Board and Staff

Calvin B. DeWitt
President Emeritus

Calvin College, 1957, B.A. (biology)
The University of Michigan, 1958, M.A. (biology)
The University of Michigan, 1963, Ph.D. (zoology)

E-mail: cbdewitt@wisc.edu

Biography/Interests
Cal is a scientist, writer, and conservationist who enjoys sharing his interest and enthusiasm for the environment and for earthkeeping. He loves to teach in the classroom and field and is particularly interested in serving Christian colleges and universities across the continent and globe in environmental stewardship. His work is directed at building bridges between environmental science, ethics, and practice. Cal's backyard zoo, begun at the age of three with his first turtle, was the start of his life's work on living things and their environment. After growing up in Grand Rapids, Michigan and teaching at Calvin College and the University of Michigan he left for Wisconsin in 1972 and now inhabits Waubesa Marsh, 8 miles south of Madison. Here, all the animals are free to move over and about a glacial drumlin island that emerges from the marsh to hold his house ("Oak Knoll") above water-- there to keep him, his wife Ruth, and Cleo the cat high and dry. Early in his career as a professor in Michigan he found that, across the country and around the world, the animals he was studying were having their habitats taken away. This brought him to contribute to the development of Au Sable Institute, to prepare hundreds of undergraduate and graduate students for environmental careers, to do wetlands research that integrates across the disciplines, to probe environmental beliefs, and to reach out to help people incorporate environmental integrity into their worldviews and beliefs. He loves to lecture on caring for Creation and has given campus-wide convocation lectures at more than 100 U.S. and Canadian colleges and universities. He has brought his message worldwide through travels to China, Korea, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Russia, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic, and the United Kingdom.

Representative Publications

DeWitt, C.B. 2008. Science, Scripture and Con-serving Creation, In Holy Ground: A Gathering of Voices on Caring for Creation. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, pp. 75-88.

DeWitt, C.B. 2008. Reading the Bible Through A Green Lens, In The Green Bible: New Revised Standard Version. San Francisco: Harper One, pp. I-25 -I-34.

DeWitt, C.B. 2008. Inspirations for Sustaining Life on Earth: Greeting Friends in Their Andean Gardens, In Bill McKibben, American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau. New York: Library of America, pp. 920-928.

DeWitt, C. B. 2007. The Professor and the Pupil: Addressing Secularization and Disciplinary Fragmentation in Academia. Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 59(2):119-127, 2007.

DeWitt, C. B. 2007. Earth-Wise: A Biblical Response to Environmental Issues, 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: CRC Publications.

DeWitt, C.B. 2006. The scientist and the shepherd: the emergence of evangelical environmentalism. In Robert Gottlieb, Oxford Handbook of Religion and Ecology, Oxford University Press, pp. 568-587.

DeWitt, C.B. 2006. Stewardship: Responding Dynamically to the Consequences of Human Action in the World. In R. J. Berry, Environmental Stewardship: Critical Perspectives - Past and Present. London & New York: T&T Clark International, pp. 145-158.

DeWitt, C.B. 2002. Complementarities of scientific understanding of nature with religious perspectives of creation. In Stephen R. Kellert and Timothy Farnham, eds. Good in Nature and Humanity: Connecting Science Religion and Spirituality with the Natural World. Island Press, pp. 19-48. (Based upon an invited paper for a symposium at Yale University.)

DeWitt, C.B. 2000. Behemoth and Batrachians in the Eye of God: Responsibility to Other Kinds in Biblical Perspective, pp. 291-316. In Hessel, Dieter T. & Rosemary Radford Ruether, eds. Christianity & Ecology: Seeking the Well-Being of Earth & Humans, Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 720 pp.

DeWitt, C.B. 1998. Science, ethics, and praxis: getting it all together. In John Carroll and Keith Warner, eds., Ecology and Religion: Scientists Speak. Quincy, Illinois: Franciscan Press, pp. 53-70.

DeWitt, C. B. 1997. Caring for Creation. Grand Rapids: Baker Books.

DeWitt, C.B. 1996. Biblical principles and environmental ethics. Environmental Review 3(10):10-16.

DeWitt, C.B. 1996. Community mobilization: a case study of the town of Dunn. Paper presented at Global Stewardship National Conference, October 16-20, 1996, Gloucester, Massachusetts.

DeWitt, C. B. 1995. Ecology and ethics: relation of religious belief to ecological practice in the Biblical tradition. Biodiversity and Conservation 4:838-848 (Given a John Marks Templeton Award, 1996).

DeWitt, C.B. 1989. Let it be: a wetland scientist and restorationist reflects on the value of waiting. Restoration and Management Notes 7(2):80-81.

Heliotis, Francis, and C.B. DeWitt. 1987. Rapid water table responses to rainfall in a northern peatland ecosystem. Water Resources Bulletin 23:1011-1016.

Kratz, Timothy K., and C.B. DeWitt. 1986. Internal factors controlling small peatland-lake ecosystem development. Ecology 67:100-107.

Winkler, Marjorie, and C.B. DeWitt. 1985. Environmental impact of peat mining: documentation for wetland conservation. Environmental Conservation 12(4):317-330.

DeWitt, C. B., and Robert M. Friedman. 1979. Significance of skewness in ectotherm thermoregulation. American Zoologist 19:195-209.

DeWitt, C. B. 1967. Precision of Thermoregulation and its relation to environmental factors in the desert iguana, Dipsosaurus dorsalis. Physiological Zoology 40:49-66. (Listed in Early Classics in Biogeography, Distribution, and Diversity Studies: 1951 to 1975 -- "primary sources . . . that have most affected the evolution of our thoughts on the geographical and ecological distribution and diversity of life.")

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