Futurist and journalist Richard Louv will be the 58th presentation in the Saint Vincent College Threshold Series at 8 p.m. Thursday, September 27 in the College's Robert S. Carey Student Center Performing Arts Center. His talk, entitled "Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder" is being co-sponsored by the Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children's Media and the Winnie Palmer Nature Reserve.

He will be introduced by Ms. Angeli Belli, Director of Saint Vincent College's Environmental Education Center and the Winnie Palmer Nature Reserve.

Admission is free of charge for Mr. Louv's presentation at Saint Vincent College. However, all seats in the Robert S. Carey Student Center Performing Arts Center are reserved and admission will be by ticket only. Requests for reservations may be made by phone (1 to 4 p.m. weekdays) or e-mail by giving name, address, daytime phone, and number of seats requested to the Threshold Box Office at 724 805-2961 or threshold@stvincent.edu. All reservations will be confirmed by phone or email. Please note that tickets will be held at the Ferretti Box Office in the Carey Center for pickup when attendees arrive for the presentation; no tickets are mailed in advance. Tickets not claimed by 7:50 p.m. will be released.

Richard Louv is a futurist and journalist focused on family, nature and community.

He is the author of seven books, including, most recently, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. Among his other books are Childhood's Future, The Web of Life, Fly-fishing for Sharks: An Angler's Journey Across America, and America II. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor and other newspapers and magazines.

In addition to his writing, Mr. Louv is chairman of The Children and Nature Network, a non-profit organization helping build the movement to reconnect children and nature. He is a member of the Citistates Group, an association of urban observers, and serves as a member of the Board of Directors of ecoAmerica.

Between 1984 and 2007, he was a columnist for The San Diego Union-Tribune. He was also a columnist and member of the editorial advisory board for Parents magazine. He helped found Connect for Kids, the largest child advocacy site on the web. He served as an advisor to the Ford Foundation's Leadership for a Changing World award program and the Scientific Council on the Developing Child, and was a Visiting Scholar at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University.

Mr. Louv speaks frequently around the country. He has appeared on NPR's Morning Edition, The Morning Show on CBS, Good Morning America, Today, Bill Moyers' Listening to America, NPR's Fresh Air, Talk of the National, PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, the CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News and many other programs. The United Nations commissioned his monograph on fatherhood for the U.N. Year of the Child, and he has spoken before the National Policy Council in the White House.

He is married to Kathy Frederick Louv and is the father of two young men, Jason, 24, and Matthew, 19. He says that he would rather fish than write.

Saint Vincent College established the Threshold Lecture Series in September 1981 when the Kennametal Foundation of Latrobe made a substantial grant to the College for the creation of an ongoing series of lectures and cultural events. The intention of the College is to offer the Threshold Series as a valuable resource not only for the academic community but also for the people of the area.

The College attempts to provide programs featuring nationally and internationally known persons presenting a variety of perspectives. From time to time, speakers will project views with which Saint Vincent, past and present funding sources, and many persons in the audience may not agree. The purpose of the series is not to present speakers with whom everyone will agree; rather, it is to stimulate us to do our own thinking on the critical issues that will shape our future as individuals and as a society.

This will be the 58th presentation in the Threshold Series. Previous Threshold speakers have included Carl Sagan, the Time magazine panel consisting of Hugh Sidey, Strobe Talbott and John Stacks, Amitai Etzioni, Alvin Toffler, Dixy Lee Ray, Donald Johanson, Isaac Asimov, Claire Bloom, Lawrence Stone and Rembert G. Weakland, O.S.B., Alex Haley, Robert Claiborne, Arthur B. Laffer, Richard E. Morley and William A. Taylor, May Sarton, Mark Littman, Jehan Sadat, Tom Wolfe, Michael Kammen, Martin E. Marty, Lt. General James A. Abrahamson, Seymour M. Hersh, Stephen F. Cohen, Joyce Carol Oates, Estelle R. Ramey, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, Stanley L. Jaki, O.S.B., Ralph Nader, Daniel Callahan, Robert Jarvik, John E. Chubb, John Noble Wilford, Ronald A. Morse, Thomas Sowell, Michael Medved, Jane Bryant Quinn, Harold S. Kushner, James Q. Wilson, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., James Burke, Bernard S. Siegal, Peter B. Dervan, Milton Katselas, Bill Moyers, Peter Stearns, Dean Ornish, Mary Pipher, Robert Munsch, Herbert S. Benson, Michael Turner, Susan Stamberg, Mike Jensen, Archduke Rudolph of Austria, Roger Cossack, Stanley Hauerwas, Regina Carter, Heinz-Joachim Fischer, Jonathan Kozol, Gilbert Meilaender and John Haught.

The Winnie Palmer Nature Reserve is a 50-acre meadow located adjacent to Saint Vincent College It is a natural sanctuary that serves as the home of the College's Environmental Education Center. It was created in honor of the late wife of Arnold Palmer who loved the environment and Pennsylvania barns. Her vision was to protect the unobstructed view of Saint Vincent for future generations and to broaden the educational opportunities for Saint Vincent students and the entire region.

The Fred Rogers Center was established at Saint Vincent College in September 2003 to serve as a national and international resource for addressing emerging issues affecting children and families. The Center continues Fred Rogers' commitment to building bridges between early learning and children's media. Staying true to the vision of Fred Rogers, and emulating the guiding principles of his life's work, the mission of the Fred Rogers Center is to advance the fields of early learning and children's media by acting as a catalyst for communication, collaboration, and creative change.

For further information, contact the Public Relations Office at Saint Vincent College, 724 805-2010, pr@stvincent.edu.

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