C.A. (Chet) Bowers has published widely on the cultural roots of the ecological crisis, and on the need for educational reforms in public schools and universities. He has been invited to speak at universities across the United States and by 34 foreign universities. In addition to books published by university presses, his online books are available as part of the cultural commons and may be found by going to his website, http://www.cabowers.net.

Donald J. Burgess is a naturalist and science education assistant professor at Western Washington University. A former secondary school science teacher and environmental learning center director, Don now teaches elementary and secondary methods and practicum courses. His research interests include children’s perceptions of nature, college readiness, preservice teacher’s views on the nature of science and green design. He possesses an inordinate fondness for chickadees and happily shares his passion for birds and nature.

Bevin Cowie is a student at Illinois Wesleyan University in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. She is an aspiring social worker and is committed to issues of social justice and equity.

Judith Dunkerly is a doctoral student in literacy and visiting faculty at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Her research interests center on critical policy analysis of primary literacy education, specifically as they pertain to children's rights and issues of social justice. She may be reached at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Department of Curriculum and Instruction 4505 Maryland Parkway Box 453005 Las Vegas, Nevada 89154 or via e-mail: dunkerly@unlv.nevada.edu

Venus E. Evans-Winters is an Assistant Professor of Education at Illinois State University, in the Department of Educational Administration and Foundations. She is the author of Teaching black girls: Resiliency in urban classrooms. Her areas of research and teaching interests are Social Foundations of Education, the schooling of black girls, critical race theory and urban children and adolescents.

Nandini Gunewardena is a scholar-practitioner (Ph.D in anthropology earned from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), with expertise on a range of critical local and global gender concerns gained from her dozen years of practical experience internationally with several multi- and bi-lateral agencies. In addition to a decade of teaching experience on gender and social justice concerns, she has been researching emergent gender concerns generated by neoliberal globalization, including the feminization of poverty, women's work in transnational factories, and vulnerabilities in disaster situations. Her recent publications include a co-edited volume on the gender of globalization, and another critiquing neoliberal disaster reconstruction strategies. She currently teaches through the International Institute at UCLA.

Rachel Jackson, in addition to teaching the Kiowa Clemente Course for the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma, is a Graduate Teaching Assistant in the English Department at the University of Oklahoma pursuing a Ph.D in Composition, Rhetoric, and Literacy, with a minor emphasis in American Studies. She also currently serves the Oklahoma Humanities Council as the Lead Scholar for the Humanities Forum, a series of public dialogues focusing on controversial political and social issues and using a selection from the humanities as a lens for study and discussion. She is also the Managing Editor for The Oklahoma Revelator - A People's Almanac and Cultural Quarterly, that aims at publishing marginalized Oklahoma voices, or the perspectives of Oklahomans that are generally not included in the local of national mainstream press or public dialogue. The quarterly includes columns on labor concerns, native issues, veteran and peace advocacy, and agrarian living, in addition to selections from Oklahoma's rich archives of socialist and progressive publications.

John Korsmo, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Human Services at the Woodring College of Education at Western Washington University. John has worked extensively to support youth and family efforts to deal with, and depart from, cycles of poverty and violence, having worked in numerous capacities in low-income neighborhoods in Oregon, Wisconsin, and Washington. His experiences range from primary school P.E. teacher, high school coach, mentor, counselor, and program director to Executive Director of two organizations. Prior to WWU, John was on faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and also taught courses for Springfield College. John's articles have appeared in such journals as Qualitative Inquiry, Relational Child and Youth Care Practice, Journal of Child and Youth Care Work, and International Child and Youth Care Network. John has presented his work in Austria, Canada, and Finland and regularly speaks at conferences throughout the US.

Michael P. Mueller is an environmental philosopher and science education professor at the University of Georgia. His philosophy focuses on how privileged cultural thinking patterns frame our relations with others including nonhuman species and physical environments. His research includes ecosociocultural theory, ecojustice, citizen science, nature schools, teacher preparation, and youth activism.

Jennifer C. Ng is an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Kansas.  Her research and teaching interests include such topics as multicultural education, urban education, and sociology of education.

Michael Reinke lives in Bellingham, Washington with his wife Holly Folk and his two children Canaan and Aniko. Michael was born and raised in Massachusetts, receiving his BA from Wesleyan University in Connecticut and his M.Div. from Union Theological Seminary in New York City, where he did street outreach in Morningside Park and the surrounding area. He has served as the executive director for a neighborhood center in New York City, a small housing organization serving the homeless in Indiana, and most recently with ICHHI, a statewide nonprofit advocacy group in Indiana focusing on issues of poverty and the working poor. Michael is currently the Director of Development for the Woodring College of Education at Western Washington University.

John L. Rury is Professor of Education and (by courtesy) History at the University of Kansas. A past president of the History of Education Society and vice president of the American Educational Research Association, he has also served as a senior program officer at the Spencer Foundation, Chicago.

Frank Serafini is an author illustrator, photographer, and an Associate Professor of Literacy Education and Children's Literature at Arizona State University. He has published six professional development books for elementary educators with Scholastic and Heinemann Publishers. More information: http://www.frankserafini.com

Kay Ann Taylor, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor, Foundations of Education and American Ethnic Studies at Kansas State University, Manhattan. She teaches undergraduate and graduate (history and philosophy) foundations of education courses. She is a Tilford Fellow at K-State. Her research foci encompass intersecting issues central to the broad spectrum of foundations of education addressing social transformation and social justice through a Critical Race Theory lens.

Muhammad Yunus became active in the fight against poverty in 1974 when he lent the equivalent of US$27 to several women in the town of Jobra, Bangladesh. Two years later, Yunus began the Grameen Bank Project, an institution designed to provide loans to people living in poverty without requiring any collateral. Yunus considers Grameen to be "a message of hope, a programme for putting homelessness and destitution in a museum so that one day our children will visit it and ask how we could have allowed such a terrible thing to go on for so long." Through this work, Yunus and the bank have earned numerous awards, most notably the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. "We were happy that the world has given recognition through this prize, that poverty is a threat to peace," said Yunus in acknowledging the award. Muhammad Yunus received his Ph.D in Economics from Vanderbilt University, U.S.A. in 1970 and taught economics in both Bangladesh and the United States for nearly 30 years. He currently resides in Dhaka, Bangladesh with his wife Afroji, a professor of physics at Jahangirnagar University. (Sources: http://www.grameen-info.org/, http://www.muhammadyunus.org/)