Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Wangari Maathai acknowledges applause after speaking at Alumni Hall at the Unversity of Pittsburgh last evening. At left is Suzy Broadhurst, vice chairwoman of Pitt's board of trustees, and at right is Pitt Chancellor Mark Nordenberg. Click photo for larger image.

Tracing the path that led her to the 2004 Nobel Prize from her studies at the University of Pittsburgh 40 years ago, Kenyan activist Wangari Maathai returned to the Oakland campus last night to accept an honorary doctorate from Chancellor Mark Nordenberg.

"I feel as though I am back home," Dr. Wangari told a large crowd at Alumni Hall. "I am deeply grateful for the gift this institution gave me. I felt I was prepared to go forth, ready to serve the world."

She earned a master's degree in biology from Pitt in 1965 before returning to her native country, where she founded the Green Belt Movement to restore Kenya's depleted forests and benefit the lives of rural women.

Under Dr. Maathai's guidance, they planted approximately 30 million trees and were paid for their efforts. The movement grew into a political one and played a major role in challenging one-party rule in Kenya.

She is now a member of Kenya's parliament, its cabinet and the African Union.

"I learned that there is nothing greater than service," Dr. Maathai said. "What everyone does matters."

Armed with her skills learned in Pitt's research laboratories, she was instrumental in the establishment of a school of veterinarian medicine at the University of Nairobi in the late 1960s.

"I was so skilled at working with tissues after studying at Pittsburgh that people expected me to treat their dogs and cats," she joked.

When logging and development stripped Kenya of its trees, leading to severe soil erosion, Dr. Maathai said she realized that environmental degradation, not disease or poverty, was her nation's biggest problem.

"We were destroying the mountains," she said, adding that continuing lack of resource management throughout Africa is a major roadblock to peace.

"We need more citizen democracy. It's important that we all talk to each other to pre-empt conflict. Violence should not be the first step."

Although her activism led to personal attacks, injuries from angry crowds and even a prison term, Dr. Maathai continues to believe "to succeed, we must be a flower to everyone we touch."

The Nobel laureate also celebrated the publication this month of her autobiography, "Unbowed" (Knopf, $24.95), printed on recycled paper.

Earlier yesterday she spoke to the national convention of the Society of American Foresters meeting here.

Co-sponsors of her visit were Pitt, the Heinz Endowments and the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.