The Florida State University College of Law's Environmental and Land Use Law Program is off to a strong start in the fall 2003 semester. Key activities include the following:

• This year's Distinguished Environmental Lecturers will be Dan Tarlock, Distinguished Scholar at Chicago-Kent Law School and Lee Breckenridge, Professor, Northeastern Law School;

• Guest lecturers for the Law School’s innovative Certificate Program Seminar include: Georgetown Law School Professor Lisa Heinzerling, Prof. Daniel Cole of Indiana University School of Law, and Shelley Metzenbaum, Director, Environmental Compliance Consortium and Visiting Professor, University of Maryland School of Public Affairs;

• The College of Law is currently in the planning stages for the next program in its Environmental Forum Series, which will be held on November 5 and will focus on the ACF River System;

• The Environmental and Land Use faculty teamed up with the Clinical faculty at the College of Law to organize a luncheon in September 2003 for students interested in the Law School’s expanding externship program. Participants included public interest groups such as 1000 Friends of Florida, The Nature Conservancy, LEAF, Earthjustice, and Wildlaw. Government agencies such as the Department of Environmental Protection, the Department of Community Affairs, and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission participated as well. More than twenty students obtained information from each of these groups about their areas of focus, the types of work students would perform, etc.

• This year's student-run Environmental Law Society has a significant number of activities on tap. These include an ELS "clean-up" day, a "brown bag" luncheon series that will feature leading environmental practitioners, and a career panel.

• The Editorial Board this year for the School's environmental law journal, the Journal of Land Use & Environmental Law, includes Cynthia Norgart, Editor-in-Chief, Kathleen Pautler and Celeste Sakowicz, Executive Editors, Stephen McDaniel, Administrative Editor, Cissy Proctor, Associate Editor, and Bridget Kellogg, Research Editor.

• The Environmental Alumni Group, co-chaired by Tom Pelham, Mary Smallwood, and Vivian Garfein, has initiated an effort to create a Mentoring Directory as well as a speakers roster. Any alumni(ae) interested in serving as a mentor for current FSU College of Law students, or in serving as a speaker as part of a College of Law event, should feel free to contact Jessie Johnson at 850-644-0432.