Dr. Angel C. Alcala, emeritus professor of Biology, and current chairperson of the Silliman University Angelo King Center for Research & Environmental Management, leaves for Chicago, New Jersey, and New York in the US this month to give a series of talks on the environment.
In Chicago, Dr. Alcala will meet with Silliman alumni led by Elsie Sy-Neibar and Luz Corsino-Frost during the Sunday worship service of the Cosmopolitan United Church on Aug. 22. He will talk on SUAKCREM’s program on marine conservation, particularly on marine protected areas, one of his specialties in marine biology. {{more}}
Dr. Alcala will also meet with officials of the famous Shedd Aquarium, and the Field Museum of Natural History.
The Shedd Aquarium has an attractive and successful exhibit on Apo Island, Negros Oriental, considered as a model of marine conservation in the developing world. Dr. Alcala and Dr. Louella Dolar-Perrin were instrumental in the initial conceptualization of the exhibit at the Shedd more than 15 years ago.
The Field Museum of Natural History houses a large collection of Philippine natural history specimens (amphibians, reptiles, mammals) studied by Dr. Lawrence Heaney and Dr. Robert Inger, and serving as basis for much of our knowledge of the biodiversity of land vertebrates of the Philippines. Dr. Alcala was a past recipient of a Biodiversity Award of the Field Museum.
In New Jersey, Dr. Alcala will visit his environmentalist son Moses and his family, and give a lecture on marine protected areas and their benefits to coastal communities of the Philippines. Scientists in the New Jersey area such as those at the Rutgers University Institute of Coastal Studies have been invited to this lecture on Aug. 28. Sillimanians in the New Jersey-New York area will also attend the lecture.
In New York City, Dr. Alcala will participate in the final discussions on the Assessment of the Marine Environment to be held in the United Nations offices. He has been a member of the Ad Hoc Committee of the Group of Experts since 2007.
Dr. Alcala’s travel expenses will be paid for by an award of the Commission on Higher Education of the Philippines in recognition of his pioneering works on, and successful establishment of, marine protected areas in central Philippines since 1974.
