UW-Madison Student Wins Knauss Fellowship

A University of Wisconsin Sea Grant-sponsored student is among 38 nationwide to be awarded a Dean John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship for 2000, according to UW Sea Grant Institute Education Coordinator Mary Lou Reeb.

Christian Lenhart, who expects to earn master’s degrees in water resources management this December and in landscape architecture in January from UW-Madison, will intern at the National Marine Fisheries Service’s Office of Habitat Conservation in Silver Spring, Md. During the year-long fellowship, Lenhart will work on two NMFS projects concerned with restoring wetlands. He will help develop plans for redirecting water flow and sediment supply in the Mississippi delta area, and he will assist with implementation, technical advice, and monitoring of community-based restoration projects in coastal and estuarine regions around the country.

"I’ll be glad to get this hands-on experience in restoration work, after all my academic studies," Lenhart said. "I also look forward to learning how policy is formulated in Washington."

Lenhart’s interest in conservation and restoration issues developed from his experience growing in Ohio and helping to dedicate several acres of his parents farm land to the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture’s Conservation Reserve Program. After earning a bachelor’s degree in biology from Notre Dame, he worked in the AmeriCorps program restoring several streams in Oakland., Calif.

"It’s a good feeling to restore these areas," Lenhart said. "We’re still losing wetlands very fast. I like to be part of the effort to slow that down."

Sea Grant’s Knauss Fellowship program matches highly qualified graduate students with hosts in the legislative or executive branches of the federal government, or in associations and institutions located in the Washington, D.C., area that deal with marine or Great Lakes policy issues. The program was established in 1979 to "provide a unique educational experience for students interested in coastal, marine, and Great Lakes resources and the national policy decisions affecting those resources," Reeb said. Lenhart is the twelfth Wisconsin student to receive a Knauss Fellowship over the last 20 years.

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Last updated 26 January 2000 by Karl
All contents copyright 1999 University of Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute

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