Founder and President of the Land Institute to Speak at Wooster on April 26

WOOSTER, Ohio - Wes Jackson, founder and president of the Land Institute in Salina, Kans., will present "The Necessity and Possibility of Agriculture where Nature is the Measure" on Wednesday, April 26, at The College of Wooster. The lecture, which is part of the "Sustainable Wooster, Sustainable World" Symposium, begins at 7:30 p.m. in Gault Recital Hall of Scheide Music Center (525 E. University St.). Admission is free and open to the public.

The following day (April 27), an art museum chat with Jackson and David Kline will be held in Ebert Art Museum (1220 Beall Ave.) at 7:30 p.m. The topic will be the selections from the John Taylor Arms Print Collection "Working the Land: 20th-Century Rural America," which are on display A dessert reception will precede both events.

Jackson, who established the Land Institute in 1976, was a Pew Scholar and a MacArthur Fellow. He earned a B.A. in biology at Kansas Wesleyan University, an M.A. in botany at the University of Kansas, and a Ph.D. in genetics at North Carolina State University. He was a professor of biology at Kansas Wesleyan and established the Environmental Studies program at California State University, Sacramento, where he became a tenured full professor. Jackson's writings include Rooted in the Land: Essays on Community and Place (1996), co-edited with William Vitek, Becoming Native to this Place (1994), Altars of Unhewn Stone (1987), Meeting the Expectations of the Land (1984), which was edited with Wendell Berry and Bruce Colman, and New Roots for Agriculture (1980), which outlines the basis for agricultural research at the Land Institute.

The work of the Land Institute has been featured extensively in the popular media, including The Atlantic Monthly, Audubon, "The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour." and NPR's "All Things Considered." Life magazine named Wes Jackson as one of 18 individuals predicted to be among the 100 "most important Americans of the 20th century."

Jackson's address is sponsored by the Environmental Analysis and Action Grant, funded by the Henry Luce Foundation, as well as Peace-by-Peace, Environmental Concerns of Students, Green House, Roots-N-Shoots, Organic Farming House, and the Women's Resource Center. For additional information, please call 330-263-2380.