Goucher College’s 2010 Woodrow Wilson Visiting Scholar: Anthony Cortese

Release date: March 30, 2010 |

Sustainability activist Anthony Cortese will present a free public lecture titled “Mobilizing Higher Education to Create a Healthy, Just, and Sustainable Society” on Tuesday, March 30, at 7:30 p.m. in Buchner Hall of Goucher College’s Alumnae/i House. Cortese will be appearing as Goucher’s 2010 Woodrow Wilson Visiting Scholar.

The Wilson Scholars program brings non-scholastic professionals to college campuses for a week of classes and informal discussions with students and faculty to create connections between the academic and non-academic worlds. In addition to the public lecture, Cortese will be meeting with environmental studies students and faculty and co-curricular groups.

For more information, contact Ariane de Bremond at 410-337-6496 or ariane.debremond@goucher.edu, or Nicholas Brown at 410-337-6269 or nbrown@goucher.edu.

Cortese is the co-founder and president of Second Nature, a nonprofit organization dedicated to making environmental sustainability a foundation of all learning and practice in higher education. The organization advocates for teaching sustainability at all institutions of higher learning through its incorporation into the curriculum.

He is also a co-organizer of the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment and co-founder of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. He is co-founder and co-coordinator of the Higher Education Association Sustainability Consortium and a consultant to higher education, industry, and nonprofit organizations on the institutionalization of sustainability principles and programs.

A Massachusetts native, Cortese has served as the commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection. He was the first dean of Environmental Programs at Tufts University and founded the Tufts Environmental Literacy Institute in 1989. He also organized the effort that resulted in the international Talloires Declaration of University Leaders for a Sustainable Future in 1990. The declaration was the first official commitment university administrators made to environmental sustainability in higher education.

Cortese is also a founding member of the board of directors of The Natural Step US, a nonprofit environmental education organization, and the Environmental Business Council of New England. He is a trustee of Green Mountain College and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has served as a consultant for the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and has been a member of the EPA Science Advisory Board and the President’s Council on Sustainable Development’s Education Task Force.

Cortese earned a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in civil and environmental engineering from Tufts University. He also received a doctorate of science in environmental health from the Harvard School of Public Health.

This event is sponsored by Goucher's Environmental Studies Program and the Sarah T. Hughes Field Politics Center. The Hughes Field Politics Center is funded by an endowment made by the late Judge Sarah T. Hughes ’17. The center was originally founded in the early 1950s under a grant from the Maurice and Laura Falk Foundation. The center, directed by Nicholas Brown, sponsors a variety of activities designed to facilitate student involvement in governmental and political affairs in the Baltimore-Washington region.