Mount Ida College to Host Renowned Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow for the First Time

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Mount Ida welcomes Mark Harris, the College's first ever Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow

NEWTON, MA (11/14/2012)(readMedia)-- Mount Ida College will host  Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow Mark Harris, an internationally renowned authority on the "green burial" movement and the modern funeral industry, for an intensive week-long visit on November 26 – 30, 2012. Harris will give classes, seminars, workshops, and be the featured speaker for the annual Wadsworth Distinguished Lecture Series. Harris also will meet with students and faculty members informally throughout the week to share his practical knowledge in the areas of green burials, green building and environmental journalism.

"We are very excited to have our first Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow at Mount Ida College, an honor typically reserved for much larger institutions. Mark Harris is a great fit for us as New England Institute at Mount Ida is one of the nation's leading funeral home management and funeral service schools," stated Barry Brown, President, Mount Ida College. 

He added, "Our students will have a chance to meet a world-class environmentalist and green burial expert with a deep knowledge of death and dying issues.  We're delighted that Mark Harris will be in residence allowing him to get to know our campus and our students and to explore in depth how the classroom and campus relate to the broader society."

The College also is pleased to announce that Mark Harris will be the featured speaker at the annual Wadsworth Distinguished Lecture Series on Wednesday, November 28, 2012 from 4:30PM - 5:30PM at the auditorium in Carlson Hall.  The lecture, based on his book Grave Matters: A Journey through the Modern Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial, is an engaging visual tour of this country's growing green burial movement, including the green cemetery he helped establish in his Pennsylvania hometown. The lecture is free and open to the general public and Mount Ida Community.

About Mark Harris

Mark Harris is an award-winning journalist and a former environmental columnist with the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, Mark Harris is a recognized authority on the "green burial" movement and the modern funeral industry. His acclaimed book, Grave Matters: A Journey through the Modern Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial (2008, Scribner), has been called the "manifesto of the green burial movement." More recently, Harris has worked with the board of an established cemetery to create Green Meadows, the first natural burial ground in east-central Pennsylvania. 

Harris has keynoted numerous conferences on funeral rights, home funerals and green burial. He speaks regularly to college students, hospice workers, church groups, funeral consumer advocates, and funeral directors, among others. An adjunct professor of writing at Moravian College (PA), Harris has also given presentations on the art and craft of environmental journalism. He is currently writing a book that follows the construction of one of the greenest and senior-friendly homes in the state of Georgia.

About The Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellows

The Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellows program, which is administered by the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) in Washington, DC, brings prominent artists, diplomats, journalists, business leaders, and other professionals to campuses across the United States for a week-long residential program of classes, seminars, workshops, lectures, and informal discussions. For 35 years, the Visiting Fellows have been introducing students and faculty members at liberal arts colleges to a wide range of perspectives on life, society, community, and achievement. The Visiting Fellows program is available to all four-year colleges and universities. For more information, visit CIC's website at www.cic.edu/visitingfellows.

About the Wadsworth Distinguished Lecture Series

The Wadsworth Distinguished Lecture Series was established in 1990 to engage in prominent individuals to provide lectures on selected topics to the Mount Ida community and the community-at-large.  The series is named after dear friends of the College, the late William Steele Wadsworth, a member of the Board of Overseers of the College, and his wife the late Arline Graham Wadsworth, an alumna of the Class of 1920.  Previous Wadsworth Lecture speakers include Arthur R. Miller, Andrew Card and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., to name a few.

About Mount Ida College

Mount Ida College is a small New England private, co-educational undergraduate and graduate institution located nearby Boston in Newton, Massachusetts that offers its approximately 1,400 full- and part-time students a strong career-focused and liberal arts education. To learn more about Mount Ida College, visit the College's website at www.mountida.edu.

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