From The Washington Post

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Urban agriculture advocate Jac Smit, 80

Jac Smit, 80, the founder and a former president of the Urban Agriculture Network, a nonprofit organization that promotes the practice of growing food staples in small, city-based gardens, died Nov. 15 at his home in Washington. He had metastatic cancer.

In the late 1990s, Mr. Smit’s organization was awarded a grant from the U.N. Development Program to investigate urban agricultural farming around the world. Mr. Smit’s findings, published in 1996, said that the millions of people from Nairobi to Mexico City who had even a small yield of crops were less likely to be malnourished and unhealthy.

Mr. Smit served as an adviser on dozens of urban agricultural projects, including in Bogota, Colombia; Karachi, Pakistan; Jakarta, Indonesia; and Port-au-Prince, Haiti; and also in refugee camps in Bangladesh and Tanzania.

John William Smit was born in Ealing, near London, to a Dutch immigrant family. The family moved to Rhode Island when Mr. Smit was an infant and later spent time in Illinois, Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

Mr. Smit graduated in 1952 with a degree in ornamental horticulture from what is now Farmingdale State College in New York. In 1961, he received a master’s degree in city and regional planning from Harvard University.

From 1963 to 1967, Mr. Smit worked as a project planner in Chicago before joining the Ford Foundation for three years as an adviser to the metropolitan planning organization in Calcutta, India.

Mr. Smit first started working with the United Nations in 1972 as a director in Bangladesh with the International Rescue Committee. From 1975 to 1978, he helped plan agricultural development projects in cities on the Suez Canal.

Mr. Smit moved to the Washington area in the early 1980s. He spent time in Egypt, working for the U.S. Agency for International Development, before being hired by the Japanese government to help plan a renewal project in Baghdad.

In 1992, Mr. Smit founded and became the first president of the Urban Agriculture Network. He stepped down as president this year.

Mr. Smit was a member of the Hash House Harriers, a running organization.

His marriage to Justine Pascale ended in divorce.

Survivors include his wife, Elise Fiber Smith of Washington; two stepsons, Guy Smith of Minneapolis and Greg Smith of Beaufort, S.C.; two brothers; and seven grandchildren.

– T. Rees Shapiro

From newsblaze.com

Steven E. Sanderson, President and CEO of the Wildlife Conservation Society, is available for commentary on current efforts at the Copenhagen climate talks to finalize a deal to compensate countries for protecting forests and peatlands. Sanderson can also comment at on avoided deforestation programs (such as REDD projects) and protecting peat soils in locations such as Chile’s Karukinka National Park.

In a recently published article appearing in the latest edition of Foreign Affairs, Sanderson writes: “Tropical forests represent a vast sink for carbon, and their destruction may account for 20 percent of annual CO2 emissions. Peatlands lock up one-third of global soil carbon in three percent of global territory, representing a cost-effective area for climate change mitigation - yet they are suffering losses from fire, drainage, and agricultural conversion and, consequently, emitting up to two gigatons of CO2 per year.”

In a recent edition of Americas Quarterly, Sanderson writes: “The Western Amazon, Chilean old-growth forests, Maya Biosphere Reserve, Sub-Antarctic nothofagus forest, and many other important forest patches offer an investment opportunity to the world, even though they are not currently high-risk: set aside intact carbon-rich forests that are not presently at risk, thereby saving the world an additional expenditure in its CO2 budget and saving the biodiversity that depends on those forests…..The nations of Latin America have the institutional, intellectual and political infrastructure to deliver on this idea, and it would be a powerful contribution to conservation and the mitigation of climate change.”

He further notes: “The same should be done for the Patagonian peatlands of Argentina and Chile, the southernmost peatlands in the world and among the richest in the world. Now, they are at risk from exploitation for energy and horticulture. Such high latitude peatlands are of growing importance in the world of climate change and hydrology, as they are unique, unusually rich in carbon, and among the most vulnerable to use….If they can be protected, the long-term benefits for biodiversity and carbon storage will be immense.”

Sanderson adds: “WCS has an extraordinary opportunity to create a Carbon for Conservation strategy that marries the conservation of biodiversity with climate mitigation and adaptation and a meaningful benefit for the poorest rural residents - our partners in the remote settings where we work. Our advantage lies in the fact that we manage about 200 million acres around the world, about 70 percent of which is in forest. A rough estimate of the above-ground vegetation CO2 in the forest landscapes we manage is ~31B tons.”

