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.      

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

Bringing Water Science to the People of Illinois

We’ve been neglecting the blog lately, which would be sad in and of itself, if it didn’t also mean that we have been out of the office doing vast amounts of outreach. What kinds of outreach, you say? We’re so glad you asked.

You may have noticed our many postings about the Drought Workshop at the Governor’s Conference on the Management of the Illinois River System. What you may not have noticed is that this workshop was developed because of outreach requirements on a research grant.  Last spring, Dr. Ximing Cai approached us with the idea of a drought workshop, because he was concerned that his research on forecasting and climate wasn’t reaching the people who needed it most, namely, farmers and water resources managers. Since the mission of the Illinois Water Resources Center is to bring watershed science to the people of Illinois, we were excited to help Dr. Cai reach a broader audience.  And we’re happy to report that we did host a broad audience. Members of Illinois’ agriculture, economics, and natural resources departments joined with researchers for the University of Illinois and the Prairie Research Institute to discuss what information they needed to help them do their jobs during droughts. Over 30 people attended the workshop, and this was during a partial federal government shutdown that kept three of our speakers at home. While we missed their input, it was encouraging to see how many people are interested in managing drought more effectively in Illinois. Stay tuned for a report and white paper on this topic to be published on our website.

The other task that’s been keeping us so busy (including talking about it in our sleep, by one report) is nutrient pollution. Illinois is home to an impressive agriculture scene and a lot of people, most of whom live in the Chicago area. These two factors mean that Illinois puts a lot of nitrogen and phosphorous into our waterways in the form of escaped fertilizer and treated wastewater. These nutrients eventually make their way down the Mississippi River and into the Gulf of Mexico, where they greatly contribute to the massive hypoxia, or dead, zones that have been appearing there for over 30 years. The State of Illinois is now working on reducing this form of pollution by developing a nutrient reduction strategy with the aid of a group of stakeholders. Led by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency and the Illinois Department of Agriculture, the stakeholder group includes representative from wastewater treatment professionals, the agricultural community, and environmental groups, and has become large. Which is where we come in. Big groups require a lot of organization to make them run efficiently and still let everyone’s ideas and opinions be heard. Consequently, IWRC is facilitating the working group meetings to ensure that Illinois drafts a workable strategy to meaningfully reduce nutrient pollution in a way that addresses everyone’s concerns and includes the expertise of all the group members. As you can imagine, curating the content generated by nearly 50 people has taken a lot of work, but it promises to be a rewarding experience, and we hope to see the finished project next summer. For more information on the Nutrient Reduction Strategy, you can visit the IEPA website.

To round out our outreach efforts, we’ve also started preparing for Illinois Water 2014! If you have ideas of activities, sections, and events you’d like to see included, please contact us.    

Governor’s Conference on the Management of the Illinois River System

The Biennial Governor’s Conference on the Management of the Illinois River System is occurring this October 1-3, 2013 in Peoria, IL at Four Points by Sheraton. The planners have sent us these exciting details to help us entice you to join us there:

On October 1, Lt. Governor Sheila Simon will host the Illinois River Coordinating Council meeting which includes an open forum for public questions and comments.  Members of the Mississippi and Wabash-Ohio River Coordinating Councils will also be in attendance. Through a public dialogue, the Councils coordinate initiatives, projects, and funding to promote the ecological health of Illinois’ rivers.

Featured keynote conference speakers include Michael Reuter, The Nature Conservancy; James Baumgartner, Caterpillar, Inc.; Mike Doherty, Illinois Farm Bureau; Wendell Shauman, Shauman Farm; Dave Wethington, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; and Ryan Burchett, Mississippi River Distilling Company. Speakers will touch on various topics addressing industry and conservation, Illinois in the global economy, the Great lakes & Mississippi River Interbasin Study, and working locally with river resources.

Concurrent sessions will address infrastructure needs and beneficial uses of sediment, local community and agricultural actions to protect river resources, watershed history, wildlife habitat, river science and more, offering perspectives on regional, national, and global impacts of the River system. These sessions are designed to present advancements in agricultural and environmental technologies; improve understanding of economic and societal benefits of healthy ecosystems; and recognize activities across Illinois through local community actions to restore the health of this globally important watershed.

To top things off, the Illinois Water Resources Center will not only be staffing an exhibit so you can stop by and talk water (perhaps collect our autographs), but we are also hosting a workshop to discuss the 2012 Drought. We’ll delve into the workshop more in weeks to come, but in the meantime, if you would like to learn more about the conference, or register, you can check out the event website here. Registration prices go up September 12, so make your plans soon. And remember, the conference is open to everyone and has plans for all interest levels, including conservation tours and a guided bus trip. 
 

Water Events around Illinois

Water Events around Illinois

I couldn’t help but notice the plethora of great sounding conferences and meetings to be held this spring.  This is round one, so if I missed your event, accept my apologies, and please forward me the information.

In chronological order:

March 6-7 in Bloomington-Normal, the Illinois Association for Floodplain and Stormwater Management Annual Conference. Early Registration Discount applies until February 15, 2013.            

            Student note: Students can attend half days (no meals) for free!

March 8-9 in Champaign-Urbana, the Prairie Research Institute will host the Naturally Illinois Expo, which will take place concurrently with the University of Illinois Engineering Open House.  

March 18-21 in Springfield, the Illinois Section of the AWWA and Illinois Water Environment Association will host WATERCON2013, which is the Midwest's Largest Water and Wastewater Conference.  

Student note: a free Career Fair will be held March 19 from 2pm to 4pm at the Crowne Plaza Hotel 

Just over the border, March 25-27 the American Water Resources Association will hold its Spring Speciality Conference: Agricultural Hydrology and Water Quality II in St. Louis, MO. Early registration discounts apply until March 4.

           Student note: there are many opportunities for students including special registration rates.  

April 4-6 in Bloomington, Illinois Lake Management Association Annual Conference. The early registration discount applies until March 20. 

            Student note: Full registration is available for a reduced fee 

April 25-26 in DeKalb, the Environmental Education Association of Illinois will hold their annual conference. Registration opens February 1.