A visionary landscape architect will return to his alma mater West Virginia University to discuss the health and resilience of our changing landscapes.
Keith Bowers, who graduated in 1982 with a bachelor’s degree in landscape architecture, will deliver the E. Lynn Miller Lecture in Landscape Architecture at 7 p.m. Wednesday, May 1, in room 1001 of the Agricultural Sciences Building on WVU’s Evansdale Campus.
For nearly three decades, Bowers has been at the forefront of applied ecology, land conservation and sustainable design. As the founder and president of Biohabitats, he has built a multidisciplinary organization focused on conservation planning, ecological restoration and regenerative design.
Using a living-systems approach as the basis for all of its work, Biohabitats employs whole-systems thinking through applied ecology to address a variety of projects at multiple scales. From site-specific river, wetland and coastal habitat restoration projects to regional watershed management and conservation, to the regeneration of urban estuaries, Bowers has kept Biohabitats at the vanguard of ecology and design.
Bowers is also president and founder of Biohabitats’ sister company, Ecological Restoration and Management, Inc. The company provides professional installation and management services for restoration projects throughout North America.
He currently serves as the President of the Board of Directors for the Wildlands Network, a national organization focused on restoring, protecting and connecting North America’s best wild places, and is the Theme Lead for Ecological Restoration under the International Union for Conservation of Nature Commission on Ecosystem Management. He has also served on the Board of Directors for the Society for Ecological Restoration International since 1999, twice as its chair and currently serves on several board committees.
He is a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects, registered in more than seven states, and is a Professional Wetland Scientist.
The lecture was endowed through a gift from E. Lynn Miller, who earned his B.S. from WVU and his Master of Landscape Architecture from Harvard. He also created the Miller Creative Writing Award, given annually to a WVU student who best expresses concepts of landscape architecture in a creative context.
Miller is an emeritus professor of landscape architecture at Penn State University. He has served as a visiting professor in the University of Texas – Austin’s landscape architecture program, at the Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal, and at Tsinghua University in the People’s Republic of China. In 1992, he was the American Society of Landscape Architects Congressional Fellow with the House Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment. In 1995, he received the Outstanding Educators Award from the Council of Educators of Landscape Architecture.
The Miller Lecture was established through the WVU Foundation, a private non-profit corporation that generates, receives and administers private gifts for the benefit of WVU.
-WVU-
dw/4/22/13
Follow @WVUToday on Twitter.