Scholarship Honors Water Center’s First Permanent Director

Viessman Scholarship recipient Jesse Winter is flanked by (from left) UNL Water Center director Kyle Hoagland, academic advisor Dean Eisenhauer, former UNL Water Center director and scholarship namesake Warren Viessman and scholarship benefactor and UNL alum Isaac Yomtovian (IANR photo by Brett Hampton).

by Steve Ress

With the scholarship’s namesake, her academic advisor and more than a hundred conference attendees looking on, Jesse Winter became the first recipient of the Warren “Bud” Viessman Memorial Scholarship at April’s University of Nebraska-Lincoln Fifth Annual Water Law, Policy and Science Conference.

The scholarship was made possible by a donation to the University of Nebraska Foundation by UNL alumnus Isaac Yomtovian, owner and CEO of Cleveland, Ohio-based S.I. Land Development and Construction.

Yomtovian, who was on hand to present the scholarship and who’s company is engaged in development, investment, construction and management of residential properties, retail centers and offices in New York and Ohio, said he had very fond memories of his years at UNL and his interactions with then UNL Water Center director Viessman and that he wanted to establish the scholarship as a way of giving something back to the university and encouraging current water science students.

The UNL Water Center, along with other Water Resources Research Institutes, was formed in 1964 as a provision of that year’s Congressional passage of the Water Resources Research Act. The Water Center began as a program of UNL’s Conservation and Survey Division under CSD director Eugene C. Reed. Viessman became the first permanent director of the center as a stand-alone institute in 1968 and held the position until 1975.

It was clear at last month’s conference that Viessman and his family were proud to have the new scholarship named after him and to see the first of the scholarships awarded to Winter.

Winter is a junior Water Science major with a 3.92 grade point average. She selected Water Science from a desire to help protect and manage this vital natural resource to ensure that our society and future generations have safe, usable water for all purposes.

She plans to specialize in water policy and go on to graduate school to study in a related field before ultimately working for a state agency.

In Summer 2007, she worked for UNL’s School of Natural Resources assisting with hydrologic research as part of a saline wetlands study.  Her tasks included taking water samples from streams and wells around Lincoln, measuring salinity and electrical conductivity of the streams and wells, and installing and collecting data from various sensors along stream banks and in wells.

At the end of the summer, she presented a poster about salinity variations related to precipitation for Rock Creek at the Geological Society of America’s annual meeting in Denver, Colo.

More recently she has been working with her advisor, Dean Eisenhauer in UNL’s Department of Biological Systems Engineering, testing the accuracy of rain gauges and water level loggers in addition to testing the hydraulic conductivity of soil samples.

This summer, Winter will work for the National Park Service at Valentine, on the Niobrara River.  She is excited at the prospect of working in an area where water plays many different roles and where many agencies and groups cooperate to manage the resource.  She plans on doing research for her senior project on some aspect of managing the Niobrara River and hopes to conduct most of the research this summer.