KAHN AND COOPER RETIREMENT

If you graduated from our program in the past 20 years, you almost certainly took a course from Professors Jim Kahn and Greg Cooper. Professor Cooper left Duke University in 1999 to join the Philosophy Department at W&L and has been a core faculty member in the Environmental Studies Program since his arrival. His courses in environmental ethics have been central in our curriculum, and his course “Ecology of Place,” co-taught with Professor of Biology Larry Hurd, has introduced many students to the unique ecological context of life in Rockbridge County. Professor Kahn ’75 left his post at the University of Tennessee to join W&L’s Economics Department and to serve as the first director of the Environmental Studies Program in 2000. His research and courses with colleagues in Brazil formed the foundations of our featured Amazon Study Abroad program, which introduced scores of students to the rainforests and communities of Amazonas, as well as the challenges that rapid development posed to the rich natural resources of the area. It is an understatement to say that the Environmental Studies Program owes much of its success over the past 20-plus years to Kahn and Cooper’s contributions.

Kahn and Cooper will be retiring at the end of this academic year, and we will feature more about their work in next year’s newsletter. If you would like to share anything about your experience with either of these great professors that we can in turn share with them and the Environmental Studies community, we would love to hear from you. Please send your reflections by email to Robert Humston at humstonr@wlu.edu. We will compile them to share at the joint retirement party in the spring and in next year’s newsletter. Please do let us hear from you!