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 50 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.

Selected Publications of the Last Three Years
1998. Mayordomia de la Creación. Quito, Ecuador: MAP Internacional, 108 pp. (Spanish translation of his book, Earth Wise. Grand Rapids: CRC Publications, 1994.)

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.

1999. Three chapters in The Environmental Professional. Proceedings on a conference on The Environmental Professional, King's University College. Edmonton: King's University College.

1999. Etica Ambiental. Boletin FCAV (Facultad de Ciencias Agronomicas y Veterinarias de la Universitad Santo Domingo) 5(8):4-6.

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

2000. Publishing in the Landscape. Benedictine Bridge, Lent 2000:6-8.

2000. Creation's environmental challenge to evangelical Christianity, pp. 60-73. In: R. J. Berry, ed. The Care of Creation: Focusing Concern and Action. Leicester, England: Inter-Varsity Press, 213 pp.

2002. Complementarities of Scientific Understanding of Nature with Religious Perspectives of Creation. Invited paper for conference, The Good in Nature and Humanity: Connecting Science, Religion and the Natural World, May 11-14, 2000, Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, Yale University.

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