News Release
September 2006
Bethlehem, Pa., September 25, 2006—Biologist Dr. Bruce Coull ’64
will present a talk, Human/Environment Interactions: Ethics for a Sustainable
Future, at
Moravian College on Thursday, October 12 at 7:00 p.m. in Dana Lecture Hall, Collier Hall
of Science. The Moravian College Alumni Association, the Environmental Coalition,
and the Office of Student Activities are sponsoring the lecture.
Coull graduated from Moravian with a Bachelor of Science degree in
Biology and earned his Master’s and Doctoral degrees from Lehigh University, where his dissertation
research was conducted at Lehigh’s marine biology field station in Bermuda. He
worked also as a postdoctoral fellow at the Duke University Marine Laboratory in North
Carolina and as assistant professor in the Marine Sciences Department at Clark University,
Massachusetts. In 1981, he was senior Fulbright fellow at Victoria University,
Wellington New Zealand; and visiting professor in marine sciences at the University of
Queensland, Brisbane, Australia in 1994. He has authored 130 scientific papers on marine
ecology and sustainability in higher education and edited 4 books.
Coull joined the faculty of the University of South Carolina in 1973,
and served as Chairman of Marine Sciences from 1982-1994. In 1996 he was invited to
become Dean of the School of the Environment, leading to one of the school’s
major initiatives in the development of research links to monitor the Chernobyl nuclear
power plant disaster in the Ukraine. As of 1998 the school has sent 32 scientists to
assess the damage and to develop research projects. Five studies are ongoing, but one
of the most important monitors the children who were exposed to the plume of the reactor.
Coull raised seed money for the Chernobyl projects and negotiated complicated agreements
with the University of Kiev, the Ukrainian Ministry of Emergency Affairs and the Radioecological
Center and agencies.
During his career he was honored as Carolina University Distinguished
Professor; and currently serves as president of an academic/professional organization
called the Council of Environmental Deans and Directors, an association of institutional
representatives who come together to improve the quality, stature and effectiveness
of academic environmental programs at U.S. universities and colleges focused on the
frugal use of natural resources. His outstanding environmental project, the South Carolina
Sustainable Universities Institute, is a network of universities and smaller colleges
around the state that promotes meaningful change from initial proposals to completed
structures on college campuses. One example of ongoing-commitment to ecological awareness
is the “green dorm” student
housing built on the USC campus.
Coull continues in his mission as teacher and activist and hopes
that students will be “aware of the size of their ecological footprint.” In
his emeritus status he directs a USC research project sponsored by the Chicago and
New York based Center for Humans and Nature to orchestrate sensible use of resources
in the South Carolina coastal region. Local decisions makers are the target of this
project.
The lecture is free and open to the public to be followed by a reception. Dana
Lecture Hall is located in Collier Hall of Science at the corner of Main and Locust Streets
in Bethlehem. For more information, call 610-861-1491 or visit Moravian on the
Web at: www.moravian.edu.
