 to 100 Years of Forest Service History October 05, 2004 Ketchikan, Alaska - The Alaska Region of the U.S. Forest Service kicks off its 2005 Centennial celebration with a series of presentations by award winning author, renowned historian and decorated professor, Dr. Char Miller.
Dr. Miller comes to Alaska to present The Greatest Good: 100 Years of Forestry in America, a provocative reconsideration of the U.S. Forest Service's history, achievements, challenges, and controversies. "This will be a very exciting and informative event for members of our local communities," said Denny Bschor, Alaska Regional Forester. "Dr. Miller's knowledge of history, coupled with his charismatic presentation style, will make for several entertaining evenings. He looks back over the past 100 years of the Forest Service and the legacy that helped shape the American conservation movement of the early 1900's." Miller, author of the award-winning Gifford Pinchot and the Making of Modern Environmentalism, offers a dynamic retelling of the origins of the Forest Service; its development; the role of its founding chief, Gifford Pinchot; and suggests ways the past continues to shape the present. Throughout the evening, Miller takes his audience on a journey as he weaves an exciting tale about the Forest Service's contributions to the nation and the controversies that swirled around its actions. Gifford Pinchot and the Making of Modern Environmentalism, first published in 2001, is the first Pinchot biography to be published in four decades. It has won five major awards and critical acclaim across the country. It is now available in paperback and is part of a new series from Island Press, entitled Pioneers of Conservation. Dr. Miller is professor and chair of the history department at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. He is also the editor of Fluid Arguments: Five Centuries of Western Water Conflict and On the Border: An Environmental History of San Antonio. Miller, on leave in 2004-05 so that he can present the Centennial Road Tour for the US Forest Service, specializes in American environmental, social, and cultural history. He served as department chair from 1998 to 2004, and was named a Piper Professor for teaching excellence in 2002, a state-wide prize awarded by the Minnie Stevens Piper Foundation for excellence in teaching and service to higher education; in 1997, he was awarded the Dr. and Mrs. Z. T. Scott Faculty Fellowship for Excellence in Teaching at Trinity University. He has the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Johns Hopkins University. A Senior Fellow of the Pinchot Institute for Conservation, he is a contributing writer of the Texas Observer, serves on the Editorial Board of Environmental History, Pacific Historical Review and the Trinity University Press, and is on the Board of Directors of the Forest History Society; in San Antonio, Miller is on an advisory board for the Witte Museum, and has served on the City of San Antonio's Open Space Advisory Board and its Tree Preservation Ordinance Panel. Dr. Miller's Alaskan tour includes four presentations in Southeast Alaska:
All presentations are free of charge and open to the public.
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