As part of the U of A's Earth Week celebrations, the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design will present lectures and student presentations on Monday and Tuesday in Vol Walker Hall and the Arkansas Union. Under the theme "The Art and Science of Sustainability – Advocating for Our People and Our Power," these events will showcase advocates from the arts and sciences, along with students' work in sustainability.

Marty Matlock, a professor in the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, will present the lecture "Designing Earth for 10 Billion People" at 4:30 p.m. Monday, April 21, in Ken and Linda Sue Shollmier Hall, room 250 of Vol Walker Hall.

On Tuesday, April 22, in the Arkansas Union flag room, graduating students from the Sustainability Minor program will present their capstone work in sustainability through an academic poster presentation format. With their posters, students will detail their sustainability internships, research projects and community service efforts. Their projects explore solutions to help people in Little Rock experiencing homelessness, highlight sustainable fashion and chemical engineering practices, and offer strategies for indoor farming in Northwest Arkansas developed during their internships.

Following the presentations, at 1:15 p.m. April 22, the playwright Carson Kreitzer will present "TRASH: A Playwright's Journey in the Arctic" in room 504 of the Arkansas Union. She will discuss her unexpected connection to the Arctic and an international group of artists working to raise awareness about this extraordinary and delicate ecosystem.

SPEAKER BIOS

Matlock, Ph.D., was elected to the Board of Agriculture and Natural Sciences of the National Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine in 2022 and served as senior adviser to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack at USDA from 2021-2022. Prior to that, Matlock was executive director of the U of A Resiliency Center. He received his doctorate in biosystems engineering from Oklahoma State University and is a registered professional engineer, a board-certified environmental engineer and a certified ecosystem designer.

Matlock is the recipient of the 2018 CAST-Borlaug Agriculture Communications Award, the American Ecological Engineering Society 2022 Odom Award for Ecosystem Design and more than 30 national and international design awards. He has been elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Ecological Engineering Society and the American Society of Civil Engineering. He served as chairman of the Cherokee Nation Environmental Protection Commission for 16 years and as sustainability science adviser for three environmental conservation organizations and more than a dozen food and agricultural product companies.

Carson Kreitzer

Kreitzer is a playwright, lyricist and librettist. Her musical LEMPICKA, co-written with Matt Gould and directed by Rachel Chavkin, ran at the Longacre Theater on Broadway last spring. Carson's lifelong mission to center the stories of "troublesome women" feels particularly important in this moment, as the stories of women and minorities are being intentionally removed from federal websites.

In addition, for the past decade, her work has been increasingly involved with the climate crisis, including her plays Green and TIMEBOMB, as well as works-in-process Svalbard and The Trash Project, inspired by her time sailing with a group of artists in the Arctic Circle and Greenland.

Kreitzer's plays include The Love Song of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Rosenthal New Play Prize, Stavis Award), The Slow Drag (New York and London) and Lasso of Truth (NNPN Rolling World Premiere). She is a member of the Dramatists Guild, an alumna of New Dramatists, an Affiliated Writer with The Playwrights' Center and was the first Playwrights of New York (PoNY) Fellow at the Lark. A Guggenheim and MacDowell fellow, she has also received support from the NEA, TCG, the Jerome and McKnight Foundations and the Jonathan Larson Award. Her collection SELF DEFENSE and other plays is available from No Passport Press.