* UPDATE: To watch a video of Richard Alley’s lecture (March 20) at Clark University, click here. *

Alley, who is the Evan Pugh Professor of Geosciences in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, at Penn State, was host of the recent PBS miniseries Earth: The Operators’ Manual, and has been compared to a cross between Woody Allen and Carl Sagan for his enthusiastic efforts to communicate the excitement and importance of science to everyone.

Alley is a leading scholar in climate change research and communication, with particular interests in polar ice, glaciology, sea level change, and abrupt climate change. He has been an adviser to the highest levels of government and has received awards for teaching, research and service including election to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. He served on the U.N.  Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose members shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore. Alley received the 2009 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement.

The annual Atwood Lecture Series honors Wallace W. Atwood, founder of the Graduate School of Geography and the President of Clark University from 1921 to 1946.

This lecture is free and open to the public. A reception will follow. For more information, contact the Geography Department at 508-793-7336.

Founded in 1887 in Worcester, Massachusetts, Clark University is a small, liberal arts-based research university addressing social and human imperatives on a global scale. Nationally renowned as a college that changes lives, Clark is emerging as a transformative force in higher education today. LEEP (Liberal Education and Effective Practice) is Clark’s pioneering model of education that combines a robust liberal arts curriculum with life-changing world and workplace experiences. Clark’s faculty and students work across boundaries to develop solutions to complex challenges in the natural sciences, psychology, geography, management, urban education, Holocaust and genocide studies, environmental studies, and international development and social change. The Clark educational experience embodies the University’s motto: Challenge convention. Change our world. www.clarku.edu