Retiring President Yarosewick, Water Policy Expert Postel to Address Keene State Grads
KEENE, N.H. 4/13/05 - Retiring Keene State College President Stanley J. Yarosewick will bid farewell to KSC students with an address at the College Commencement on Sunday, May 8. Yarosewick will also award associate’s, bachelor’s, and master’s degrees to the more than 800 graduates who are expected to attend. The event begins at 1 p.m. on Fiske Quad.
Sandra Postel, the director of the Global Water Policy Project in Amherst, Mass., and a leading U.S. authority on international freshwater conservation issues, will also address graduates and receive an honorary doctoral degree.
Yarosewick will retire at the end of this academic year after serving Keene State for 11 years as its president. In that time, Dr. Y, as he is known, has worked to build a sense of community on campus and to strengthen the many partnerships that tie the College to the city, state, and region. During his tenure he led campus initiatives to upgrade technology in support of teaching, learning, and service to students; to increase campus diversity; and to improve the quality of academic, residential, and recreational space on campus. A major accomplishment for the physicist president was to spearhead the College’s most ambitious building project to date, the recently opened Keene State College Science Center.
Postel is an advisor to the Division of Earth and Life Studies of the U.S. National Research Council and is a visiting senior lecturer in environmental studies at Mount Holyoke College. She has been awarded a Pew Scholars Award in Conservation and the Environment and is a lifetime chair of the International Water Academy in Oslo, Norway. In 2002 she was named one of the “Scientific American 50” by Scientific American magazine.
Among her publications are Rivers for Life: Managing Water for People and Nature, which she coauthored with Brian Richter, _Pillar of Sand: Can the Irrigation Miracle Last? _and Last Oasis, which was the basis for a segment of the 1997 PBS documentary Cadillac Desert. She has published extensively in popular and scholarly publications, including Science, Natural History, Scientific American, Foreign Policy, BioScience, Ecological Applications, Technology Review, Environmental Science and Technology, and Water International. Her essays have appeared in more than 30 newspapers, including The New York Times and The Washington Post. She has addressed the European Parliament on environmental issues and has served as commentator on CNN’s Futurewatch.
The Commencement ceremony is the culmination of graduation activities at Keene State. On Saturday, May 7, the Spring Honors Convocation will be held at 4 p.m. in the Main Theatre of the Redfern Arts Center on Brickyard Pond. “Emerging Art: The Annual Art Student Exhibition” will be on display at the Thorne-Sagendorph Art Gallery on Saturday and Sunday, from noon to 4 p.m. All events are free and open to the public.
