CEDAR FALLS, Iowa -- The Sustainability Hometown Initiative, a new effort by the University of Northern Iowa Center for Energy & Environmental Education, will bring former businessman and current environmental activist and conservationist Doug Tompkins to the UNI campus.

            Tompkins will present "The Next Economy: Transitions from Globalization to Eco-localism," at 7 p.m., Wednesday, Oct. 1, in the CEEE auditorium, Room 11.

            Tompkins founded The North Face and Esprit clothing lines and now works in conservationist and ecological philanthropy. He has established four non-profit organizations, including the Foundation for Deep Ecology, which supports education and advocacy on behalf of wild nature primarily through publications and public programs, and the Conservation Land Trust, which works to protect wildlands, primarily in Chile and Argentina.

            The Sustainability Hometown Initiative is a new effort by UNI's CEEE to educate and involve the campus and community in making communities more sustainable. Future Sustainability Hometown Initiative programs include: Christine Ziebold, of University of Iowa Children's Hospital, "Loving our Children: Improving Environmental Health at Home and School," on Oct. 16; Des Moines Mayor Frank Crownie, "Towards Sustainable Cities," on Nov. 6; and Preston Maring, a physician with the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in California who is working to link Kaiser Permanente hospitals to local food sources, "Sustaining Iowa: Making the Connections between Food, Health and Land," on Nov. 10.

            For more information, contact Carole Yates, communication and grants coordinator for UNI's CEEE, at (319) 273-2573 OR (319) 273-7599.

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