Steven E. Sanderson has been President and Chief Executive Officer of the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York since 2001. Previously, he was Dean of Emory College, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, at Emory University in Atlanta. He received a Ph.D. in Political Science from Stanford University in 1978. Over the past thirty years, he has studied the politics of rural poverty, biodiversity conservation and environmental change. As a member of the faculty of the University of Florida from 1979 to 1997, he directed the Tropical Conservation and Development Program and chaired the Department of Political Science.

A former Fulbright Scholar in Mexico (1976-77), in the mid-1980s Sanderson held a Rockefeller Foundation International Relations Fellowship in Mexico and a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellowship in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative in Washington, D.C. From 1985 to 1987, he served as Ford Foundation Program Officer in Brazil, where he designed and implemented the Foundation’s Amazon conservation and rural poverty program.

Position Description

One of the nation’s foremost research universities, Rutgers University was chartered as a colonial college in 1766, making it the eighth oldest institution of higher education in the country. A member of the Association of American Universities, Rutgers now comprises 27 degree-granting schools and colleges and more than 200 specialized research institutes. External research funding in FY 2009 exceeded $390 million. The remarkable diversity of its 54,000 students, and over 9,000 faculty and staff reflects the racial and ethnic diversity of the population of its state.

Douglass Residential College, for women students, is located on the New Brunswick campus of Rutgers University.  The Douglass Residential College provides programs promoting women’s leadership for a community of approximately 2000 students. Douglass was founded as the New Jersey College for Women in 1918 and renamed Douglass College, after its first dean, in 1955. Today, this innovative residential college retains traditions and close relations with alumnae. Douglass Residential College offers Rutgers women the close-knit community of a small liberal arts college and, at the same time, access to the resources of a distinguished public Research I university.

The dean of the Douglass Residential College participates actively in the recruitment of students and holds authority over educational programs. Any female undergraduate at Rutgers-New Brunswick may choose to be a member of Douglass Residential College; requirements for students in Douglass Residential College include a mission course on women’s leadership; an externship with a Douglass alumna; and the creation of an e-portfolio to highlight curricular and co-curricular achievements. Douglass Residential College students also receive priority placement in one of the eleven living-learning communities located on that campus. Douglass’s living-learning communities, including the first residence hall for women in science in the nation, engage students inside and outside the classroom on issues related to an academic theme; many houses have funding for students to travel or complete group projects.

The dean of the Douglass Residential College works with a vice dean, six assistant deans, and a staff totaling twenty, overseeing a budget of close to $2.5 million. The dean reports to the vice president for undergraduate education, and works closely with that office, as well as with admissions, the deans of the academic schools, the other campus deans, and the offices of student life and residence life. In this last capacity, the dean will form partnerships with student affairs professionals, including the dean of students and the vice president for student affairs. The dean of the Douglass Residential College has a major role in fund-raising, working in collaboration with the Associated Alumnae of Douglass College and the Rutgers University Foundation in the development of long-term fund-raising strategies.

The dean also serves as Campus Dean for the Douglass Campus, a role that makes the dean the academic leader of the campus, the person who connects all students living on the campus—not just those who are members of Douglass Residential College—to the academic work and events of faculty and departments. Although authority over faculty and academic requirements resides with schools and/or departments, the Douglass Residential College and its dean provide leadership for university-wide initiatives related to women’s and gender issues.

The dean will also be a member of the Institute for Women’s Leadership at Rutgers, a consortium including the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies and other institutes focused on women’s issues.

Qualifications: The successful candidate will possess a Ph.D. and a record of scholarly accomplishments warranting appointment at the rank of associate or full professor in a discipline taught at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. The candidate must have a demonstrated interest in women’s education, undergraduate education, and in working with students of diverse backgrounds. The ideal dean will have experience in administration and be a leader in innovative, student-centered women’s scholarship and education. The successful candidate must be invested in serving as dean for at least five years.

The salary for this position is competitive, based upon the candidate’s experience and credentials. The deadline for submission is January 4, 2010.

Please submit nominations, expressions of interest, and inquiries to:

Professor Carla Yanni
Chair of Search Committee/DRC and Douglass Campus Dean
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
83 Somerset Street
New Brunswick, New Jersey 08901-1281
cyanni@rci.rutgers.edu
732-932-4388

If you wish to apply, send C.V., cover letter, vision statement about women’s leadership and education, and names of three referees to Carla Yanni c/o Linda Palmieri. Applications and referees’ names will be kept confidential. Electronic applications strongly preferred.

