Aldo Leopold Distinguished Lecture Series

The Aldo Leopold Distinguished Lecture Series (ALDLS) was established in 2018 with the goal of engaging the University of Northern Iowa community, providing opportunities throughout the academic year to interact with a dynamic set of visiting speakers focusing on our relationship with the natural world. In its inaugural year, the ALDLS planning group coordinated lectures, accompanying educational events, and supplemental reading and materials for six distinguished speakers. Additionally, they collected all of the lectures and accompanying material in ScholarWorks, UNI’s institutional repository so that the knowledge presented through the ALDLS will be available far beyond each immediate audience. The speakers’ topics represented a broad diversity of sustainability issues and speakers’ views represented a range of political backgrounds. So far, the ALDLS has engaged thousands of people, drawing audiences from campus, throughout the Cedar Valley, and beyond. The success of the ALDLS is a testament to the urgency and interest in sustainability and to the benefits of interdisciplinary and cross-campus collaboration.