Austin Isinghood (right) was awarded runner-up for the 2016 WVU Student Employee of the Year. He is pictured above with his supervisor Andrew Stacy.

Austin Isinghood, WRI’s undergraduate graphic designer, was selected as a runner-up for the 2016 WVU Student Employee of the Year.

Along with the three other finalists, Austin was presented with a certificate of appreciation by WVU President Gordon Gee at the awards ceremony on Monday, April 11 at 12:30 p.m. in the Mountainlair Ballroom. The winner was also announced at the ceremony.

Austin is a graduating senior majoring in graphic design in the College of Creative Arts.

“Austin was instrumental in helping WRI redesign and launch the new NIWR.info website,” said Andrew Stacy, WRI public relations coordinator and Austin’s supervisor. “Austin is a fantastic employee. He approaches every task with enthusiasm and a willingness to learn. He’s not afraid to try something new and is going to go on and do great things.”

Austin, we wish you the best. Many thanks for doing such great work for WRI!

-WVWRI-

ahs3/16/16

Coordinated by WVWRI, an interdisciplinary team of researchers from the WVU Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Design and the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences will introduce scouts and their adult leaders to the environmental STEM field, particularly the aquatic sciences, while using the site as an ecology observatory and laboratory.

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia Water Research Institute Director Paul Ziemkiewicz announced today a project to establish an environmental science, technology, engineering, and math education and research program with the Boy Scouts of America’s Bechtel Summit Reserve near Oak Hill, West Virginia.

An interdisciplinary team of researchers from the WVU Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Design and the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences will introduce scouts and their adult leaders to the environmental STEM field, particularly the aquatic sciences, while using the site as an ecology observatory and laboratory.

The team will include Todd Petty, professor of wildlife and fisheries resources, Jim Anderson, professor of wildlife and fisheries resources, Nicolas Zegre, associate professor of forest hydrology, and Richard Thomas, professor of biology.

Through the program, scouts will earn merit badges while learning about ecology, biology, water science, wildlife and wetlands. Scouts will receive hands-on training through taking measurements, entering data and plotting simple graphs to see the results.

Fred King, vice president for research at WVU, is a strong supporter of the program. “This is a great opportunity to introduce a new generation of leaders to the environmental sciences, West Virginia and West Virginia University. They will find that we have a beautiful state and an outstanding natural laboratory to pursue meaningful studies while receiving hands on guidance from our leading environmental faculty.”

The reserve is the BSA’s newest high-adventure camp and is adjacent to the New River Gorge National River and more than 13 miles of the property border the park, providing access to more than 70,000 acres of managed, Appalachian highlands wilderness beyond the summit property. Up to 50,000 scouts are expected to be on site for major events such as the National Scout Jamboree, which typically takes place in July, with about 20,000 cycling through the site every two weeks during the remainder of the summer.

Federal funding of this project is provided through the U.S. Geological Survey’s section 104b program. The USGS awards 104b grants to State Water Research Institutes that have been established in each of the 50 states, three U.S. territories and the District of Columbia under the provisions of the Water Resources Research Act of 1984. The West Virginia Water Research Institute, a program of the National Research Center for Coal and Energy at West Virginia University, serves as a statewide vehicle for performing research related to water issues. WVWRI is the premiere water research center in West Virginia and, within selected fields, an international leader.

-WVWRI-

as03/21/16

ROANOKE - The Water Resources Conference of the Virginias began on Monday, Oct. 5 at Stonewall Resort. The annual meeting brought together the West Virginia Water Research Institute at WVU and the Virginia Water Resources Research Center at Virginia Tech. The two organizations meet each year to share research with people in academics, industry and politics in an effort to keep water resources safe and usable.

“There needs to be some type of dialogue to translate the research to something that policymakers and industry can understand, and I think that’s one part of it,” said WVWRI’s Andrew Stacy.

The two organizations are funded by the U.S. Geological Survey, and the conference is one of their major requirements each year, spreading the research to those interested. Organizers in both states said the joint conference makes it much easier to pass information along to those interested.

“We also share a lot of similar water challenges, with regard to energy extraction, coal mining, natural gas drilling, and so many of the issues in both Virginia and West Virginia are identical,” said VWRRC Director Stephen Schoenholtz.

Read the full article on the WBOY website.

A team of researchers with West Virginia University and Ohio State University are getting up close and personal with the Northeast Natural Energy drilling site in Morgantown to study various impacts of shale drilling, and project leaders are calling it an unprecedented opportunity to drive change in the oil and gas industry.

“It’s been very difficult to get all of the kinds of information on the process that we really need to do the good science; to match up the field data with the process data,” said Michael McCawley, interim chair of the Department of Occupational and Environmental Health Sciences in the School of Public Health at West Virginia University. “It’s just extremely important to be able to gather this kind of information because it’s very expensive to do it. And to have the opportunity and to be in on that opportunity, it’s really groundbreaking and really important for science and for the people that science serves, which is the rest of the world, really.

“More transparency, better accuracy, better precision,” McCawley said. “That’s the name of the game in science.”

‘Absolutely critical’

The team of geoscientists, hydrologists, engineers, ecologists, social scientists and public health professionals began work on the study earlier in the summer through a five-year, $11 million agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory.

“I think (the partnership) is absolutely critical,” said Paul Ziemkiewicz, director of West Virginia Water Research Institute. “Here you have a company that’s operating that’s allowing us access to their site. You have a federal agency, the U.S. DOE, that’s providing the funding to make all this happen, and then you have two major research universities.

“And between them we have a tremendous amount of capability.”

Read the entire article on The State Journal website.