Learn about natural environment in fall community lecture series

Registration is now open for the first annual Community Lecture Series at Lake Forest College. The 2019 series, scheduled for three consecutive Wednesdays starting September 18, will feature Lake Forest College professors sharing their perspectives on the natural environment:

• 10:30 a.m., Wednesday, Sept. 18 : “Rapt Attention to Flowers: Lasting Stories from Ephemeral Things”

In Walden, Thoreau promised to “take infinite pains to know all the phenomena of the spring.”

Lake Forest College Associate Professor of Environmental Studies Glenn Adelson doesn’t claim to know “all” the phenomena of the spring (or the summer and fall), but will share stories of the infinite pains (pleasures, really) of various flowering plant species in native flora that he has acquired.

• 1 p.m., Wednesday, Sept. 25: “Literature of the Great Lakes”

Professor of English Ben Goluboff will take community members on an idiosyncratic tour of twentieth-century writing about the Great Lakes, featuring Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac, Lorine Niedecker’s Lake Superior, the Brown Dog stories of Jim Harrison, and other imaginative texts from and about the region.

Goluboff has a special interest in American literature and environmental literature. He serves a dual role at the College, teaching both in the English department and the environmental studies program. He leads Ryerson Reads, a series of talks on environmental literature at the Brushwood Center at Ryerson Woods. He is also a birder and an amateur botanist.

• 1 p.m., Wednesday, Oct. 2: “The Overlooked Splendor of Ants: Restoration Ecology and the Ants in Your Backyard”

The final lecture will be presented by Associate Professor of Biology Sean Menke, who will focus on the diversity of ants—why they are important to our everyday lives and how ants commonly interact with us in the Chicago region.

Menke’s background and training are in the field of ecology and biogeography specifically studying how shifting environments influence the composition of animal communities. These studies have spanned the spectrum from climate change, urbanization, and how the encroachment of invasive species have affected native communities. His recent research focuses on the great Chicagoland area and also California and the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.

“The College always welcomes the community to share in the wide variety of classes, lectures, and cultural events that take place on campus, but now we have created something just for our friends and neighbors,” Lake Forest College Director of Community EducationCarol Gayle said.

"We are a community of curious, life-long learners,” said Community Relations LiaisonBrenda Dick, a Lake Forest resident. “We see this when friends and neighbors join students to fill every seat at the college's Oppenheimer, Ruth Winter, and Brain Awareness Week lectures. When community members asked us for a program that would easily slide into busy schedules, the Fall Community Lecture Series was born."

Lake Forest resident Betsy Hough is looking forward to the new lecture series. “It gives us a chance to know the professors and have an insight into their research and teaching," she said.

All lectures will be held in McCormick Auditorium in the Lillard Science Center on Middle Campus at Lake Forest College, 555 N. Sheridan Road, Lake Forest. There is a $75 fee for the series per person. Register at lakeforest.edu/lectures. Questions? Call 847-735-6000.