ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.—With President Obama setting education, energy, and the environment among the top priorities of his administration, it is critical to explore how best to prepare students to meet the challenges presented by climate change, rising global population, and the need for renewable energy. The Bard Center for Environmental Policy (BCEP) is hosting a three-day conference, Friday, April 24 to Sunday, April 26, to discuss these issues and examine the challenges facing environmental policy programs in higher education. The conference, “Interdisciplinary Environmental Education in the 21st Century: Training for Leadership,” includes keynote conversations with New York Times reporter Andrew C. Revkin; Bard College President Leon Botstein; leading environmental educator David Orr; William H. Schlesinger, president of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies; and Eban Goodstein, BCEP director and cofounder of the National Teach-In on Global Warming Solutions. The conference, which is being sponsored by the Henry Luce Foundation, is free and open to the public and takes place in the Multipurpose Room of the Bertelsmann Campus Center. For a complete conference agenda or for more information on BCEP, visit www.bard.edu/cep, call 845-758-7085, or e-mail [email protected].

Highlights of the conference include several keynote conversations, focusing on important issues: education and sustainability with Botstein and Revkin at 3 p.m. Friday; public education with Orr, Schlesinger, and Goodstein at 3:45 p.m. Saturday; and the National Teach-In with Goodstein at 9 a.m. Sunday. How can we best educate the generation of leaders who, by 2050, will have to rewire the world with clean energy, house and feed another three billion people, and adapt to a rapidly changing climate? Today’s students must guide the world through unprecedented challenges; as educators, how can we prepare them for the tasks ahead? These are a few of the many questions the conference is expected to explore. Sessions will focus on, among other topics, how to achieve a true interdisciplinary curriculum, balance theory and practice, and implement instructional tools that utilize examples and practices from both within and outside the United States. Participating academics and practitioners will evaluate methods for connections across disciplinary fields, and environmental studies graduates will examine how to engage participants in the integration of interdisciplinary learning into curricula designed to support leadership.