National lakeshore superintendent to discuss Indiana Dunes in HLA talk

The marvels of the Indiana Dunes will come alive Tuesday (Nov. 29) in a presentation by the area's superintendent brought to the West Lafayette campus by the Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture.

Paul Labovitz, superintendent of the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, will give the fall Bookwalter Lecture on "Celebrating 100 Years of the National Park System: Focus on the Indiana Dunes." The lecture, which is free and open to the public, is set for 5 p.m. in the Horticulture Building, Room 117.

Labovitz became superintendent of the national lakeshore, headquartered in Porter, Indiana, in May 2014. Labovitz began his National Park Service career in 1988 in what is now the Northeast Regional Office in Philadelphia. He graduated from Penn State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in forest service and received his Master of Business Administration from Frostburg State University in western Maryland in 1987.

The Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore encompasses over 15,000 acres of dunes, beaches, bogs, marshes, swamps, prairie remnants, and historic sites along the southern shore of Lake Michigan.

The Bookwalter Fund was established by Elinor F. Bookwalter and her daughter Ellie, an alumna of the Landscape Architecture Program, for the purpose of bringing significant speakers from the professions of landscape architecture and allied fields. The fund also supports other Landscape Architecture student activities.