It is our great pleasure to announce the winners of our recent elections and to thank the outgoing members of the ASLE executive team.
Christoph Irmscher
Christoph Irmscher (Indiana University, Bloomington) and Anthony Lioi (The Juilliard School) will serve as ASLE Co-Presidents for the next two years, followed by a year as Immediate Past Presidents. Both Christoph and Anthony come to the position with extensive ASLE experience as well as outstanding records of scholarly achievement in ecocriticism. Christoph was Local Coordinator of the highly successful 2011 biennial conference in Bloomington, IN; he also continues to serve as Creative Writing Book Award Coordinator. He is the author, most recently, of the highly acclaimed Louis Agassiz: Creator of American Science (2013). Anthony served as a member-at-large of the EC from 2011-13, in that capacity helping to organize the excellent 2013 biennial conference in Lawrence, KS. He is also the author of the forthcoming book Nerd Ecology: Defending the Earth with Unpopular Culture (2016). I cannot imagine two people better able to pilot ASLE through the next three years, including leadership of our 2017 conference in Detroit, MI. Thank you and congratulations, Christoph and Ant.
Heather Houser
Anthony and Christoph will be joined by two newly elected EC members who will also serve three year terms: Greg Garrard (University of British Columbia, Okanagan) and Heather Houser (University of Texas at Austin). Both bring to the EC great experience and insight. In addition to their many highly regarded publications, Greg served for many years as Chair of ASLE-UKI and is currently co-editor of its journal Green Letters; Heather has already served for a year on the ASLE EC as an interim member and has begun to work with ISLE editor Scott Slovic to reimagine and strengthen the journal for the future. We are delighted to have two such outstanding colleagues on board.
Kudos to the excellent candidates who ran for office but were not elected this time around: Bridgitte Barclay, Christine Battista, Salma Monani, and Nicole Seymour. The slate was extraordinarily rich this election, and we would have been very well served by any of these outstanding EC nominees. Thank you for stepping up to serve ASLE in this capacity.
Aubrey Streit Krug
Equally impressive was the slate of candidates for the position of Graduate Student Liaison (junior), an elected position starting this year. We welcome to the EC Aubrey Streit-Krug (University of Nebraska, Lincoln), and thank all of the other exceptional candidates for their willingness to fill this role: Molly Hall, Matt Henry, Taylor McHolm, Caitlin McIntyre, Eric Morel, and Ashley Reis.
We are also very pleased to announce the appointment of three new Coordinators. Heather Sullivan (Trinity University) will serve as our new Professional Liaison Coordinator, and Erin James (University of Idaho) and Elizabeth Dodd (Kansas State University) will serve as our new Graduate Student Mentoring Co-coordinators.
Special thanks go out to the ASLE officers whose terms officially end in 2015. Mark Long was an exemplary Vice President, President and Immediate Past President from 2012-15: as part of his very distinguished service, he spearheaded our website redesign and also initiated and carried out several important policy initiatives. Much of this work is not highly visible, but it is absolutely vital and Mark’s quiet and determined leadership has been key. Mark is also stepping down as Mentoring Coordinator, a position he has held since 2001!
We extend sincere thanks to Allison Carruth, who is leaving us as EC member-at-large, to Clare Echterling who has been an outstanding GSL, and to Tonia Payne who has served as Professional Liaison Coordinator since 2011. Their contributions to the organization have been crucial, and we look forward to future collaborations.
