Leaders of the international trend toward "greener" corporations will speak in an eight-part seminar series at Cornell titled "Industrial Ecology: Connecting Business and the Environment."

The seminar series began Feb. 14 with a presentation by Andrea Farrell, chair of the National Pollution Prevention Roundtable. The next speakers will be David Lyons, engineering manager of Environmental and Engineering Services at Corning Inc., and Anthony Gallo, professor of business in the University of North Carolina at Wilmington's Cameron School of Business. Their talk is set for Friday, March 7, at 10 a.m. in 253 Malott Hall on the Cornell campus.

The seminars, which are sponsored by Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management, Center for the Environment, and Work and Environment Initiative, are open to the public at no charge.

"Three decades of increasingly complex environmental regulations threatened to make natural enemies of business and the environment," said Thomas McGalliard, researcher in the Cornell Work and Environment Initiative and an organizer of the seminar series. "The assumption by corporate America was that higher levels of environmental protection inevitably lead to higher costs for business.

"Now, new ideas are challenging the old ways of production and environmental regulation," McGalliard said. "'Industrial ecology' is an emerging field of thought and action, based on some very different assumptions: that industrial systems can more closely resemble natural systems, and that closer connections between business performance and environmental performance are possible. We built this seminar series around some of the foremost leaders in this new way of looking at business practice and performance."

Other scheduled speakers include:

• BradAllenby, vice president for environmental health and safety, AT&T Co., Thursday, March 13, at 10 a.m., 253 Malott Hall.
• John Ehrenfeld, professor and director of the Business and Environment Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Friday, March 28, at 10 a.m., 253 Malott Hall.
• Ray Cote, professor of management, Dalhousie University and developer of an ecological-industrial park in Nova Scotia, Friday, April 11, at 10 a.m., Bache Auditorium.
• Mary Nichols (invited), assistant administrator, EPA, Friday, April 18, at 10 a.m., 253 Malott Hall.
• Jesse Ausubel, professor and director of studies in Rockefeller University's Commission on Science, Technology and Government, Friday, April 25, at 10 a.m., 253 Malott Hall.
• Ed Cohen-Rosenthal, director of Cornell's Work and Environment Initiative and of the Eco-Industrial Development Program, Friday, May 2, at 10 a.m., 253 Malott Hall.

An informal buffet luncheon with the speakers will follow each presentation in the Collyer Room of Malott Hall. Then participants are invited to join small-group discussion sessions, led by Alan K. McAdams, Cornell associate professor of managerial economics, and students from the business school and other programs, to explore each topic in depth and draw on actual case studies. The discussion sessions are scheduled from 1:30 to 3:45 p.m. in 253 Malott Hall.

For more information about the seminar series, call (607) 254-5089 or e-mail tnm2@cornell.edu.