VSU announces 2001 Connell Lecture

Valdosta State University will host the 19th annual Clyde Eugene Connell Visiting Lecture at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, April 5, in Room 1011 of the Biology/Chemistry Building. This year, Dr. Michael Fitzsimons will speak on "Hawaiian Stream Fishes and the Mauka-Makai Connection."

Fitzsimons is an adjunct professor at Louisiana State University (LSU) and curator of fishes at the LSU Museum of Natural History and serves on the Advisory Council of Turtle Cove Environmental Research Laboratory at Southeastern Louisiana University.

His research interests include behavior, evolution and natural history of fishes, with emphasis on the behavioral ecology and conservation of Hawaiian freshwater fishes. In the course of his career, he has written 65 publications, 21 of them on Hawaiian fishes.

The Connell Visiting Lecturer Program is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Clyde Eugene Connell, who died on May 22, 1985. Born in Naylor, Ga., Connell attended Emory Junior College in Valdosta and then served in the Medical Corps of the U.S. Navy until 1952, when he went back to complete his Bachelor of Science degree in Biology from Valdosta State College. He returned to Valdosta State as an assistant professor after earning his Ph.D. in Animal Ecology from the University of Georgia in 1958. A group of Connell's colleagues, students and friends established the program when he retired in 1980. It was the first endowed visiting lecturer program established at Valdosta State.

For more information, please contact the Biology Department at (229) 333-5759.