Honors and Awards

Susan Bolton

Susan Bolton Honored at Diamond Awards Banquet
Professor Susan Bolton was honored with a Distinguished Service Award at the UW College of Engineering’s Diamond Awards Banquet in May for her work as a faculty mentor for the UW student chapter of Engineers Without Borders (EWB). Over the last four years, Bolton has mentored more than 150 UW students as they work with villagers in a remote, mountainous region of Bolivia to implement sustainable engineering solutions for improving quality of life and increasing access to schools, markets and health clinics. In a region with poor sanitation, scarce clean water, significant health problems and difficult access to markets, Bolton and her student teams work with villagers to implement sustainable changes. A project on roofs and stoves improved indoor air quality and health by providing corrugated roofs and student-designed, well-ventilated cook stoves to more than 50 households. A project to stabilize seven miles of rugged, unpaved road provided better access to schools, markets and health clinics for more than 5,000 people. Bolton holds adjunct faculty appointments in Civil and Environmental Engineering and in Global Health.

Estella Leopold

Estella Leopold Awarded International Cosmos Prize
Professor Emeritus of biology, forest resources and quaternary research Estella Leopold recently received the International Cosmos Prize, which carries a cash award of nearly $500,000. The object of the annual award, announced by Japan's Expo '90 Foundation, is to further the "harmonious coexistence between nature and mankind."  Leopold has been teaching and conducting research in botany and forest resources for more than 60 years, 35 of them at the UW. She pioneered the use of fossilized pollen and spores in North America to understand how plants and ecosystems respond over eons to climate change.

Jason Scullion

Jason Scullion Nets UW's 2010 Distinguished Thesis Honor
Jason Scullion, ’10, a graduate of the joint SFR/Evans School’s concurrent Master of Science /Master of Public Affairs program, has received the 2010 Graduate School Distinguished Thesis Award for his thesis entitled "The Political Ecology of Payments of Ecosystem Services: A Case Study of Coatepec, Mexico."  His nominators (co-Committee Chairs Kristiina Vogt (SFR) and Craig Thomas (Evans School)) cite the extraordinary rigor and creativity of Scullion’s interdisciplinary research, including his use of an innovative approach to empirical research in this field with the use of remote sensing to identify land‐cover change, and social science field research to identify behavioral changes on the ground. Watch a video of Scullion presenting his research at the 2010 SFR Graduate Student Symposium. The thesis will be forwarded to the Western Association of Graduate Schools Distinguished Thesis Award Competition.

Alex Win

Alex Win, '10, Receives Bonderman Travel Fellowship
For the second year in a row, an SFR student has been the recipient of the Bonderman Fellows Travel Award. Last year it was master’s degree student Melissa Maxa, ‘09. This year it’s Alex Win, an Environmental Science and Resource Management senior who graduated this spring. Win was among seven UW undergraduate Bonderman Fellows. The $20,000 award specifies that each recipient must travel solo for eight months, to at least six countries in at least two regions of the world, during which he or she is not permitted to pursue academic study or research. Their charge is to simply travel, learn, explore and grow. Win plans to travel to Papua New Guinea, Panama, Belize, Indonesia, China and Mongolia. His trip is structured around learning about the "social, cultural and financial impediments present in various landscapes and societies to see how they might hinder conservation efforts and find ways to balance the immediate needs of the people with the needs of the wildlife."

Jiquan Chen

Jiquan Chen, '91, Named UT Distinguished Professor
Jiquan Chen was one of five University of Toledo faculty members selected as 2010-11 Distinguished University Professors. Chen has developed an internationally recognized research area by linking biophysical measurements to important ecosystem processes underlying the changing climate and increasing environmental disturbances.