Ecologist Sandra Steingraber to Speak at Illinois Wesleyan University

July 31, 2003

World-renowned ecologist, author, and Illinois Wesleyan University alum, Sandra Steingraber, class of 1981, will speak at 4:30 p.m. on Aug. 19 at IWU’s Shirk Center Performance Arena, 302 East Emerson St., Bloomington. She is the keynote speaker at the University’s First-Year Convocation, which will welcome the class of 2007 to the academic tradition at Illinois Wesleyan, and kick off the University’s Fall Festival for first-year students.

Steingraber’s speech, entitled “Scientists Wear White, and Poets Wear Black: My Life as a Biologist-Author,” is possible due to a grant from the Illinois Wesleyan Humanities Series. The Division of Student Affairs and the Office of the President are sponsoring the event as well, which is free and open to the public.

Steingraber will also take part in a roundtable discussion with IWU students, and will hold a book signing on Aug. 21 from 12:30-2:00 p.m. at Illinois Wesleyan’s bookstore in the Hansen Student Center, 300 Beecher St., Bloomington.

The Fall Festival is a six-day orientation program for the incoming class at Illinois Wesleyan designed to help students get acclimated to the University before classes start.

In addition to Steingraber’s visit, separate discussions about environmental issues will be a part of the festival’s activities, as well as the showing of several movies that deal with the environment including Erin Brockevich, Silkwood, and Gorillas In the Mist.

The idea to have Steingraber as the First-Year Convocation speaker came from students in IWU Professor Charlotte Brown’s “Ethics and the Environment” philosophy course in environmental studies. The students helped to research and draft the initial proposal for the grant, and arranged for the first-year students to receive coffee mugs with the recycling rules printed on them as a reminder that we need to take care of our environment.

“My students came up with the idea that the way to get entering students interested in ecological concerns was to introduce these environmental issues to them during their orientation to the university,” said Brown. “They decided that having a First-Year Convocation speaker who would address these matters would be a good way to do that.”

A cancer survivor, Steingraber is the author of Living Downstream and Having Faith, both of which explore current environmental issues, as well as Post-Diagnosis, a collection of poetry, and numerous published papers and essays.

Currently on the faculty at Cornell University in New York, Steingraber was diagnosed with bladder cancer while attending Illinois Wesleyan as a biology major. She was successfully treated for the illness, but suspects that it was a result of harmful chemicals she may have been exposed to when growing up in Pekin. Since overcoming the cancer, Steingraber has devoted much of her life to investigating the link between environmental toxins and cancer, and is recognized internationally as an expert in this field.

Steingraber has done extensive research on carcinogens that she has discovered are present in everything from water to breast milk. Having Faith focuses on how she became aware of the toxins in her own body as she was inevitably passing them along to her newborn daughter through breastfeeding.

After graduating from Illinois Wesleyan University magna cum laude, Steingraber went on to earn a Ph.D. in biological sciences at the University of Michigan and a master’s English degree at Illinois State University. In 1997, she was named the Woman of the Year by Ms. Magazine. Steingraber has also appeared as a guest on the Today show.

Steingraber’s books are available at the IWU Bookstore in the Hansen Student Center.

For more information, contact Given Harper, associate professor and chair of biology, and co-director of environmental studies at gharper@iwu.edu or (309) 556-3056.