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| Monday, September 17, 2001 WRITER: Phil Williams, 706/542-8501, phil@franklin.uga.edu CONTACT: Robert Rhoades, 706/542-1042, rrhoades@uga.edu UGA ANTHROPOLOGY PROFESSOR ROBERT RHOADES NAMED FIRST SPERLING LECTURER AT BIODIVERSITY AND CULTURAL HERITAGE MEET ATHENS, Ga. — Robert Rhoades, a professor of anthropology at the University of Georgia, has been selected to deliver the first Sperling Lecture at the annual meeting of the national Crop and Soil Science Association in Charlotte, N.C., on Oct. 24. The lecture will be part of the Biodiversity and Cultural Heritage Symposium to be held in conjunction with the CSSA annual meeting. The title of his speech will be “New Century, New Challenges: The Changing Historic Role of Local Culture in Genetic Resources.” The lectureship honors the late Calvin Sperling, a scientist in the Plant Exchange office of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Office in Beltsville, Md. “I am of course delighted to be the first person, especially as an anthropologist speaking to biological scientists, selected to give this lecture in Dr. Sperling’s honor,” said Rhoades. “Issues of biodiversity have never been more important than they are right now.” This is not the first non-anthropological group that has honored Rhoades. The American Society for Horticultural Science inducted him as an elected honorary member in 1994. During the past 35 years, Rhoades has worked in the Alps, the Spanish Sierra Nevada, the East African Highlands, the Andes, the Himalayas and in Appalachia. He has published more than a dozen books and 100 articles in both lay and scientific journals. He serves on the executive boards of two international centers and leads a long-term collaborative mountain research program in the Andes. He is also leading collaborative projects with the Foxfire Program in north Georgia. He is co-founder of the Southern Seed legacy program dedicated to preserving the heirloom plants of the American South. He was appointed by the U. S. Secretary of Agriculture to serve on the National Genetic Resources Council, a citizens’ advisory group to the Clinton Administration. |