This event celebrates the leadership and vision of Bob Leader through his more than twenty years as a faculty member of the College of Veterinary Medicine at Michigan State University. Dr. Leader came to MSU after positions with Washington State University, the University of Connecticut, Rockefeller University, and other significant assignments which contributed to his knowledge and wisdom he so generously shared with students and faculty, alike.

While at MSU, Dr. Leader served as chairperson of the Department of Pathology, Associate Dean for the College of Veterinary Medicine, and as assistant to the director of the newly-formed National Food Safety & Toxicology Center. In that role, he had a significant impact on the development of the NFSTC and in bringing it to fruition. The bronze plaque in the entrance of the NFSTC building illustrates the role Bob Leader played in lobbying and facilitating this Center's founding. Bob arrived in Michigan shortly after the state experienced the PBB episode. He observed the destruction of hundreds of thousands of animals and empathized with this state's farming families over the devastation that the agricultural community experienced during this time.

With his background and thorough understanding that the food system lacked a level of technology, education, and public policy to deal with such an ordeal, Bob Leader took it upon himself to make a difference. It is his spirit and dedication that we honor today, and it is through the generous gifts of his many friends and colleagues that we pay tribute to him through this endowment.

The 2008 Robert Leader Endowed Lecture will be held
Wednesday, June 11, 2008 at 4:00 p.m.
University Club

"Don't Follow Them -They're Lost"
Richard Bawden, Ph.D.

The National Food Safety & Toxicology Center of Michigan State University is pleased to announce that this year's guest lecturer is Richard Bawden, who until his recent retirement, was a Visiting Distinguished University Professor of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources at Michigan State University. He has also been a visiting professor/fellow at Cornell (1996) and at the Universities of Minnesota (2006), Natal, South Africa (1994-1997), and the Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom. He is a Professor and Dean Emeritus at the University of Western Sydney and a Fellow and Director of the Systemic Development Institute in Australia.

His research and professional interests reside in the role universities play in engaging society, as well as systemic organization and community development. He is a former consultant to UNESCO, FAO (the food and Agriculture Organization of the UN), the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, USAID and AusAID.

He is the author of more than one hundred peer-reviewed publications and the co-author of the monograph Coming to Critical Engagement.

He holds an honors bachelor degree in agriculture from the University of London and a Ph.D. (in animal parasitology) from the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. In 2000, he was appointed to membership of the Order of Australia in recognition of his work in systemic development.

Abstract: Don't Follow Them - They're Lost

Contemporary agri-food systems operate in environments that are so complex and dynamic that their impact on the behavior of the systems embedded within them is often very unpredictable. Moreover, the systems are not only under the influence of these turbulent environments, but are themselves contributing to that turbulence in many ways through the dynamic inter-relationships they have with them. These circumstances are providing leadership challenges the like of which have never been seen before.  Where prevailing models of leadership continue to emphasize the linearity of food chains and the need for regulation and control, the current situation demands a much greater systemic, non-linear perspective, which appreciates the complexity of agri-food systems and their multiple stakeholder character.

In his lecture Professor Bawden will draw on personal experiences and on scholarship to argue for leadership as an emergent property of agri-food systems and for the associated need for intellectual, moral and competency development of those concerned with nurturing that emergence.

© 2008 Michigan State University Board of Trustees. East Lansing, Michigan 48824.
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