Keynote highlights

Michael DiBerardinis, former Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) and current Philadelphia Commissioner of the Department of Parks and Recreation and Special Advisor to the Mayor on the Free Library, will be the keynote speaker for the Educating for Sustainability conference. Topics for the address include how academia can best partner with local communities and agencies to create an environmentally literate and effective citizenry, how the higher education community can effectively communicate with policy makers, and how students and faculty can learn about emerging green career opportunities.

Governor Rendell linked the following accomplishments to DiBerardinis during his tenure at DCNR:

• Protection of more than 130,000 acres of natural areas, a greater amount than was conserved over the past 30 years
• Establishment of large, regional landscape efforts such as the Pennsylvania Wilds, viewed as a national model for mobilizing and coordinating conservation, tourism promotion, economic development and community revitalization interests
• Investment of more than $415 million in rehabilitation and improvements to Pennsylvania's state parks and forests
• Strong efforts to connect citizens to recreational and conservation activities and projects across the state - among them, construction at Bald Eagle State Park of a nature inn offering overnight accommodations beyond the traditional camping experience
• Launching of the iConserve Pennsylvania outreach effort, encouraging practical conservation in everyday lives
• TreeVitalize (pdf), a statewide metropolitan tree planting initiative.

A particularly exciting DCNR program spearheaded by DiBerardinis is the Conservation Landscape Initiative (CLI). Throughout the commonwealth, large regions work together to drive strategic investment and actions around sustainability, conservation, community revitalization, and recreational projects. In his letter inviting DiBerardinis to speak at this conference, Penn State president Graham Spanier said: "No agency in the commonwealth does more to promote sustainable resource management and the values of sustainable lifestyles than DCNR, providing unique opportunities for collaboration between Penn State teaching faculty and various DCNR initiatives." Penn State’s one university geographically distributed structure virtually assures that there is a Penn State campus in each of the CLI areas, and this provides invaluable opportunities for teaching faculty across the university to collaborate pedagogically with DCNR. The conference committee anticipates a thought-provoking and action-oriented talk from Mr. DiBerardinis.

Additional biographical information on Michael DiBerardinis.