Thomas S. Litwin papers

Thomas S. Litwin holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Hartwick College in Oneonta, N.Y., and a Ph.D. from Cornell University in Conservation Biology and Natural Resource Policy & Planning (1986). His research focused on avian population ecology and habitat use. From 1981-1989, he served as a Senior Research Associate and Program Director of the Cornell University Laboratory of Ornithology’s Seatuck Research Program, a collaborative program with he U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. In 1989, Litwin became the director of Smith College’s Clark Science Center, a seven-building complex supporting eight academic departments and 90 faculty members, located in Northampton, Massachusetts. He also served as the founding director of Smith’s Environmental Science and Policy Program, in which he developed and taught the Senior Seminar in Environmental Science, as well as advising graduate and undergraduate students and teaching field courses on the tropical ecology of Belize and Costa Rica. His dedication to raising the understanding of science to a broader public was expressed through his work as a project creator and producer of the PBS television project, "The 1899 Harriman Alaska Expedition Retraced, A Century of Change" (1998-2004) and the 4-part NOVA series, "Thin Ice: An Exploration of the Bering Sea in the Age of Climate Change" (2008). In 2013, Litwin became the Vice President for Education at the Jackson Laboratory, Bar Harbor, ME and Farmington, CT, overseeing the postdoc, PhD, and undergraduate programs, in addition to the continuing medical education and online digital education programs. After his retirement in 2017, he was appointed as a Visiting Research Scholar. Litwin held memberships in the American Ornithological Society, , Wilson Ornithological Society, American Association of Colleges and Universities, Society for Conservation Biology, Ecological Society of America, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.