Assumption College professors Kevin L. Hickey (left) and Demetrius Kantarelis are the co-founders of the Interdisciplinary Environmental Association.

Assumption Professors Lead International Environmental Organization

June, 2004—Chances are that most of the Assumption College community has never heard of the Interdisciplinary Environmental Association. The chances are greater that people are not aware that two Assumption College professors of Economics and Global Studies, Kevin Hickey and Demetri Kantarelis, co-founded and continue to preside over this internationally-known organization. For 10 years, the IEA has attracted hundreds of academics, scientists, planners, lawyers, and non-profit leaders from more than 30 countries who share a professional interest in interdisciplinary environmental issues. Still, it remains somewhat of a well-kept secret.

The IEA’s mission is simple: it is a non-profit organization whose functions are neither "lobbying" nor "watch-dog" in nature. It aims to bring together all disciplines so that learning about environmental issues is enhanced through interdisciplinary communication. It also serves to inform the educated layperson about accomplishments, current concerns, and plans for a cleaner future. The IEA is currently responsible for the Interdisciplinary Environmental Review Journal, now published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, but still edited by Hickey and Kantarelis. They also organize an annual conference, which has been held in cities such as London, San Francisco, Montreal, Toronto, and Washington, D.C.

The 2004 conference will be held at the Boston Park Plaza Hotel, from July 1-3, 2004. Attendees from all over the world, representing a dozen different countries and diverse areas of expertise (from “accounting to zoology,” in Hickey’s words) will be present. The purpose of these annual conferences, according to its brochure, is to combine ideas and research findings from different disciplines to enhance understanding of the interactions between the environment and human institutions.

The seeds for the IEA were sown more than 10 years ago, when both Hickey and Kantarelis were in the midst of designing new courses. Each asked the other for their expertise. As they worked together, Kantarelis reasoned that there was a need for an interdisciplinary organization that could facilitate collaboration on projects between experts of differing disciplines. The hope was to have people begin to think and write in a way more easily understood by those not in their field, but interested in their topics.

“We don’t always understand each other’s fields,” Kantarelis explained. “We need to collaborate and communicate. For example, an engineer might be an expert in that particular field, but needs to be able to communicate that information clearly to an economist. Through an organization like ours, they can learn to do so.”

While Hickey envisioned this project as a local venture, Kantarelis, a native of Greece, was thinking globally. He wanted to extend this opportunity to environmentally conscious leaders around the world. After joining a number of mailing lists, they initially spread news of the IEA’s inception through the Internet. The response was significant, and more than 100 people attended the organization’s first meeting.

Hickey and Kantarelis decided from the beginning that the IEA’s annual conference would differ considerably from other conferences they had attended in the past. They designed the format so that no more than three sessions would be held simultaneously, while encouraging regular communication between attendees. This allows for a free flow of ideas, and puts attendees at ease, allowing them to take in more information while establishing close, first-name-basis relationships with their associates.

To the delight of the IEA’s founders, several collaborative works have resulted from these conferences.

“Two of our past attendees, an environmental studies professor from Japan, and a business-administration professor from Creighton University in Nebraska, recently collaborated on a project,” said Hickey. “Two other professors from India and South Africa met last year, and this year, they are presenting a paper together which they hope to have published. None of these people would have met otherwise.”

“This is very exciting to see,” agreed Kantarelis. “This was what we set out to do.”

The 2004 conference will feature several recognized names in the field of environmental studies, including John Trefry, a professor of chemical oceanography at the Florida Institute of Technology, who was a co-discoverer of deep-sea hydrothermal vents in the Atlantic Ocean in 1985 and is a 2002 Medalist of the Florida Academy of Sciences. He is currently working on arctic oil resources off Alaska. Also scheduled to speak is Barry Chernoff of Wesleyan University, an ichthyologist recently featured in the July 2004 issue of Discover magazine. He specializes in biodiversity in Latin America, and is associated with the Field Museum in Chicago.

Hickey and Kantarelis are proud of their organization, which, despite limited funding and little local fanfare, has flourished internationally, garnering praise from well-known and widely respected leaders in environmental fields.

“We haven’t lost the dream for it to become huge,” says Kantarelis, with a smile. “It’s just a matter of letting the public know we exist!”

Click here for IEA's website.