Rowan engineering student awarded NJWEA Bigler Scholarship

April 29, 2008

The New Jersey Water Environment Association (NJWEA) recently awarded Rowan University civil and environmental engineering senior Matthew Pavelchak, 22, of Green Township, the Daniel E. Bigler Award for academic and research excellence. The association will honor Pavelchak with the $2,250 scholarship on April 30 at the NJWEA annual conference in Atlantic City.

Pavelchak was awarded for writing a book chapter on disaster management. The chapter, titled "Responding to Natural Disasters: An Increased Military Response and Its Impact on Public Policy Administration," will be published in the Disaster Management Handbook.

"The Disaster Management Handbook is designed to serve as a public policy and sociology textbook as well as a handbook for professionals in emergency response fields. The book is divided into three main sections dealing with the theoretical constructs and conceptual foundations of disaster management, case studies and lessons learned, and finally emergency personnel and the methods and issues faced in on-the-scene response and preparation," Pavelchak said.

"The chapter focuses on the implications of the federal government turning to the military for domestic deployment of troops and resources," he said. Pavelchak's faculty advisor was Dr. DeMond Miller, an associate professor of sociology.

The Daniel E. Bigler Award is given to students of any qualified major whose research emphasis is on environmental protection or water pollution control. This award is one of 10 scholarships, ranging from $500 to $2,250 each, funded by the Raymond Manganelli Scholarship Awards Program, according to NJWEA.

The NJWEA is a member of the Water Environment Federation (WEF). Formed in 1928, the WEF is a not-for-profit technical and educational organization with 34,000 individual members and 81 affiliated member associations representing an additional 50,000 water quality professionals throughout the world, according to the WEF web site.

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