Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture

Lois Wright Morton joins Leopold Center team

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Lois Wright Morton, an Iowa State University professor of sociology, became the Leopold Center’s interim director on July 1. Her research and extension focus is natural resource management and how citizens work together to solve the problems of their physical and social environments. She has published extensively on rural food deserts, citizen-led watershed management, civic structure and rural health. Wright Morton currently serves as the project director for the four-state Heartland Regional Water Quality Coordination Initiative and leads the ISU Extension Leadership and Performance-based Environmental Management project—a farmer-led watershed management program.

Before coming to ISU to work as a rural sociologist in 1999, she was associated with the Extension Service at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. She also has been an instructor at Syracuse University and raised fruits and vegetables on 30 acres of land in upstate New York. Wright Morton, who is a native of Ohio, received a Ph.D. in Development Sociology from Cornell University. She brings a unique sociological/community development perspective to the Center’s key initiatives in ecology and food systems.

Look for a more extensive interview and comments from Lois Wright Morton in the fall issue of the Leopold Letter.

Back to Leopold Letter Summer 2010