Bowling
Green, Ky - The 5th International Conference on Environmental Informatics (ISEIS2006) will take place Aug. 1-3 at the Sloan Convention Center in Bowling Green.
The conference will provide a unique gathering place and open forum for bringing together researchers, engineers, managers, and practitioners from a broad range of disciplines with common interests in techniques and tools of environmental information sciences.
Jointly organized by the Western Kentucky University Center for Water Resource Studies and the International Society for Environmental Information Sciences (ISEIS), the event will offer an unprecedented opportunity for participants to discover cutting-edge environmental informatics technology, its development and applications in environmental studies, resource management and sustainable development.
The conference will feature exhibits, breakout sessions, speakers and social opportunities. Keynote speakers for the 2006 conference are Kevin Mickey, Director, Professional Education and Outreach for The Polis Center at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis; Cheryl Charles, Senior Director for The Business and Technology Group; and LaJuana Wilcher, Kentucky Environmental and Public Protection Cabinet Secretary.
The International Society for Environmental Information Sciences is a non-profit and free-membership organization of individuals, institutions and corporations. The society is dedicated to the development of information systems technology for environmental applications. It promotes the international exchange of knowledge in the field of environmental information systems research. As its vision, ISEIS is working toward becoming an influential contributor of scientifically credible and technically sound information with regard to environmental science, health and technology in international communities.
Membership to ISEIS is free. The society, based in Saskatchewan, Canada, has members employed by academia, government and industry all over the world. For information about the 2006 International Conference, visit www.iseis.org or contact Karla Andrew at (270) 991-5663 or karla.andrew@wku.edu.
The 2006 ISEIS International Conference is being coordinated by the WKU Continuing Education department, a unit of the Division of Extended Learning and Outreach (DELO). For information about Continuing Education or DELO, contact Sharon Woodward at (270) 745-1910 or Bill Oldham at (270) 745-1926. For information about the WKU Center for Water Resource Studies, contact Andrew Ernest at (270) 745-8895 or andrew.ernest@wku.edu.
Keynote speaker profiles
Kevin Mickey is the Director of the Professional GIS Education Program for The Polis Center at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis and an Adjunct Faculty member at the Department of Geography at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis. The Professional GIS Education program, created and developed through his leadership, currently offers more than two dozen technical and theoretical courses in Indianapolis as well as on-site at client locations throughout the country. The program, recognized as a resource for its wide variety of standard courses as well as for customized education, has supported the needs of hundreds of organizations including the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the U.S. Department of Labor, the National Library of Medicine, and many state and local government, private sector, academic, and not-for-profit entities.
In addition to serving as an educator, Mickey has managed and supported more than 300 spatial technologies projects since joining The Polis Center in 1990. His responsibilities in these projects have included design, development, testing, implementation, and analysis of complex GIS applications, models and databases.
Mickey has served on a variety of committees that address cartographic and GIS related issues. These include the Indiana Geographic Information Systems Initiative (INGISI) Steering Committee, Standards Committee and Web Committee. He chairs the Education Committee for INGISI that addresses the educational needs of all sectors of GIS users throughout Indiana. In addition, he serves on the Midwest HAZUS Users Group Steering Committee.
Cheryl Charles is Senior Director of Communications, Research and Strategic Planning for The Business and Technology Group (BITS) for the Financial Services Roundtable. BITS is a non-profit industry consortium of the 100 largest financial institutions of the United States. She was recently named as Co-chair of the World Conservation Union’s (IUCN) Education for Sustainable Development working group of the Commission on Education and Communications.
For close to 20 years, Charles served as National Director of the two most widely used environment education programs in North America for K-12 educators, Project Learning Tree and Project WILD, receiving numerous awards for her leadership. She serves as a member of the Advisory Board to the National Conservation Learning Summit, held near Washington, D.C., in November 2005, and will help to guide the Summit’s five-year Implementation Plan for a New Conservation Agenda. She is also a member of the World Conservation Union’s Commission on Education and Communication, and a Special Advisor to the IUCN’s Steering Committee for the Commission on Education and Communication.
Charles is author, editor and designer of a wide variety of publications including books, articles, educational materials and monographs. Her most recent book, co-authored with her husband, Bob Samples, is “Coming Home: Community, Creativity and Consciousness” (Personhood Press, 2004). She has been listed for many years in the “Marquis Who's Who in America” and “Who's Who in the West.” She has taught at the elementary, secondary, undergraduate and graduate levels; has given hundreds of public presentations and scores of keynote addresses; and has facilitated a wide variety of civic, business and educational meetings on a range of topics from developing community leadership to improving educational systems.
LaJuana Wilcher is a biologist and environmental lawyer with almost three decades experience in environmental and natural resources issues. In 2003, Kentucky Gov. Ernie Fletcher selected Wilcher to the Commonwealth’s top environmental position.
Wilcher is secretary of Kentucky’s Environmental and Public Protection Cabinet. A biologist and lawyer, she returned to Kentucky in 2002 after 19 years of federal service and private practice in Washington, D.C. As the U.S. EPA’s Assistant Administrator for Water (1989-1993), she directed initiatives in Eastern/Central Europe, the Wider Caribbean Basin, the Mexico Border, and the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development.
She traveled with congressional leaders to Poland and Hungary to meet local government officials and was a featured speaker in a symposium on environmental problems in Eastern/Central Europe. She was the senior official on the U.S. delegation at the International Conference on Water and the Environment in Dublin and served as the rapporteur of the Water Resources Workgroup. She was the keynote speaker at the International Conference on Ecological Engineering in Sweden, a featured speaker for a Toronto conference on global environmental issues, and addressed border issues at the U.S./Mexico Environmental Infrastructure Colloquy.
In private practice, she attended the “Partners for Peace” project in Israel with representatives of business, government and NGOs from the U.S., Israel, West Bank and Gaza. She has spoken on international environmental issues at the Government Institutes Conference of European Environmental Laws and Regulations.
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For information, contact Bill Oldham at (270) 745-1926.