One of the core strengths of the Center for Energy, Environment and Sustainability (CEES) is, along with our campus partners, the ability to leverage our extended network and organize outstanding seminars, lectures and roundtables with leading figures in the areas of energy, environment and sustainability. View the spring 2017 speaker lineup.

Here are highlights of events CEES has hosted or co-hosted throughout the years:

10/12/2016: Environmental Prospect editor Bill Jordan is an intellectual leader in the field of ecological restoration. Jordan’s interactive presentation shed light on the value of restoration as a conservation strategy, a technique for basic research, and as a performing art and the basis for a “new communion” with nature.

10/12/2016: The Southeast Program Associate for Defenders of Wildlife, Christian Hunt, engaged members in a conversation about the world’s most endangered canid and North America’s most endangered mammal– the red wolf.  During his presentation, Hunt addressed biological, political, and social issues associated with the red wolf.

10/19/2016: A photojournalist and Senior Fellow with the International League of Conservation Photographers, Jason Houston, explained his work at the intersections of social and environmental issues, producing stories that explore and inform our relationships with the natural world. Houston shed light on some of his recent projects in Latin America, the Philippines, the western United States, the eastern Andes, and in the Amazon.

11/10/2016: Chuck Leavell has become one of the most respected keyboardists in the world of rock’n’roll. Leavell is also a published author, long time tree farmer, and co-founder of the popular website The Mother Nature Network. Leavell performed live for audience members and also served on a panel regarding conservation and environmental stewardship.

11/4/2014:  The culminating event in the fall speaker series, Vandana Shiva spoke on the “Challenges and Realities of Feeding the World”.  Dr. Shiva addressed the myths that allow an unsustainable, unjust, violent system of food production to dominate our discourse, while the initiatives and movements that are creating sustainability, justice, and peace are marginalized.

10/31/2014:  Dr. Kirstin Dow, Professor of Geography at the University of South Carolina, speak on adaptation as a result of climate change in her lecture “Regional Climate Services and Adaptation”.  Dr. Dow is a social environmental geographer focusing on understanding climate impacts, vulnerability and adaptation. She is a lead author on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment, Working Group 2 report and contributing to the Summary for Policy Makers.

10/7/2014:  A screening of GMO:OMG was followed with a Q&A discussion with film maker Jeremy Seifert.  This event was the second in a series on the challenges and realities of feeding the world.

9/10/2014:  A moderated discussion titled “Make Every Bite Count” served as the kick-off of a semester-long series on the challenges and realities of feeding the world. Panelists Eliza Greenman, Eric Hallman and April McGregor provided insights into the importance of biodiversity and sustainable land and water use to adaptation, resilience, and economic viability.

3/21/2014:  Bill Hunt, PhD, a professor of biological and agricultural engineering at N.C. State (and the “rock star” of stormwater management in North Carolina), gave a lecture titled “No Drop Left Behind — Innovative Green Practices that Absorb Rain Water” which presented an entertaining and eye-opening look at how new technologies such as permeable pavement and green roofs can drastically reduce run-off and improve water quality.

2/27/2014:  Dr. Pete Daniel, Distinguished Historian and Former Curator, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution presented Toxic Drift: Pesticides and Health in the Post-World War II South.  Dr. Daniel specializes in the history of the twentieth-century South, and has curated exhibits that deal with science, photography, and music.

2/18/2014:  Rick Edgeman, Professor of Sustainability & Enterprise Performance at the Interdisciplinary Center for Organizational Architecture, School of Business & Social Sciences at Aarhus University, Denmark delivered a lecture titled “Sustainability and Wicked Challenges” which discussed  the Age of the Anthropocene, an age that is environmentally rather than stratgraphically defined and that is associated with the impact of humankind on planet earth.

2/11/2014:  Ken Richards, Musim Mas Professor of Sustainability at the National University of Singapore Business School will give a lecture discussing how the world is facing unprecedented challenges related to sustainability in his lecture “Education for a Sustainable Future”. 

2/10/2014:  A screening of Foodways and Roadways took a look at the community change over time in Winston-Salem as related to the built environment with particular emphasis on the effect on the African American Community and food access.

2/3/2014:  Dave Tell is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Studies, University of Kansas, and author of Confessional Crises and Cultural Politics in Twentieth-Century America.  His lecture The Rise and Fall of Mechanical Humanities: Or what Grain Elevators Teach us about Postmodernity follows the one hundred year, transatlantic circulation of six photographs of grain elevators, from Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier and the “icons of modernity” to a suddenly impassioned case against modernity.