Professor Lara B. Fowler presents keynote speech for the 2025 Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful conference

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa.—Meeting in State College, the 2025 Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful conference focuses each year on how to empower Pennsylvanians to keep our communities clean and beautiful. This year's conference on Oct. 15-16 features two keynote speakers, Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Jessica Shirley and Penn State Dickinson Law Professor Lara B. Fowler. Fowler’s talk is entitled "Communities from the Bottom Up: Building Resilience and Sustainability in a Time of Extraordinary Change."

With her background in water law and community-engaged work, Fowler works with local stakeholders to find solutions to challenging issues of water, agriculture, energy, and climate impacts. She has helped co-facilitate discussions in Pennsylvania like the “Pennsylvania in the Balance” series, helping find ways to ensure productive agriculture and clean streams. Prior to joining Penn State in 2012, she was an attorney, mediator, and facilitator working in Washington, Oregon, and California on complex natural resource issues.

Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful is the Pennsylvania chapter of "Keep America Beautiful," a nationwide nonprofit focused on a mission "to spark action and pride in the places we call home." Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful focuses on preventing litter and illegal dumping, cleaning and greening communities, promoting and providing for the proper handling of waste and hard-to-recycle items, educating youth, and fostering community stewardship through volunteer engagement and recognition.

Professor of Teaching Lara B. Fowler is an attorney, mediator, and facilitator who works at the intersection of law, science, and working with communities. She focuses on challenging questions related to energy, food and agriculture, water, climate, community resilience, and sustainability. In addition to teaching and research, she is the faculty advisor for Dickinson Law’s Alternative Dispute Resolution student group; a nominator for The EarthShot Prize; the jury chair for the Stockholm Junior Water Prize; the vice president of the Chesapeake Bay Journal board of directors; and a board member for Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Science and Technology Policy Program (COPA STEP).