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STAR Fellow Will Lead Society for Risk Analysis
Additional Profiles
(January, 2004) Dr. Caron Chess, an EPA STAR fellow from 1996 to 1997, is the new president of the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA).
SRA, an international professional society, provides a forum for those interested in risk analysis, including risk assessment, risk characterization, risk communication, risk management, and policy relating to risk at a local, regional, national, or global level.
As a Science to Achieve Results (STAR) fellow, Dr. Chess worked on a doctoral dissertation at the State University of New York's School of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse. Her research project entitled, "Risk Communication as an Organizational Adaptation: The Cases of Three Chemical Manufacturers," focused on how internal organizational factors influence corporate responses to outside stakeholders.
Dr. Chess is now an Associate Professor at Rutgers University in the Department of Human Ecology. Her publications include materials widely used by risk analysis practitioners in government and industry, including Communication with the Public: Ten Questions Environmental Managers Should Ask, and a manual for industry called Improving Dialogue: The Industry Risk Communication Manual. Dr. Chess is presently focusing on factors that affect government agencies' stakeholder involvement efforts as well as methods to evaluate public participation and risk communication on a range of issues. She is also studying the risk communication of the anthrax scare in New Jersey.
Dr. Chess now serves on the National Academy of Science's Committee on Public Participation and Environmental Decisionmaking. She has also served on the Academy's Committee on Risk Characterization (which was responsible for the report Understanding Risk: Informing Decisions in a Democratic Society) and its Board on Radioactive Waste Management. She has been a member of the Institute of Medicine's Committee on National Institutes Of Health Priority-Setting. Prior to joining academia in 1987, Dr. Chess held positions in government and nonprofit environmental advocacy organizations. She is the former director of the Rutgers' Center for Environmental Communication.
For more information, contact Estella Waldman at Waldman.Estella@epa.gov.