During Convocation on Sept. 17, five alumni will receive Williams Bicentennial Medals. This year’s honorees were selected for distinguished achievement in fields relevant to the college’s yearlong program Confronting Climate Change.

The medal recipients are:

Eliot Coleman Jr. ’61, a pioneer in the organic farming movement whose innovative tool design and cold-weather growing techniques have enabled farmers throughout the Northeast to be productive year round;

Bruce Beehler ’74, naturalist and conservationist, who has studied birds and their forest habitats—in an effort to preserve them—in the Asia-Pacific region and North America;

Jeff Speck ’85, a city planner and urban designer who, through writing, lectures and built work, advocates internationally for more walkable cities;

Sharon Burke ’88, an international security and energy security specialist whose work in the U.S. government and with New America examines security, prosperity and natural resources;

and Maxine Burkett ’98, professor of law at the University of Hawaii, whose scholarship and activism focus on international climate justice, policy change and adaptation for island peoples and the most vulnerable.