Three UW Students Awarded Plummer Scholarships from Haub School

Three University of Wyoming students won Plummer Interdisciplinary Excellence Scholarships for the 2017-18 academic year, paving the way for them to pursue lasting solutions to environmental and natural resource challenges.

Each year, the UW Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources makes the award available to UW students through a private endowment from Evelyn and Chiles Plummer. The scholarships celebrate academic performance and extracurricular merit, and support students who work across disciplinary boundaries. Financial need also is a consideration for the awards. The scholarships provide $5,000 to each student, to be applied to academic expenses at UW.

Scholarship winners this year are undergraduate students Tessa Wittman and Jennet Nedirmammedova, and graduate student Casey Terrell.

“We are very proud of this year’s Plummer Scholars. They all show great integrity and commitment to their educations, as well as a desire to work toward a better world,” says Doug Wachob, interim dean and director of academic programs in the Haub School. “They’re addressing environmental and natural resources challenges from a range of perspectives, and bringing true interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches to this work.”

Wittman, of Minneapolis, Minn., is a freshman double majoring in environment and natural resources, and wildlife and fisheries biology and management, with honors. She aims to apply her education toward conserving wild places in a way that will support ecological, economic and societal prosperity.

Nedirmammedova, of Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, is a junior studying environmental systems science and religious studies, with minors in sustainability and GIS. She is interested in finding ways to incentivize sustainable resource use in society, including through waste reduction and energy efficiency, and is an active member of the Sustainability Club.

Terrell, of Pinedale, is a second-year law student pursuing a joint Juris Doctor/Master of Arts in law, and environment and natural resources. He has extensive experience working on environmental and natural resource issues with the Wyoming Department of Agriculture, the Wyoming State Legislature and the Cheyenne office of U.S. Sen. John Barrasso. He seeks a career that will let him serve as a translator among the worlds of conservation, policy and law.

The three students demonstrate the skills in critical thinking, interdisciplinary approaches, collaborative decision making and application of sound science, all of which the Haub School values in future leaders, says the school’s communications coordinator, Emilene Ostlind.

Learn more about the Haub School and Plummer Scholarships at www.uwyo.edu/haub, or call Ostlind at (307) 766-2604 or email emilene@uwyo.edu.