2001 Dissertation Award Recipients

The Universities Council on Water Resources (UCOWR) Research Committee selected the 2000 dissertation Award winners.  Jonathan Pote, President, presented the awards along with a check for $750 to the recipients at the Awards Luncheon Thursday, June 28 at the Conference Center Terrace, Cliff Lodge in Snowbird, Utah.  The awards were given to the best dissertation in each of two areas - Natural Science and Engineering and Water Policy and Socio-Economics.

Natural Science and Engineering:

Laurie McNeill, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, for her paper titled, “Water Quality Factors Influencing Iron and Lead Corrosion in Drinking Water.”  Laurie received a B.S. in Chemical Engineering,  M.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from Virginia Tech.  Her dissertation research, done under the guidance of Dr. Marc Edwards, focused on water distribution system corrosion.  Laurie is currently an assistant professor at Utah State University in Logan, UT where she enjoys snowboarding and hiking with her two dogs.

Water Policy and Socio-Economics:

Beth Lemberg,  Texas A&M University, College Station, for her paper titled, “Integrating Ecological, Hydrologic, and Economic Models for Water Valuation in the Frio River Basin, Texas.”  Beth came out of an agricultural background. Her undergraduate degree was in horticulture and ecology from Rutgers University. After some years of farming she returned to school for her MSc in Agricultural Economics from Penn State University.  Beth’s thesis was on a method to manage nutrient flows on dairy farms to improve water quality. Upon graduation, she joined the Peace Corps and for the next few years she lived in Botswana, in southern Africa, working as an economic planner for the agricultural and natural resource sectors. Living on the edge of the Kalahari desert, Beth became very interested in issues of water allocation under scarcity. When she returned to the U.S. for her doctorate, she chose Texas A&M, Texas seeming a likely place for water scarcity issues to arise. Her dissertation research allowed Beth to combine many personal interests - economics, ecology, hydrology, agriculture, and simulation modeling - to study water allocation and valuation.  Beth now works for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, where in addition to water valuation work, she is helping to model a tradable credits system for alleviating excess storm water runoff.