NEWS

Children of eminent sociologist Odum to participate in panel discussion

CHAPEL HILL -- In honor of the 80^th anniversary of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Social Work, the children of Dr. Howard W. Odum, an eminent sociologist and founder of the school, will participate in a panel discussion Friday (Nov. 9) at 5 p.m.

"Celebrating the Past and Looking to the Future," to be held in the Tate-Turner-Kuralt Building auditorium, will feature Dr. Eugene P. Odum of the University of Georgia, Dr. H.T. Odum of the University of Florida and Mary Frances Schinhan of Chapel Hill. They will discuss their father’s work, its impact on social work and its influence in their lives.

Dr. Howard W. Odum came to Chapel Hill in 1920 as the Kenan professor of sociology to head UNC’s new department of sociology and School of Public Welfare (now the UNC School of Social Work). His interest in the social and economic problems of the South and his vision for the region’s future became the foundation of the Howard W. Odum Institute for Research in Social Science, known today as the Odum Institute.

One of Odum’s legacies to his children was a passion for learning. His oldest son, Eugene, is known as the father of modern ecology. In a recent biography, "Eugene Odum: Ecosystem Ecologist and Environmentalist," he attributed much of his ability to think holistically about ecology to his father.

Eugene Odum played a key role in the creation of the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, the Marine Institute on Sapelo Island and the Institute of Ecology at the University of Georgia. But his greatest legacy may be the textbook he wrote, "Fundamentals of Ecology," which for 10 years was the only book available worldwide on ecosystem ecology. Odum was honored by Georgia Trend magazine in 2000 as one of the 100 most influential Georgians of the century.

Howard W. Odum’s youngest son, H.T., is an environmental scientist dedicated to developing principles for understanding the self-organization of environment and society. Influenced by his father’s overview of society, Odum developed new energy hierarchy concepts to explain the resource basis of the economy of society and nature and its current trends.

H.T. Odum’s career started with U.S. Air Force Tropical Meteorology in 1944, followed by an undergraduate degree in zoology at UNC.

Since then, he has earned a doctorate degree at Yale University, held various faculty positions at leading universities, started environmental experiments, founded graduate degree programs, started the fields of systems ecology and ecological economics, and stimulated computer mini-models of the principles of organization of environment and society.

Odum’s sons have been published hundreds of times and have won several national and international awards for their work in linking ecological systems theory to human phenomena and social problems.

Schinhan is Howard W. Odum’s only daughter and often serves as the family historian. She attended UNC in the summers and graduated with high honors from the University of Chicago in 1940 with a music degree. An accomplished musician, she has been a piano accompanist and church organist in New York, Illinois, Utah, Alabama and North Carolina and gave private music lessons in Chapel Hill. In 1941 she married Philip Schinhan, with whom she had four children.

Schinhan is a member of the Chapel Hill Music Teachers Association, the Chapel Hill Preservation Society, the Chapel Hill Historical Society and the N.C. Alliance for the Mentally Ill.

Since her father’s death in 1954, she has been the point of contact for the Odum papers, which are housed in the Southern Historical Collection at Wilson Library at UNC.

For more information about the panel discussion, call (919) 843-5299.

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