Doyle Childers, director of Missouri’s Department of Natural Resources, will provide the keynote address for the 12th annual Mid-America Environmental Engineering Conference, to be held Oct. 6-7 at the University of Missouri-Rolla.

The public is invited to join the UMR community as Childers’ presents his “Vision For the Future of Missouri’s Environment” at 3:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 6, in Room 125 of the Butler-Carlton Civil Engineering Building. Childers will discuss his vision for leading the agency, improvements in service implemented under his leadership and current and future priorities for Missouri’s environment. He will also talk about opportunities for engineers and scientists in the public sector, especially within the state’s Department of Natural Resources, and take questions from the audience.

A reception that features student posters will be held in the atrium of the Butler-Carlton Civil Engineering Building following Childers’ presentation.

Student presentations will be from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Saturday in the Butler-Carlton Civil Engineering Building. The conference is co-hosted by UMR, the University of Missouri-Columbia, Washington University and Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville.

“The aim of the conference is to build relationships between the environmental engineering programs at the schools and to all our students — mostly graduate — to present their work in a relaxed but professional setting,” says Dr. Mark Fitch, associate professor of civil, architectural and environmental engineering at UMR.