Schuylkill Center Presents Meigs Award to Bob Mercer
October 8, 2015
PHILADELPHIA � At a special event on Thursday evening, October 1, the Schuylkill Center presented its highest honor, the Henry Meigs Award for Environmental Leadership, to Robert A. Mercer, the executive director of the Silver Lake Nature Center in Bristol.
"The award is especially timely," said the Schuylkill Center�s Mike Weilbacher, "as Bob is retiring this year after 40 years running Silver Lake. He�s the dean of the area�s nature center directors, and all of us lean on Bob for his advice and wisdom. In our 50th year, we wanted to present the award to an environmental educator, and Bob is the clear and obvious choice."
On Thursday evening, after accepting the award from Binney Meigs, a Massachusetts sculptor who is Henry�s son, Bob presented his vision for the future of nature centers, then joined a panel discussion that included Brian Winslow, executive director of the Delaware Nature Society, Jim Waltman of the Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Association in central New Jersey, and Gail Farmer, the Schuylkill Center�s education director.
In the audience was almost 60 representatives of the environmental education community from three states, including many regional nature center directors. Schuylkill Center director Mike Weilbacher led the panel and the audience in a lively town hall conversation about the future, ranging across a wide landscape that include educating for critical and controversial environmental issues like climate change, reaching diverse audiences, building deeper connections to communities, becoming more relevant to more people, and more.
Named after one if its founders, the Meigs Award is given annually "to a visionary leader," in the words of the award, "whose commanding presence and guidance towards the world�s sustainable future reflects the spirit, integrity, and vision of one of the Center�s founding visionaries, Henry Meigs."
Henry worked with his mother, Margaret Meigs, and aunt and uncle, Lawrence and Eleanor Smith, to found the Schuylkill Center in 1965, and stayed on the board for 40 years until his death in 2005. In 2006, the Meigs family established the award in his memory.
Past winners include Pennsylvania Governor Edward Rendell, Philadelphia Deputy Mayor Michael DeBerardinis, the Clean Air Council�s Joseph Otis Minott, pioneering aquatic ecologist Thomas Dolan IV, longtime Schuylkill Center trustee and friends John and Cindy Affleck, and legendary Morris Arboretum botanist Ann Fowler Rhoads.
About the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education
The Schuylkill Center was founded in 1965 as the nation's first urban environmental education center. Its 365-acres of fields and forests serve as a living laboratory to foster appreciation, deepen understanding, and encourage stewardship of the environment. Reaching over 36,000 Philadelphia-area residents each year, the Schuylkill Center offers a diverse collection of educational programs, including programs for school, continuing education for teachers, Pennsylvania's first Nature Preschool, and a full calendar of events for the public. In 2015 the Schuylkill Center is celebrating 50 years of connecting people and nature, with a series of events highlighting the Center's work and vision for the future. For more information: www.schuylkillcenter.org.
