Name:	Randy Kritkausky
Title:	President of ECOLOGIA and Research Scholar
Department:	NGO
Organization:	ECOLOGIA
Phone:	(802) 623-8075
Email:	rkritkausky [a] ecologia.org
Address:	P.O. Box 268 Middlebury, VT 05753

Brief Biography:
I began my community organizing career by transforming a tiny citizens environmental group in rural northeastern Pennsylvania into a regional organization with several thousand members. While teaching at Keystone College, a small private two year college in northeastern Pennsylvania, I co-founded ECOLOGIA, an international environmental organization designed to transfer grassroots organizing experience to the Soviet Union during its opening-up years. With funding from major foundations (Ford, Mott, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Soros) ECOLOGIA has implemented a highly regarded model of civil society development by embracing student scientist-activists in 'societies in transition' (former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, China) and by involving American students as staff. Since moving to Vermont in 2001, ECOLOGIA has been an active community partner with Middlebury College students, faculty teaching service learning courses, and the Alliance for Civic Engagement office which promotes community involvement. We have worked with more than 100 students on local Vermont and international service learning, research, and internship projects. I have recently consulted with Middlebury College and the Monterey Institute for International Studies (MIIS) on institutional opportunities for enhanced engagement in the international studies and research arenas, with a focus on China. I arranged for Middlebury/MIIS to become the U.S. consortium partner for a network of European universities conducting an environmental studies graduate program within the European Union's Erasmus Mundus initiative. In 2007 I conducted a first-year program evaluation of the World Leadership Corps, an international service learning experiment affiliated with the James Martin School at Oxford University. As the founder/director of an international non-profit, I am profoundly sensitive to the need to utilize existing resources and to get added value out of available resources, rather than building castles in the sky. This strategy has become ever more timely with the current global economic meltdown, a condition I see as an opportunity as well as challenge for community engagement by colleges and universities.

Areas of Expertise