WAEE Events

Fall Conference 2008 - Urban EE

Keynote Speakers

Ken Leinbach
Executive Director of the Urban Ecology Center

As the Executive Director of the Urban Ecology Center in Milwaukee, Ken Leinbach is a leader in promoting community-based environmental education. In seven years Ken led the community effort to build the Urban Ecology Center from an old trailer in a crime-ridden city park, into a state-of-the-art five million dollar “green” community center that this year is on track to host over 50,000 visitors. The Center, known for its innovation and creative approach to environmental education, provides consistent contact to natural land for many thousands of central city students. The school program, combined with the wide array of adult and community programs, have changed this once urban blight into a college level field research station and grade school outdoor classroom that is being modeled across the country. In this formula environmental education becomes the tool for urban revitalization.

Ken has over 20 years experience directing, teaching and developing science and environmental programs in Wisconsin, Michigan, Virginia and Kentucky. In 1995 Ken was awarded the National Nature Educator of the Year Award from the Roger Tory Peterson Institute in New York. This followed his receipt of the Thomas Jefferson Medal for outstanding contributions to natural science education for an innovative Outdoor Laboratory he set up for schools in Virginia. Many more awards have followed with his work at the Urban Ecology Center. Ken, a certified high school science teacher, received a Masters degree in Environmental Education from Prescott College in Arizona and holds a Bachelor of Science from Antioch College in Ohio.

Bob Peterson
Elementary Teacher and Founding Editor of Rethinking Schools

Bob Peterson is a teacher, writer, and organizer. He is a a fifth grade teacher at La Escuela Fratney, an innovative, anti-racist, two-way bilingual public school in Milwaukee. His fifth grade students have participated in environmental education programs at Milwaukee’s Urban Ecology Center for several years and for the past 15 years he has taken students on three-day camping trips to Camp Upham Woods on the Wisconsin River.

Bob is a founding editor of Rethinking Schools, a national magazine which advocates equality and school reform. He has written many articles that have appeared in periodicals and newspapers across the country. He has also co-edited several books including Rethinking Globalization: Teaching for Justice in an Unjust World. Bob has been a workshop leader and keynote speaker at dozens of educational conferences, school districts, and universities across the country and in England and Australia. Bob has won several awards including the 9/11 Teaching Award from Dickinson College and the Smithsonian Museum of American History (2004) and the Wisconsin Elementary Teacher of the Year (1995/96).

Bob has a Masters Degree from UW-Milwaukee in Curriculum and Instruction. He received a Doctorate (Ed.D) at Cardinal Stritch University in Leadership for the Advancement of Learning and Service. His dissertation was “Anti-prejudice, Anti Racist Teaching in a 5th grade classroom: Examining Children’s Understanding and a Classroom Teacher’s Curriculum.”