KU News Release

KU professor to speak in Wichita on global warming, future of Great Plains

LAWRENCE — University of Kansas professor Don Worster will visit Wichita to present a lecture titled “Feeling the Heat: Global Warming and the Future of the Great Plains.”

Worster, Hall Distinguished Professor of American History at KU, will speak at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 14, at Wichita’s Crestview Country Club, 1000 N. 127th St. E. An expert in environmental history, Worster will discuss past climate events such as the Dust Bowl and how lessons learned can help the sunflower state cope with the biggest challenge facing the 21st century.

The event is free and open to the public and will include 5:30 p.m. cocktails and a 6 p.m. light supper. Reservations will be accepted until Nov. 9 and can be made at the Alumni Association Web site (click on calendar), via e-mail at kualumni@kualumni.org or by phone at 800-584-2957.

Worster grew up in western Kansas and attended KU, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1963 and a master’s degree in 1964. He earned his doctorate in American history and literature at Yale University in 1971. A trailblazer in the field of environmental history, he has been president of the American Society for Environmental History and is general editor of the Cambridge University monograph series “Studies in Environment and History.” His most recent book, A River Running West: The Life of John Wesley Powell (Oxford University Press, 2001), won the Byron Caldwell Smith Award. His other books include Rivers of Empire (1985), which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize; the Bancroft prize-winning Dust Bowl (1979); and Nature’s Economy (1994, second edition).

The event is sponsored by the Hall Center for Humanities and the Wichita chapter of the KU Alumni Association. The event is funded in part by the Lattner Family Foundation.

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