Registration for USU's 2006 Sustainable Landscapes Conference Underway

Registration is underway for the 2006 Sustainable Landscapes Conference to be held Tuesday, Apri1 4, at Utah State University. “Wildland and Urban Restoration: Processes of Rejuvenating Place” is the theme of the seventh annual gathering, which features lectures by nationally renowned speakers, along with discussions led by local experts.

Registrants for the day-long conference receive discounted tickets of $50 per person if purchased by March 28. Tickets are $60 after March 28. Cost for students with current ID is $10 if purchased by March 28 and $15 thereafter. Cost for USU faculty and staff is $25 if purchased by March 28 and $30 thereafter.

 

Tickets include access to all conference sessions, a conference guide and continental breakfast. Tickets purchased by March 28 include lunch. A complete conference schedule and registration forms are available on-line at www.sustainablelandscapes.org or by calling 435-797-0500.

 

The conference is sponsored by Sustainable Landscapes at Utah State, a student-led organization that seeks to provide a forum for discussion of sustainable issues, especially those particular to the Intermountain West.

 

“This year’s gathering explores the scientific, philosophical, ethical and social issues involved with restoration,” said Greg Wolfgang, conference co-chair.

 

Environmental ethicist and author Andrew Light is keynote speaker for the gathering, to be held in the Eccles Conference Center on the Utah State campus. Light is associate professor of philosophy and public affairs at the University of Washington, Seattle. He is also a research fellow at the Institute for Philosophy & Public Policy at Lancaster University (U.K.), a faculty fellow of the Center for Sustainable Development in the School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin, and affiliate faculty member at the Center for Environmental Policy at Bard College, New York.

 

Light is the author, editor or co-editor of 17 books on environmental ethics and policy, philosophy of technology, and aesthetics, including Environmental Pragmatism (Routledge 1996), Philosophies of Place (Rowman & Littlefield 1999), Technology and the Good Life? (Chicago 2000), Moral and Political Reasoning in Environmental Practice (MIT 2003), Animal Pragmatism: Rethinking Human-Nonhuman Relationships (Indiana 2005), and The Aesthetics of Everyday Life (Columbia 2005).

 

Other featured speakers include Darrel Morrison, professor and dean emeritus at the University of Georgia's School of Environmental Design, adjunct professor at USU and visiting professor, Rutgers University; Planting Project Coordinator Vaughn Lovejoy of Tree Utah; Ecologist Joan G. Ehrenfeld, professor in the department of ecology, evolution and natural resources at Cook College, Rutgers University; G. Mathias Kondolf, landscape architecture and geography professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and Karen Rodriguez, ecological protection and restoration team leader with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Great Lakes National Program Office.

 

The gathering also features moderated roundtable discussions.

 

Parking for the conference is available in the university parking terrace at 850 E. 700 North. The Eccles Conference Center is a short walk from the parking terrace and the Logan Transit District Route 1 and 4 bus stop at the Veterinary Science building on 700 North.

 

Conference sponsors include Utah State’s colleges of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences and Natural Resources, USU’s Western Rural Development Center, the Utah Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects, BIO-WEST, Inc., USU’s landscape architecture and environmental planning department and private donors.