville, TN 37996-4134.

Visit our Web site at: http://eerc.ra.utk.edu/

International News.  Rosalyn McKeown, director of EERC’s Center for Geography and Environmental Education, attended the Eighth Annual Meeting of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development in New York City as a delegate of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). At the meeting, McKeown released the Education for Sustainable Development Tool Kit, which steers communities toward a program of education for sustainable development. The Tool Kit (http://www.esdtoolkit.org), written by McKeown with Charles A. Hopkins, UNESCO chair for reorienting teacher education to address sustainable development, and Graduate Assistant Regina Rizzi (Anthropology), was funded by EERC’s Waste Management Research and Education Institute (WMREI).

Each year, the EERC hosts a number of international visitors. Marco Frey, vice director of the Environmental Division of the Institute of Energy and Environmental Economics at Bocconi University in Milan, Italy, visited UT’s Knoxville campus in April. Frey’s visit to UT included a brown bag seminar at UT’s Conference Center Building, where he presented “The New Voluntary Instruments in Environmental Policy: The European Experience.”

Appointments.  Senior Research Scientist Jack Ranney was appointed director of the newly formed Southern Appalachian Mountains Cooperative Ecosystems Studies Unit (CESU), which is part of a national network of CESUs. The local CESU is sponsored by the US National Park Service, USDA Forest Service, US Geological Survey, and US Department of Energy. Local members include regional universities and nongovernmental organizations. Ranney will head a seven-member advisory group tasked with addressing such issues as climate change, exotic pest plants, and biodiversity. George Hopper, professor and head of UT’s Department of Forestry, Wildlife, and Fisheries, brought the CESU to UT.

Conferences.  EERC Faculty Associate Mary Rogge (College of Social Work) organized a session titled “Community‑Based Research on Environment and Social Justice” for the Midwest Sociological Society’s annual meeting in Chicago in April. At the session, Rogge and Research Specialist Kimberly Davis presented “Risk, Resilience, and Justice at Chattanooga Creek.” Chattanooga neighborhood activists Milton Jackson, president of Stop Toxic Pollution (STOP); Deborah Maddox, program manager of the Alton Park Development Corporation; and Maria Noel, formerly a reporter for the Chattanooga Times also presented papers at this session. In addition, Rogge and Davis presented their work in Nashville at the recent Tennessee Conference on Social Welfare in a session titled “Advocacy, Risk, and Environmental Justice.”

Laura Duncan, a research assistant with EERC’s Water Resources Research Center (WRRC), organized a session titled “Empowering Watershed Organizations: How to Increase the Effectiveness of Watershed Organizations through Participation and Planning” for the Third Annual Tennessee Clean Water Network Conference in Nashville. In this session, Davis, Rogge, and graduate assistant Vina Clark (College of Social Work) presented a progress report of a WMREI-sponsored project led by Rogge and Davis, in which UT students and faculty along with community members have identified and documented concerns about neighborhood toxins and their perceived risks. The researchers also participated in meetings about community-development issues and worked in the field with community-based agencies.