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is an Equal Employment Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer, and an NSF Advance Institution.

The University has a strong commitment to achieving diversity among faculty, students, and staff, and we encourage members of underrepresented groups to apply for this position.

From news.adventist.org

Milton Murray, a life-long philanthropist, mentor and founder of charitable organizations throughout North and South America, died December 9 in a care facility in Loma Linda, California. He was 87.[photo: courtesy Milton Murray Foundation]

Murray founded the philanthropy program of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, Philanthropic Service for Institutions (PSI), in the 1970s and served as its director for 20 years. The organization is based at the church’s world headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Murray received the highest honor bestowed by the Association of Healthcare Philanthropy, the Si Seymour Award, in 1980. The National Society of Fund-Raising Executives named him Outstanding Fundraiser in 1991, and he received the Henry A. Rosso Award from the University of Indiana in 1992.

“He was one of the monumental leaders in the field of philanthropy nationwide, and one that all of us in that profession respected greatly,” said Jim Erickson, director of the Center for Philanthropy at La Sierra University. Erickson recently named a series of nonprofit seminars after Murray.

After Murray spent 27 years advocating for the release of a stamp commemorating philanthropy, the United States Postal Service issued “Giving & Sharing” postage in 1998.

Murray was born on April 6, 1922, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, to missionary parents. After spending his first 17 years in Spanish-speaking territories, he spoke fluent Spanish for the rest of his life.

Murray graduated from La Sierra University, located in Riverside, California, in 1949. He joined the staff at Loma Linda University as the facility’s first public relations professional, working there for 12 years.

In 1961, Murray left Loma Linda to work for the G. A. Brakeley Company and later for the Ford Foundation. He subsequently moved to Mexico, commissioned by the Ford Foundation to establish a development program at the University of Guadalajara. The program was the first of its kind at any private institution of higher education in Latin America.

Murray later accepted a position with the Adventist Church’s regional administration in the Mid-Atlantic United States as a consultant for institutional development. He also worked at the church’s Columbia Union Conference, which serves the U.S. Mid-Atlantic region.

In 1973 Murray joined the Adventist world headquarters, launching PSI. In that office he helped nurture and establish programs among more than 100 church institutions located primarily in the continental United States.

Kristin Priest, associate director for PSI programs, said Murray played a key role in her career path; she now oversees the program he founded - Career Opportunities.

“I’ve basically come full circle, thanks to Milton,” Priest said.

Murray received an honorary doctorate in humanitarian service from La Sierra University in 2004. Murray’s life also inspired the book, “The Makings of a Philanthropic Fund Raiser: the Instructive Example of Milton Murray,” written by Ronald Knott and published in 1992.

“He had a rare gift for moving effortlessly between the inside and the outside of the Adventist environment, relentlessly advancing the church’s interests and its good reputation in the non-profit world and in general society,” Knott said. “He was a consummate church statesman who helped define a great generation of church leadership.”

Until his retirement in 1992, Murray was a certified member of the National Association of Fundraising Executives, an Accredited Member of the Public Relations Society of America, and a Fellow of the Association for Healthcare Philanthropy.

He is survived by his second wife, Jeanne Murray, two children and two grandchildren. His first wife, Virginia H. Murray, died in 2000.

–additional reporting by Don Roth

To honor Murray’s legacy of service in philanthropy, the family suggests charitable contributions be made to:

Milton Murray Foundation for Philanthropy
PO Box 521
College Place, WA 99324

La Sierra University
Center for Philanthropy
Office of University Advancement
4500 Riverwalk Parkway
Riverside, CA  92515

From Business Week

After five years at the helm of the world’s most prestigious B-school, Light is calling it quits. His successor faces daunting challenges

By John Lauerman and Brian K. Sullivan

(Bloomberg) – Harvard Business School (Harvard Full-Time MBA Profile) Dean Jay Light, who oversaw the school during the global financial crisis that challenged business education and slashed the value of Harvard’s endowment, will retire in June, after five years in the position.

Light, 68, the ninth person to serve as the school’s dean since its founding in 1908, is stepping down after serving in a number of positions for 40 years, the school in Boston said today in a statement.

Light, a director of the Harvard Management Co. that invests the university’s endowment, saw the fund fall to $26 billion from $36.9 billion during the fiscal year that ended June 30. The meltdown raised numerous issues for educating business leaders, Light said.

“The lessons have been about risk management, about making sure there’s a focus on the possible downsides, how to monitor them, how to manage them, how to be alert to systemic risk,” he said in a telephone call with reporters today. “All those are crucial to the function of a real leader.”

