APPLETON, WIS. — A $2.5 million gift from a long-time benefactor of Lawrence University to establish an endowed professorship in environmental studies has been announced by Lawrence President Jill Beck. It is the largest gift given toward an endowed professorship in Lawrence’s 160-year history.
Marcia Bjornerud, professor of geology, will be the first holder of the new Walter Schober Professorship in Environmental Studies, effective July 1, according to Beck.
Appointments to endowed professorships are made in recognition of academic distinction through teaching excellence and/or scholarly achievement.
“Professor Bjornerud demonstrates passionate dedication equally to her scholarly discipline and to her students and their intellectual development,” Beck said in announcing the appointment. “The international relevance of her research in earth science and the evidence of global climate change over time is evident through the translation of her published work into several languages.
“Lawrence is extremely fortunate to have Marcia Bjornerud on our faculty and to be able to recognize her contributions through Mr. Schober’s generosity.”
Schober’s motivation in establishing the professorship grew out of his own concern for the future of the planet and the need to educate young people about the importance of environmental stewardship.
“Man cannot continue to exploit the finite resources of this Earth without affecting his own well-being and that of other species on this planet,” said Schober, a retired resident of Pentwater, Mich. “We must respect all forms of life or consider the probability of widespread extinctions.”
Schober, whose only connection to Lawrence is a niece, Amanda Schober, who graduated in 2001, first became interested in Lawrence after a campus visit that left him impressed with the campus community. He made the gift out of admiration for Lawrence’s educational mission as articulated by former and current presidents Richard Warch and Beck.
“The type of undergraduate scholarship practiced at Lawrence is consistent with my concept of a great liberal arts school,” said Schober. “May it always be so!”
The donation for the endowed professorship is the third major gift Schober has made to Lawrence in the past six years. He previously made a gift of $1.3 million in 2001 to renovate the first floor of Seeley G. Mudd Library. Two years later he donated $300,000 for a digital database for the library.
Bjornerud, a structural geologist who studies mountain building processes, joined the Lawrence faculty in 1995 after six years with the geology department at Miami University in Ohio. She has served as the chair of the Lawrence geology department since 1998 and helped establish the college’s environmental studies program as a major in 2000, serving as its director through 2006.
Elected a Fellow of the Geological Society of America in 2003, Bjornerud is the author of two books, the science textbook “The Blue Planet: A Laboratory Manual in Earth System Science” and “Reading the Rocks: The Autobiography of the Earth,” which was published in 2005.
A storyteller’s history of the Earth and the toll human activity is exacting on the planet, “Reading the Rocks” draws upon field research Bjornerud conducted in 2000 as a Fulbright Scholar on exposed rock complexes on the island of Holsnøy in western Norway. The book has since been reprinted in French, Dutch and Japanese, with a Chinese edition for Taiwan slated for publication later this year.
In collaboration with six students, she also recently produced the pamphlet “Building Stones of Downtown Appleton,” an illustrated layman’s guide to the geological and historical context of the rocks used in the construction of a dozen downtown buildings, including the Zuelke Building and the Outagamie County Museum.
After earning a bachelor’s degree in geophysics at the University of Minnesota, Bjornerud earned master’s and doctorate degrees in geology at the University of Wisconsin.
