ELON COLLEGE – Adam Werbach, who at 25 became the youngest president of the Sierra Club, is the featured speaker during commencement exercises Saturday, May 22 at Elon College.
The Rev. Ann Calvin Rogers-Witte, a conference minister with United Church of Christ in New Mexico who also had been a pastor in North Carolina, will deliver the baccalaureate address on Friday, May 21. Her daughter, Mary Ann, is a student at Elon.
Werbach is the best known conservationist of his generation having recently served two years as president of the Sierra Club, the oldest and largest grass-roots environmental organization in the country. Currently, he’s developing nature television projects to tell what he calls “the greatest story never told.”
Werbach started his activism in the second grade by circulating a petition to oust Secretary of Interior James Watt, who served under President Reagan. As a high school student he founded the Sierra Club’s national student program, the Sierra Student Coalition. Under his leadership the group grew to 30,000 members and helped create the largest national park in the lower 48 states.
Rogers-Witte was associate minister at the Community Church in Chapel Hill and served as pastor of the Community United Church of Christ in Raleigh from 1997 to 1995. She has served as president of the North Carolina Council of Churches and was an UCC representative to the National Council of Churches’ governing board. She was a UCC delegate to the World Council of Churches’ assembly in Zimbabwe in December.
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