Ulmer named to Gulf oil spill commission
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Alaska has been given a seat at the national table in preventing and mitigating offshore oil spills.
Fran Ulmer, chancellor of the University of Alaska Anchorage and former lieutenant governor, has been named by President Barack Obama as one of the members of the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling Commission.
The commission, chaired by former two-term Florida governor and former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham along with William K. Reilly, former Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, was established through an executive order and is tasked with providing recommendations on how the nation can prevent, and mitigate the impact of, any future spills that result from offshore drilling.
Others named to the commission in the June 14 announcement are Frances G. Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council; Donald Boesch, president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science; Terry D. Garcia, executive vice president for Mission Programs for the National Geographic Society; and Cherry A. Murray, dean of the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
Ulmer is a member of the Aspen Institute’s Commission on Arctic Climate Change and holds board positions with the Alaska Nature Conservancy, the National Parks Conservation Association and the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Prior to her 2007 appointment as UAA chancellor, Ulmer was a distinguished visiting professor of public policy and director of UAA’s Institute of Social and Economic Research.
Former lieutenant governor A former mayor of Juneau, Ulmer served in the Alaska Legislature and was a member of the Legislature’s Special Committee on the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Claims Settlement.
She was lieutenant governor from 1994-2002 in the administration of Tony Knowles, and lost a bid for governor to Frank Murkowski.
Ulmer was a member of the Federal Communications Commission’s State and Local Advisory Committee, the Federal Elections Commission’s State Advisory Committee and co-chaired the National Academies of Science’s Committee on State Voter Registration Databases. Ulmer earned a J.D. cum laude from the University of Wisconsin Law School, and has been a Fellow at the Institute of Politics at the Kennedy School of Government.
—Petroleum News
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