FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Bates professor elected to professional office

LEWISTON, Maine -- Peter Blaze Corcoran, associate professor and chair of the department of education at Bates College, was recently elected president-elect of the North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE). As president-elect for 1996, he will assume the presidency in 1997.

NAAEE is the world's largest professional association of environmental educators. A network of professionals and students working in the field of environmental education throughout North America and in more than 40 countries worldwide, it has promoted environmental education and supported the work of environmental educators for almost 25 years. From 1991 to the present, Corcoran has served as a member of the organization's board of directors.

Corcoran was also recently appointed for a three-year term to the National Environmental Education Advisory Council, an 11-member federal board that makes recommendations to the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on matters relating to activities, functions and policies under the National Environmental Education Act.

A Bates faculty member since 1992, Corcoran received his A.B. degree from Antioch College and an M.Ed and Ed.D in education from the University of Maine. From 1989-92, he was assistant professor of education at Swarthmore College; he served as education coordinator and faculty member in human studies at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor from 1981-1989. He recently spent several weeks as a visiting academic at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia.

Corcoran is the author or editor of several textbooks and teaching guides in environmental education, including "Science and Natural History: A Maine Studies Sourcebook," a four-volume cirriculum guide to teaching about the Maine environment co-authored by Dean Bennett.

A resident of South Freeport and son of John and Jane Corcoran of Falmouth Foreside, Corcoran is a member of the boards of the Chewonki Foundation and the Maine League of Conservation Voters and serves on the national boards of the Santa Fe Council for Environmental Excellence and the E2 Environment Education Project in Ketchum, Idaho.

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