by Mark Sytsma, WALPA Scholarship Committee
WALPA received many high-quality applications for our three student scholarships in 2021 and the Scholarship Committee had a hard time choosing the winning applicants. In fact, the struggle was so difficult that the WALPA Board decided to make a special award this year.
The Nancy Weller Memorial Scholarship is awarded to a graduate student in a doctoral program. This year, Alexander Reyes from WSU-Vancouver won the $1250 scholarship for his work on food web ecology in Omak Lake, an alkaline lake hosting Lahonan cutthroat trout.
The $1000 Dave Lamb Memorial Scholarship is awarded to a student in a Masters degree program. UW-Seattle’s Rachel Fricke received the award for her research on using mobile data to assess human interactions with lakes.
Meg McCann from UW-Tacoma won the $500 undergraduate scholarship for her work mapping the spread and ecological impacts of invasive New Zealand mud snails in Spirit Lake.
Acknowledging that much research is done in teams, the Board made a special award this year to three students from Walla Walla University to support their work on Corbicula fluminea, an invasive clam in Lake Ozette. Noah Bos, Allison Simmons, and Alexandra Tyler will split the $500 award.
The awards include registration for the upcoming annual WALPA conference, at which we look forward to learning more about the students’ research.
