Featured speaker highlights
Debra Rowe has considerable experience facilitating catalyzing events at higher education institutions. She has been highly involved in preparations for this Penn State conference and will play several critical roles in facilitating conference goals. In the opening session, she will provide a national context for sustainability education and operations practices at Penn State by responding to panelists’ overview of our current sustainability efforts. She will engage panelists and audience members in a dialogue about how we can learn from and serve as a model for other institutions. She will then lead a concurrent session on greening the co-curriculum. On the second day of the conference, Dr. Rowe will facilitate the concluding discussion and action forum in which participants will come up with a plan for making sustainability one of the defining features of a Penn State education. Students, staff, faculty and administrators will work together to formulate this plan of action, and it will include directives for policy advocacy at state and federal levels, how to infuse the curriculum, and how to remove barriers at all campuses.
Dr. Rowe is the president of the U.S. Partnership for Education for Sustainable Development. The U.S. Partnership convenes members of the business, education, communities, government, and faith sectors of the United States and catalyzes sustainability initiatives. Dr. Rowe is also national co-coordinator of the Higher Education Associations Sustainability Consortium, founder of the Disciplinary Associations Network for Sustainability and senior advisor to the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. She helps higher education associations and institutions integrate sustainability into mission, curricula, professional development, research, student life, purchasing and investments, facilities and operations, and community partnerships.
For over twenty-eight years, Dr. Rowe has been a professor of energy management, renewable energy technology and psychology. She has created online sustainability related courses and degrees with funds from the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation. Dr. Rowe is often a keynote speaker at national and international education conferences and is the author or editor of numerous publications on the integration of sustainability into education.
Dr. Rowe holds a bachelor of arts from Yale University, a master of business administration in business, a master of arts in psychology and a doctor of philosophy in business from the University of Michigan.