Business & Community Outreach Award

The Award for 2019

richard seigel
Dr. Richard Seigel

The FCSM Business and Community Outreach Award is awarded to an individual who has demonstrated an ability to reach out successfully beyond the TU campus to develop and sustain mutually beneficial relationships with business, industry, and local school districts.

Our recipient has been a member of the TU community since 2001.  He served as Chair of the biology department for ten years.  During this time, the recipient’s research program has focused on studies related to the population ecology and conservation biology of amphibians and reptiles.  Much of this research has been exclusively field‑oriented and has involved large numbers of undergraduate and graduate students.

In 2008, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources awarded funding to our recipient to survey the Susquehanna River with the hope of locating the northern map turtle, which had not been documented since 1992. The recipient and members of his/her lab got to work right away to locate this species.  As the story unfolded, and thanks to the effort and hard work of our awardee and members of his research lab, Port Deposit turned out to be the home site for the only population of this turtle species in Maryland!  This project has provided over $500,000 of funding to TU.  In 2013, Port Deposit and TU established a strategic partnership to sustain the preservation of this species and to expand opportunities to support ecotourism, educational programs, research, and local economic interests. This collaboration has provided research opportunities to more than 40 TU undergraduate and graduate students.  Many of these students have, since, furthered their education and pursued advanced degrees in wildlife management and conservation.

With more than $1 million in state grants and in-kind support, there have been extensive renovations in creating a museum, conservation center, and research space.

Join me in “shell-ebrating" the efforts of Dr. Richard Seigel from the Department of Biological Sciences, for spearheading this “turtle-iffic” project and as our 2019 winner of the FCSM Business & Community Outreach Award.  Unfortunately, Dr. Seigel cannot be here today, as he has a teaching conflict, so I will ask Dr. Laura Gough, Chair of Biology, to accept this award on his behalf.

(As presented by Associate Dean  Vonnie Shields at the Fisher College of Science and Mathematics Forum on December 5, 2019.)