Harvard Business School pioneered the use of case studies to examine business decisions. Under Light, professors used the used the same method to scrutinize whether the school failed to teach students to understand and manage risk in the recession that began last year.

‘SOLID FEATURE’

Paul Danos, 65, dean of Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business Administration (Tuck Full-Time MBA Profile) in Hanover, New Hampshire, said he expects Light’s successor to continue with the case method.

“This is a pretty solid feature of the program that is going to be a feature of the program for a long time,” Danos said.

University President Drew Faust will soon launch a search for Light’s successor, according to the statement. Harvard has had a tradition of selecting deans from within the school, David Schmittlein, dean of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management(MIT Sloan Full-Time MBA Profile), in Cambridge, said by telephone. While the Harvard Business School’s complexity would make it hard for someone from the outside to take over, it wouldn’t be impossible, he said.

“A great strength of Harvard is that it has a strong set of senior associate deans, and on one level, the ability of an outsider to come in is greatly enhanced by having that level of skill available,” Schmittlein said.

Harvard’s faculty spend more time writing, researching or supervising case-writing than professors at other top business schools, Danos said. That makes the job better suited to an insider, he said.

‘VERY COMPLEX’

“It makes it very complex to an outsider, especially the case-writing tradition,” he said. “There aren’t many schools that have it at that level.”

Light, a 1963 graduate of Cornell University in engineering physics, earned his doctorate in decision and control theory from Harvard in 1970. He joined the Harvard Business School faculty in 1969, and left the school in 1977 to work at the Ford Foundation.

After returning two years later, he held positions at the business school in finance, strategic planning and new initiatives before being named dean. He succeeded Kim Clark, who stepped down as dean in 2005 after a decade in the post. His research has focused on capital markets and institutional asset management, the statement said.

Light has been “a strong and influential voice within our deans’ council on matters of university-wide concern, and someone whose organizational and financial expertise has long benefited not just the business school but the university more generally,” Faust said in the statement.

GLOBAL ECONOMY

Light said his successor will face the challenges of teaching graduates to function in a global economy and helping them develop leadership skills.

“This and all business schools need to constantly press ahead in becoming more global institutions,” said Light, who is also the George F. Baker Professor of Administration.

Harvard Business School was ranked third in the world behind the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and the London Business School in the latest Financial Times survey. The school’s alumni include Jeffrey Immelt, General Electric Co. (GE) chairman and chief executive officer, and former U.S. President George W. Bush.

26.11.2009

In the essay, “Where the Wild Things Were,” currently appearing in Foreign Affairs, Dr. Steven Sanderson, President and CEO of the Wildlife Conservation Society, asserts the world’s political institutions have failed the planet but “realism cannot turn into defeatism.”

Sanderson, who published an essay with a similarly dire assertion in 2002, concludes these seven years later: “There have been landmark foreign policy acts in the past that managed to satisfy both domestic and global interests, and there could be again in the future.”

Sanderson sees as one road to progress policies that connect biodiversity and climate change.

Writes Sanderson: “In short, the time is ripe for a new vision, one that takes both biodiversity and climate change seriously and explores the crucial connections between them. The Copenhagen process is already moving in this direction, and some new global financial mechanisms are also emerging.”

The following are excerpts from this timely article being published on the eve of the U.N. Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen, December 7-18.

Sanderson is available for interviews on these climate change issues and others.

The Situation Is Worsening

“On the eve of the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, I argued that wild nature was in deep distress and that the international institutions charged with the planet’s care were managing it poorly (”The Future of Conservation,” September/October 2002). Seven years on, the situation is even worse. Humans control the Earth’s biosphere and directly manage perhaps half of global plant matter. Their collective ecological impact, however, has taken on a pernicious life of its own, seemingly beyond the will, and perhaps even the capacity of sovereign political actors to affect.”

Dire Political and Environmental News

“Nevertheless, the loss of biodiversity — wildlife, genetic material, ecosystems, and evolutionary processes — has not abated. The United States has still not ratified the CBD, and the UN system for conservation is still weak, lacking sanctions for states that fail to live up to their commitments. Trade in protected wildlife continues and poaching runs rampant. Funding for conservation remains vanishingly small, and important animal populations and entire species are in grave danger.”

