User: Rick Swarts
Frederick A. Swarts, Ph.D., is Life Sciences Editor for New World Encyclopedia. Serving in this position since 2005, he has written or edited over fourteen hundred articles in the areas of biology, sustainable development, medicine, research ethics, and so forth. He also serves as Academic Dean for Bridgeport International Academy.
Dr. Swarts has had a distinguished career in the fields of science and education, and has been active in non-governmental organizations and on a governmental institutional review board.
Until retiring in 2021, he served as Adjunct Associate Professor of Sustainable Development at the University of Bridgeport, where he taught graduate-level courses in sustainable development, research methods, and thesis. Previous to this, he served as an adjunct professor of biology at Lackawanna College. From 2010 to 2021, he was a member of the Central Institutional Review Board for the United States Department of Energy (DOE), which is the DOE's IRB of record for reviewing human subject research.
In the non-governmental world, from 2001 until 2012, Dr. Swarts held the post of Assistant Secretary-General for the World Association of Non-Governmental Organizations, an international membership organization for non-profit organizations worldwide. He oversaw creation of the Code of Ethics and Conduct for NGOs and organized international conferences for NGO leaders in such venues as Washington, D.C.; Bangkok, Thailand; Budapest, Hungary; Montevideo, Uruguay; Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic; and Toronto, Canada. He has also overseen NGO award ceremonies for such recipients as the Rotary Foundation, Green Belt Movement, SurfAid International, Inuit Circumpolar Conference, and Bahrain Women's Society. He currently serves on the board of directors of several non-profit organizations.
In the realm of environmental science, Dr. Swarts served as Secretary General of the World Conference on Preservation and Sustainable Development in the Pantanal, and Secretary General of the International Conference on Agriculture and the Environment in the Paraguay River Basin. He also founded the Waterland Research Institute for Water and Land Resources, a non-profit, inter-disciplinary, research, education, and conservation organization primarily active in the Paraguay River Basin in Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay. Among other activities, he presented the Keynote Address for a Society of Wetland Scientists Annual Conference, organized a panel at the United Nations on The World’s Fresh Water & Wetlands in the 21st Century for the State of the World Forum, and organized and headed a fact-finding tour of American and international authorities to the Pantanal area of Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil. Dr. Swarts has published scholarly articles in the fields of aquatic ecology, environment, evolution, and education. He is the editor of The Pantanal: Understanding and Preserving the World’s Largest Wetland (Paragon House Publishers 2000), the most comprehensive, English-language text on the Pantanal region. He is also author of The Spiritual Code (Hudson MacArthur Publishers 2000), and co-editor of both Culture of Responsibility and the Role of NGOs (Paragon House Publishers 2003) and America in the 21st Century: Trends in Education (American Leadership Conference 1990). His scholarly articles have appeared in such journals as Ecology, Journal of Research in Science Teaching, and Transactions of the American Fisheries Society. He also served as a book review editor for the International Journey on the Unity of the Sciences and is co-founder of Hudson MacArthur Publishers. Under a pseudonym, Richard Straws, he has also published a number of works of fiction, including the novel Hugh Holiday.
Dr. Swarts is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Bucknell University, with a B.S. in Biology, and a graduate degree in Zoology from Pennsylvania State University, specializing in aquatic ecology. He completed his doctoral studies at Columbia University Teacher’s College and the Graduate School of the Union Institute, graduating with a Ph.D. in Biology and Education from the latter institution. His interdisciplinary doctoral committee consisted of professors from Columbia University, Pennsylvania State University, Union Institute, and the University of North Carolina at Asheville. Among his research endeavors has been an extensive field study of brook trout in streams affected by acid-mine drainage, a study of an exceptional tolerance of some tropical blackwater fish to low pH, and a comparative study of the presentation of evolution in secondary school textbooks of the United States, China, and the U.S.S.R.
Contact information
- Frederick Allen Swarts, Ph.D.
- PO Box 1008
- Gouldsboro, PA 18424
- email: swarts.rick@gmail.com
