April 11 - Dr. Bill Kovarik, Department of Media Studies, Radford University
"Biofuels: History, Public Debate and Climate Change"
The current debate over biofuels has proceeded in an historical vacuum, and has suffered from high expectations over responsiveness to climate change in what amounts to a relatively shallow public debate.
Bill Kovarik, Ph.D. is a Professor of Communication at Radford University in southwestern Virginia and a graduate of the University of Maryland's PhD program in Communication (1993). He teaches science and environment writing and other communications courses. His Ph.D. dissertation, The Ethyl Controversy, explored the role of the news media in protecting the public interest in a 1920s scientific controversy over leaded gasoline and safer alternatives (especially ethanol), and he has become known as a significant historian in the area of renewable energy and especially biofuels, with papers on these topics given at conferences of the Society of Automotive Engineers, Society of Automotive Historians, American Society for Environmental History, the Society for the History of Technology, and the Society of Environmental Journalists.
Before his current position, Kovarik served on the faculty at Virginia Tech and the University of Maryland. His professional experience as a journalist includes reporting and editing for Jack Anderson, the Associated Press, The Charleston (S.C.) Courier, The Baltimore Sun, Time-Life Books, Business Publishers and the National Center for Appropriate Technology. He is a co-author of "The Forbidden Fuel" (1982, with Hal Bernton and Scott Sklar), "Mass Media and Environmental Conflict" (1996, with Mark Neuzil), and author of "Web Design for the Mass Media" (2001). Kovarik also serves as an academic representative on the board of directors of the Society of Environmental Journalists and on the editorial board of Appalachian Voices. He is currently working on a book entitled "Ethyl: Henry Ford, Charles Kettering and the Fuel of the Future."
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