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The School of Communication Studies at 5X���� announces its inaugural Global Communication Issues Forum, “Fracking: Promise or Peril?” featuring Dimiter Kenarov, a Pulitzer Center journalist on Wednesday, Feb. 20, at 7 p.m. in the Kent Student Center Kiva. Paid parking is available. This event will examine the practice of hydraulic fracturing to extract natural gas from the earth.

The event will feature a recent reporting project by Kenarov on natural gas extraction in Poland, followed by a panel discussion moderated by Mitch McKenney, assistant professor in Kent State’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication. The forum is free and open to the public.

Panel representatives include:

Dimiter Kenarov, Pulitzer Center journalist specializing in natural gas extraction in Poland.  He is a freelance journalist based in Istanbul, Turkey, and a contributing editor at the Virginia Quarterly Review. His work has also appeared in Esquire, Outside, The Nation, the International Herald Tribune, and others, and has been twice anthologized in "The Best American Travel Writing." He is currently working on a book-length project about the Black Sea.

Bob Downing has served at the Akron Beacon Journal for more than 40 years and writes for the Ohio Utica Shale blog for the Akron Beacon Journal. Downing covers the environment, parks and the outdoors. His reporting has examined several environmental issues in Ohio, including ozone and soot problems, landfills, toxic waste, Superfund sites, brownfields, wetland preservation and other topics.

Donald Palmer, Ph.D., emeritus professor of geology at Kent State, has had an extensive academic career in the geological sciences, with research focusing on geophysics. Palmer’s research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory and the U.S. Geological Survey.

Yoram Eckstein, Ph.D., is a professor of geology and hydrogeology at Kent State with extensive research in hydrology, focusing on modeling ground water flow and transport. Eckstein has served as a consultant for numerous hydrogeological projects.

Future Global Communication Issues Forum discussions will center on the global effect of a topic, such as natural gas extraction, and how consumers and the media communicate about the practice.