Climate Change Adds to the Urgency

“Climate change, meanwhile, has begun to rival habitat loss as the greatest threat to the biosphere. After somehow maintaining most of its animal species throughout human history, for example, Africa now faces unprecedented losses of wildlife and wild places thanks to global warming. Savannah elephants have no exit corridors from East African drought; changes in water availability threaten natural areas and force the rural poor to resettle; migrating birds arrive at the wrong time, finding little food or nesting opportunities; small populations of animals are simply blinking out.

Melting glaciers and changing patterns of rain and snowfall are transforming the Andean, Rocky Mountain, and Himalayan watersheds. The headwaters of the Amazon, the Ganges, and the Brahmaputra rivers are in peril, along with the human and wildlife diversity they sustain. The Arctic is warming fast, surrendering methane and CO2 to the atmosphere from the not-so-permafrost. Troubling images of drowning polar bears overshadow an even greater concern: credible estimates warn that five out of every six migratory birds are vulnerable to climate change, and some Arctic habitats could suffer a 90 percent depletion of waterfowl.”

The Role of the United States

“For years, Washington has largely stood apart from the climate change debate. The U.S. role in the lead-up to next month’s climate summit in Copenhagen has been cautious and noncommittal, as the Obama administration looks warily over its shoulder at years of hostility in Congress toward the Kyoto protocol and its successors. If climate legislation ever emerges from Congress, it will have struggled its way past powerful forces trying to prevent a truly global bill or at least deflect its purpose from combating climate change to subsidizing special interests in the agricultural, energy, and other sectors.”

One Solution: Connecting Climate Change and Biodiversity

“In short, the time is ripe for a new vision, one that takes both biodiversity and climate change seriously and explores the crucial connections between them. The Copenhagen process is already moving in this direction, and some new global financial mechanisms are also emerging. The World Bank’s climate investment funds are designed to reduce deforestation in order to mitigate climate change. The Global Environmental Facility, an organization that provides grants to developing countries for projects related to promoting biodiversity and other environmental issues, could make a greater contribution if given more funding and more agile management. Both the UN and the World Bank have limited but valuable new financial facilities for reducing emissions from land-use change.”

Losses Are Global/Solutions Start Local

“Realism cannot turn into defeatism, however. There have been landmark foreign policy acts in the past that managed to satisfy both domestic and global interests, and there could be again in the future. The Food for Peace program begun in 1954, for example, has been simultaneously good for agricultural surplus disposal, foreign assistance, and hunger relief. Leadership from Washington now could help spur movement toward a low-carbon economy and marry it to existing support for protected areas and global public health. The problems of climate change and biodiversity loss are global, but the solutions to them must begin at the local level. Conservation is about saving wildlife and wild places in specific locales. Small programs can become large building blocks if the global community stands ready to encourage them.”

INTERVIEW AVAILABILITY:
Dr. Steven E. Sanderson is President and Chief Executive Officer of the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York. Prior to his appointment to WCS in 2001, he was Dean of Emory College, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, at Emory University in Atlanta. He received a Ph.D. in Political Science from Stanford University in 1978. As a faculty member at the University of Florida from 1979 to 1997, he directed the Tropical Conservation and Development Program and chaired the Department of Political Science.

A former Fulbright Scholar in Mexico (1976-77), Dr. Sanderson also held a Rockefeller Foundation International Relations Fellowship in Mexico and a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellowship in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative in Washington, D.C. Sanderson has been the recipient of fellowships and grants from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars of the Smithsonian Institution, NASA, and the Ford, MacArthur, Tinker and Heinz Foundations. From 1985 to 1987, he served with the Ford Foundation in Brazil, where he designed and implemented the Foundation’s Amazon conservation and rural poverty program.

For the past twenty years, he has been deeply involved with scientific cooperation on the environment, through the Social Science Research Council Committee for Research on Global Environmental Change, the International Geosphere-Biosphere program, and the National Academy of Sciences Oversight Committee on Restoration of the Greater Everglades Ecosystem. Dr. Sanderson is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and advisor to the Woods Institute of the Environment at Stanford University.

Sanderson has written several books and monographs about Latin American politics, trade and the environment, as well as the politics of conserving wild exploited nature. Since leaving academia in 2001, he has continued to write about conservation and society and is a frequent lecturer on wildlife conservation, and the impact of global climate change on the future of the wild. Among his recent publications: “The Future of Conservation,” Foreign Affairs (September 2002); “Poverty and Conservation: The New Century’s Peasant Question?” World Development (2005); and “Conservation as Diplomacy,” State of the Wild (Island 2008),”Growing Green,” Americas Quarterly Fall 2009.