Dr. Ray Energy and Environment Speaker Series continues this week

Dr. Ray’s Energy and Environment Speaker Series kicks off another academic year 7 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 4, with a lecture by Lauren Schroeder, professor emeritus of Biological Sciences at Youngstown State University.

The free talk, titled “Global Warming, the Existential Crisis of the 21st Century,” is in Cushwa Hall Room B100 on the YSU campus. The series continues in Cushwa Hall Room B100 at 7 p.m. the first Wednesday of the month throughout the Fall semester - Oct. 2, Nov. 6 and Dec. 4.

Ray Beiersdorfer, YSU Distinguished Professor of Geology and commonly known as Dr. Ray on campus, started the free lecture series in 2013, sponsored in part by the YSU James Dale Ethics Center. Beiersdorfer died in October 2018 following a heart attack on campus.

Schroeder, the first director of the YSU Environmental Studies Program, served as assistant to the director of the National Science Foundation and research assistant to the U.S. Antarctic Research Program in 1967 prior to joining the YSU’s faculty in 1968. He retired in 1996.

A specialist in the field of ecology, Schroeder received several NSF grants for research in the areas of resource control and evolutionary tendencies which develop to adapt new resources. He was a pioneer in bringing the word “ecology” to his students, finding dramatic ways to illustrate his lectures, taking ecology lab students into the field to measure the energy flowing through the biomass, or on aquatic sampling trips to Lake Glacier, Lake Erie and area strip mine ponds. He also was instrumental in organizing YSU’s first Earth Day observance. He is a member of the Ecological Societies of America, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Institute of Biological Science, the Ohio Academy of Science and the Sigma Xi and Phi Kappa Phi honorary societies. In April, he received the YSU Heritage Award, the highest honor bestowed by YSU on former faculty and administrators.