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By David Poulson
One of the delights of Michigan State University’s Fate of the Earth conference is the dinner for organizers and speakers the night before.
I always angled to get a seat next to Barbara Sawyer-Koch, a former MSU trustee, who with her late husband Donald Koch, an MSU philosophy professor, endowed this annual conference on sustainability.
It was their support that allowed MSU’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism to help bring top-flight environmental journalists to speak at the event and later meet with our students.
Barb, who died March 6, was an excellent dinner companion. Her interests were far ranging – music, travel, sustainability, international students and a deep love for MSU. They intersected – she spoke knowledgeably about the impact of climate change that she noticed in her travels. And while we did not know each other well, she thoughtfully remembered to accommodate my hearing deficit during those noisy dinners.