Lana Pollack

Lana Pollack, president of the Michigan Environmental Council and a lifelong environmental advocate, will give the 2008 Commencement address for the School of Natural Resources and Environment April 26.

The Sunday event begins at 1:30 p.m. at Rackham Auditorium; doors open at 1 p.m. The ceremony recognizes students graduating in December 2007, April 2008 or August 2008. Tickets are not required, but students are encouraged to bring no more than 4-6 guests. A reception is being held in the Great Lakes Room in Palmer Commons immediately following the ceremony.

Because the main University commencement is earlier that morning in the nearby Diag, students and their guests are encouraged to use shuttle services available across campus.

Since 1996, Pollack has led the Michigan Environmental Council (MEC), which provides a collective voice for the environment at local, state and federal levels.  Her environmental work first captured statewide attention in the Michigan Senate, where she represented the city of Ann Arbor and Washtenaw County for three terms from 1983-95. In 1987, Senator Pollack first introduced legislation that three years later became known as the "Polluter Pay" Law. The law forced the responsibility for cleaning polluted industrial sites onto polluters themselves and generated $100 million for the environment.

The law was amended - critics say weakened - in 1995, and the attacks on it drew Pollack back to the policy arena (Michigan's then-new term-limit law had forced her from office). In 1996, she assumed the presidency of MEC, which represents 70 member groups and their collective membership of nearly 200,000 residents. Under her leadership, the organization has become a powerful voice for Michigan's environment.

Before beginning her political career, Pollack served as a teacher of dance and social studies. She also spent those years as a political volunteer, learning from the ground up before going on to manage campaigns and, eventually, chairing the Ann Arbor Democratic Party. Realizing that she would be in a better position to promote change as an elected official, Pollack was elected in 1979 to a term on the Ann Arbor Public Schools' board of education.

In 1982, voters first sent her to the Michigan Senate, where she would serve with distinction on its Appropriations, Finance, Education, Criminal Justice and Urban Affairs committees. In 1988, Pollack was the Democratic nominee but lost the race for Michigan's 2nd Congressional District. In 1994, she narrowly lost the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate, and retired from public office.

Upon her retirement, she founded Michigan Monthly and served as the magazine's publisher until selling the publication in 1996. Pollack also worked as a consultant for the Washington, D.C.-based National Democratic Institute.

In 1997, she was a Fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. In 2002, she was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame. In 2005, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm appointed her to the Natural Resources Trust Fund Board. Pollack was a founding trustee of the Michigan Women's Foundation and served in that capacity for 10 years. She now serves on several governing boards, including the Center for the Education of Women and the Hillel Foundation at the University of Michigan.

More recently, she has taught at the university and served on the boards of directors of national, state and local nonprofit organizations.

Pollack grew up in Ludington, Mich., and attended the University of Michigan, where she earned a B.A. in political science and an M.A. in education. She has lived in the United States, England and Zambia and traveled in Africa, Europe, North and South America, Asia and Antarctica. She is married to Henry Pollack, a professor of geophysics at U-M; they are the parents of an adult son, John, a writer in New York.

More on commencement: http://sitemaker.umich.edu/snre-commencement/snre-commencement
Others

For more information, contact

Kevin Merrill
Director of Communications
School of Natural Resources and Environment
merrillk@umich.edu
O: 734.936.2447
C: 734.417.7392