Sandra Steingraber on "Sustainability on Campus"

Author, biologist, and central Illinois native Sandra Steingraber will give a talk, "Sustainability on College Campuses," at 7 p.m., Wednesday, October 8, in Kresge Hall, Ford Center for the Fine Arts, Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois. The talk is free and open to the public.

Steingraber has written and lectured extensively on environmental issues. Her books include "Having Faith: An Ecologist's Journey to Motherhood," and "Living Downstream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer and the Environment."

Praised by reviewers from the Washington Post, Nation, Chicago Tribune, Lancet, and London Times, "Living Downstream" was the first book to bring together information on toxic releases with data from U.S. cancer registries. Steingraber was named a Ms. Magazine Woman of the Year and received awards from the Jenifer Altman Foundation and the American Medical Writers Association, and the Will Solimene Award for Excellence in Medical Communication. Chatham College selected Steingraber to receive its biennial Rachel Carson Leadership Award. In September 2009, "Living Downstream" will released as a documentary film.

Steingraber's book "Having Faith" is both a memoir of her own pregnancy and an investigation of environmental hazards that threaten fetal development. The Library Journal selected "Having Faith" as a best book of 2001, and it was featured on "Kids and Chemicals," a PBS documentary by Bill Moyers. She contributed to "What We Do Now," an anthology of individual manifestos on ecologically sustainable lifestyles. She also is the author of "Post-Diagnosis," a volume of poetry; and co-author of a book on ecology and human rights in Africa, "The Spoils of Famine."

In 1999, as part of international treaty negotiations, Steingraber briefed U.N. delegates in Geneva on dioxin contamination of breast milk.

A graduate of Illinois Wesleyan University, Steingraber received a doctorate in biology from the University of Michigan and a master's degree in English from Illinois State University. She has taught biology at Columbia College, Chicago, held visiting fellowships at the University of Illinois, Radcliffe/Harvard, and Northeastern University, and served on President Clinton's National Action Plan on Breast Cancer. Steingraber is currently a Scholar-in-Residence at Ithaca College.

The lecture is sponsored by the President's Task Force on Sustainability.

Founded in 1837, Knox is a national liberal arts college in Galesburg, Illinois, with students from 48 states and 42 nations. Knox's 'Old Main' is a National Historic Landmark and the only building remaining from the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates.