Defiance College student Jennifer Creighton demonstrates cycle beads at the Cambodian Women’s Crisis Center (CWCC) in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The beads help poor Cambodian women monitor their menstrual cycles to help avert unwanted pregnancies. DC McMaster scholars and fellows have been actively engaged in research-based projects at the center for five years. Defiance Crescent News
By JACK PALMER
palmer@crescent-news.com
Whether it's improving economic growth in Belize or sustaining healthy families in rural northwest Ohio, the 2009 McMaster Symposium and Collegiate Global Summit covers a wide range of human issues.
The fifth annual event begins Thursday at 8 a.m. and runs through Saturday.
"This not only highlights the extraordinary work of our McMaster scholars and fellows, it is an opportunity for area residents to come together to share ideas and expertise around a common theme," said Dr. Laurie Worrall, dean of the McMaster School for Advancing Humanity.
This year's theme is "Humanity at the Crossroads: Challenges to Sustainable Community Development."
"We've attempted to define sustainability and community development broadly," said Worrall. "It's tempting to think of sustainability strictly in terms of developing nations where human activities are encroaching on forests and wildlife habitats. Yet is also applies to our own existence in northwest Ohio.
"For example, how do we sustain healthy families? What is sustainable economic growth? Can we sustain the current use of natural resources in our region? How can we create more sustainable lifestyles while also retaining the freedom and liberties we enjoy?"
Worrall cited the current economic crisis as proof that people around the world are more interdependent that they have been willing to admit.
"There is a broader, more inclusive notion of humanity that is emerging that can be uncomfortable," she said. "When the conversation moves toward changing the way we've always done things, it can appear unfamiliar, even threatening. We hope this week's McMaster Symposium and Global Summit presentations begin to provoke critical reflection on the sustainability of the way we live and consume on campus, in our communities and around the world."
The two keynote speakers are Margaret Lowman and Ruby Neil Sales.
Lowman, author of Life in the Treetops and It's a Jungle Up There, has worked extensively in the area of forest canopy research, traveling around the world. She is currently visiting professor of environmental studies at New College in Florida. An avid conservationist, she frequently speaks about her jungle adventures and about rain forest conservation.
Sales is a committed long distance runner for social justice. She is a scholar, public theologian, artistic producer and educator working at the intersection of race, class, gender, violence and sexuality. She is a prolific writer whose sermons and social critiques are widely acclaimed and circulated.
As a student she worked with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee in Alabama during the Civil Rights Movement. Sales completed her undergraduate education at Manhattanville College and attended Princeton University as a Princeton Scholar where she advanced to PhD candidacy. In 1998, she received a master's of divinity degree from Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass.
Lowman will speak Thursday at 7 p.m. and Sales will speak Saturday at 9 a.m. Both events are in Schomburg Auditorium.
"We hope the conference allows area residents to reflect on ways in which they can contribute to sustainability in their own communities," said Worrall. "This is a time to share, motivate and educate one another on the challenges we face in sustainability."
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