Student Opportunities at Illinois Water 2014

One of the biggest reasons we started holding Illinois Water conferences on the University of Illinois campus is because it's easier for students to attend. In addition to all the talks and plenaries, we’ve created several opportunities uniquely for students. We hope you’ll take advantage of them in October.

Poster Session: The student poster session will take place on the evening of October 14. Students will have an opportunity to present their research to fellow conference attendees and compete for best poster awards. The deadline for poster abstracts is July 9, 2014. You can submit a poster abstract through this form.

Registration Scholarships: If you have submitted a poster or presentation, you are eligible to submit an application for a registration scholarship. While we try to keep the registration costs as low as possible, sometimes low isn’t low enough where you are a full time student. And if you’re not presenting, you’re still welcome to apply for a scholarship, although we try to accommodate presenting students first. If you only want to attend one session or wander through the posters, don’t worry, you don’t need to register at all. Do stop at the registration table and say “hi,” though. We love to know who attended the conference, and we could probably get you a free pen.  

Water Careers Panel: As you know by now, we here at IWRC love talking about water jobs, so of course we organize a career panel every Water Conference. This year we’ve even invited a Water Jobs alum to join our panel and tell you about the joys of water planning. Other guest speakers may include an aquatic ecologist at a nonprofit, a stormwater engineer, and a college professor. The panel will take place during lunch on Wednesday, October 15 and include lots of time for questions.      

More Water Job Resources

We’re taken a short break from our Water Jobs interviews, but don’t worry, we have lots of subjects lined up for your edification in coming months. If you just can’t bear the wait and know that water is a great field to be researching, here are a few sites that provide additional interviews and resources. 

Although we might not like to admit this, Illinois doesn’t actually host every type of water job in the world. For example, we don’t have any oceans to draw oceanographers. To cover this lapse in geography and occupation, we point you to Sea Grant’s Marine Careers website. Of course, several of our coworkers (based in both Illinois and Indiana) are featured on this site, but there are also interviews with many marine biologists, ocean mappers, marine geophysicists, and many, many other careers, some of which we didn’t know existed. In addition to the interviews, the site provides listings about possible salaries in marine careers, frequently asked questions, and lots of information about schools, majors, and internships.

Another site we enjoy is EngineerJobs.com. While we get very distracted by many of the other articles, including reasons why you'd kill yourself with a Lightsaber, they also run a great feature titled: So you want my job? Thus far the series has boasted such highlights as a civil engineer, a preservation engineer, and a marine engineer. In addition to job profiles, the site also includes a lot of job hunting and career advice that we, in spite of being non-engineers, found very useful. Be warned, though. If you are remotely nerdy, this site is a huge time-sucker, in a good way.

Finally, if you’re interested in water supply and wastewater treatment, we recommend checking out Work for Water. A joint project between the American Water Works Association and the Water Environment Federation, Work for Water is a massive clearinghouse for all water industry related career details. Information in available about everything from graduate school to career opportunities for veterans to community college programs in environmental engineering, and there are lots of interviews, scholarships, and fellowship opportunities, too.

And finally, if you want the opportunity to actually talk to people working in water, you should probably attend Illinois Water 2014. Not only will we host a career panel, but we also offer student scholarships to help you get there.

It's Time to Submit Abstracts for Water 2014!

We are excited to announce that we are now accepting abstracts for the 2014 Illinois Water Conference, held Oct. 14-15 at the Illini Union on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus. To submit an abstract for an oral presentation or student poster, complete the appropriate online form by Monday, May 5. You will be notified regarding the status of your abstract by June 2.

Session Topics
The majority of accepted abstracts will fit within one of the session topics listed below. However, you may submit under the Open Topic category, from which we will develop one or two additional sessions. Student posters are requested as general submissions.  a

• Application of statistical and machine learning methods in hydrology
• Biomass crops to enhance water quality
• Critical zone observatory research
• Effects of climate and land use changes on Illinois water resources
• Floodplains: recent developments in science, management and restoration
• Global challenges and opportunities at the boundaries of water and sanitation research
• Illinois regional water supply planning
• Monitoring to modeling (TMDLs)
• Protecting water quality and addressing flooding on multiple fronts in Cook County
• Resolving chronic problems with landfills and waste fills
• State of Lake Michigan
• Stream restoration
• The energy implications of resource recovery in wastewater treatment
• Water for energy: power generation, fracking, and more

Conference Format
Sessions will be scheduled concurrently in 90-minute periods. Each session will include 4-5 presentations running 12 minutes each, with an additional six minutes for questions and discussions after each presentation.

Student posters will be presented and judged during the evening reception on Oct. 14.

Student Scholarships

Scholarships are available for students interested sharing a poster. To apply, complete the scholarship application form by Aug. 29.

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact us.

Illinois Water 2014 Call for Sessions

As the snow melts and it seems like spring may someday arrive, it’s also time to start planning for our biennial Water Conference. Illinois Water 2014 is scheduled for this October 14 and 15 at the University of Illinois’s Illini Union. We have exciting plans for plenaries, student poster sessions, and a water careers panel, but we need your help to create an engaging and timely lineup of sessions and speakers. If you have a research project or concept you’ve been developing and you’d like an opportunity to present and discuss it with your peers, we invite you to submit a session proposal. We’ll be accepting proposals until March 28. Please see the Water 2014 website for more information on how to submit a session proposal or for help in developing your ideas.

Photo by Anjanette Riley