Don Betz

Chancellor, University of Wisconsin-River Falls

Don Betz has served as Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-River Falls since July, 2005. During the past year, Chancellor Betz has spearheaded several intiatives including a comprehensive strategic planning process and has established relationships with universities in Asia and South America.

Previous to coming to River Falls, Don served as Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs and Professor of Political Science at the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond, Oklahoma. For five years he served as the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Palmer College, Davenport, Iowa. For twenty-three years he was connected with Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, USA, the capital of the Cherokee Indian Nation, where he served as the Vice President of University Relations and Professor Political Science. During his tenure he also was the Director of the Sequoyah Institute and the founder and advisor of the university's President's Leadership Class and its nationally recognized Model United Nations program.

Since 1982 Don Betz has worked for and with the United Nations. Among his duties was the creation and expansion of an important non-governmental organization (NGO) network pursuing peace in the Middle East. From 1982 through 1984 he served with the United Nations as Political and Liaison Officer focusing on the Question of Palestine. After leaving the United Nations, he spearheaded the establishment and development of the International Coordinating Committee for NGOs on the Question of Palestine (ICCP), a representative council that has served as an important connection between the United Nations and NGO's worldwide active on Middle East peace issues. He has served as chairman of the ICCP from 1985-2002. He has chaired the United Nations-sponsored International NGO Meetings on the Question of Palestine and he has served as a chair, and/or speaker at more than 50 United Nations conferences, seminars and symposiums around the globe.

A frequent writer and speaker, Dr. Betz has addressed international, motivational and educational topics for over 30 years. He has worked with newspapers, radio and television in the United States and other countries addressing international, leadership and educational issues.

Dr. Betz was named the recipient of the 1991 Medal of Excellence in University Teaching by the Oklahoma Foundation for Excellence. In July 1999 he participated in Harvard University's Institute for Educational Management (IEM).

Greg Brock

Senior Editor, The New York Times

Greg Brock was appointed a Senior Editor of The New York Times in May 2006 after spending four years as the news editor in the Washington bureau of The Times. As news editor, he oversaw the day-to-day news coverage of the White House, Congress and all government agencies.

Since joining The Times in 1995, Brock has worked as the deputy political editor for the 1996 presidential campaign and was the news editor on the Foreign Desk during the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the first Iraq war.

Brock is a native of Crystal Springs, Mississippi, and a 1975 graduate of Ole Miss, where he was managing editor of The Daily Mississippian, editor of Mississippi Magazine and a member of Omicron Delta Kappa. He received the Sigma Delta Chi award as the Outstanding Graduate in Journalism in 1975 and was chosen for Who’s Who in American Colleges and Universities.

After graduating from Ole Miss, Brock worked for several newspapers including The Washington Post, The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer and the San Francisco Examiner. While at The Washington Post, he was awarded a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard for the 1994 academic year.

In his role as Senior Editor of The Times, Brock helps oversee the standards and ethics of the newspaper and works with editors and reporters throughout the newsroom to address readers’ concerns about bias, fairness and accuracy.

Anne Colby

Senior Scholar, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching

Anne Colby, a psychologist whose work centers on adult development with special reference to the development of character and values, co-directs the Preparation for the Professions Program and the Political Engagement Project. She was also a team member of the Foundation's study of Higher Education and the Development of Moral and Civic Responsibility Project. She was previously director of the Henry Murray Research Center of Radcliffe College.

Colby is the principal author of A Longitudinal Study of Moral Judgment (1983), The Measurement of Moral Judgment (1987), and Some Do Care: Contemporary Lives of Moral Commitment (1992), and one of the authors of Educating Citizens: Preparing America's Undergraduates for Lives of Moral and Civic Responsibility (Carnegie/Jossey Bass, 2003).

She completed a B.A. at McGill University and a Ph.D. in psychology at Columbia University.

John Cronin

Renowned Environmentalist and Policy Maker

A Time magazine Hero for the Planet, a college professor without a college degree, a former commercial fisherman, and frequent contributor to the New York Times, John Cronin’s message is that making a difference is only about wanting to.   He has dedicated his career to the American environment, earning him widespread praise ranging from the The Wall Street Journal to the Miami Herald who called him a “hero in one of the great success stories of the modern environmental movement.”

But his is not strictly an environmental message.  His inspiring combination of personal achievement, humor, optimism, and expert storytelling has motivated diverse audiences all over the country to believe that as individuals, they too can shape their future starting in their own backyards. 

A native of the Hudson River Valley, his work there was featured on Bill Moyers Presents: America’s First River.  A writer, he authored, with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., The Riverkeepers, published by Scribner, and has been a frequent contributor on environmental policy on the Op Ed page of the The New York Times.  An award-winning documentary filmmaker, he produced and wrote The Last Rivermen, which the Motion Picture Academy Foundation named one of the outstanding documentary films of 1991.  An activist, he has been involved in the investigation and prosecution of high profile pollution cases taken from today’s headlines.  And he has even kept his crusade active in the classroom too, helping students in his "Issues in Politics" course research, design, and lobby for environmental legislation. Governor George Pataki signed the Hudson River Marine Sanitation Act into law in 1999 as a result of their efforts.

Most recently, as director of the Pace Academy for the Environment at Pace University, John has turned his attention to working regularly with citizens, teachers, scientists, policy makers, and business leaders on the ethical dimensions of the human relationship to nature.

George Mehaffy

Vice President for Academic Leadership and Change, American Association of State Colleges and Universities

George Mehaffy serves as the Vice President for Academic Leadership and Change at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU). His division is responsible for a number of special programs and projects for AASCU presidents and chief academic officers in the areas of leadership and organizational change, specifically focusing on subjects such as technology, teacher education and international education.

In 2003 he initiated a new civic engagement project, the American Democracy Project (ADP), in partnership with The New York Times, involving 197 institutions representing 1.7 million students. That project has generated a broad range of national and campus-based activities, including a national meeting this past summer for 300 participants, a meeting at The New York Times for 170 student newspaper editors on the role of newspapers in a democracy, a Wingspread Conference to develop a monograph for senior university leaders, a partnership with the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) to create an instrument to assess civic engagement, a new series entitled Civic Engagement in Action for participating campuses, and a trip to Hungary with university presidents to meet with representatives from eastern European countries about a European Democracy Project.

Prior to coming to AASCU, Mehaffy served as the Vice President for Academic Affairs
at Eastern New Mexico University (ENMU). There he initiated a university-wide focus
on the use of technology in teaching and greatly expanded the distance education
program. For that work, in l997 Eastern was awarded the $ 250,000 Pew Leadership
Award for the Renewal of Undergraduate Education, one of only three awarded that year. Before coming to Eastern, Mehaffy served as the Director of the School of Teacher Education at San Diego State University, where his most notable achievement was the design and construction of a nationally recognized award-winning professional development school built by a partnership of San Diego State University, the Chula Vista School District, and Cox Cable. A former captain in the United States Coast Guard Reserve, he was the recipient in 1994 of the Vice President’s Award for Reinventing Government, which recognized his work in creating an innovative program in San Diego to combine active duty and reserve units, resulting in significantly greater effectiveness and efficiency. That program was subsequently adopted in all Coast Guard reserve units throughout the United States, and has been emulated in other countries as well.