At our Kolshorn Lecture in September we will honor this year’s Distinguished Alumnus award winner. FWCB established this award four years ago to highlight the accomplishments of our alumni and to increase awareness of the contributions our graduates make to natural resources and to society more broadly. The nomination phase of the award selection process is an important part of recognizing alumni accomplishments.  This is an opportunity for all of us to take time to think about and share the career accomplishments of our FWCB friends and colleagues.  A committee of faculty and students first reviews the nominations received, followed by a selection process that is mostly a celebration of how impressive, inspiring and impactful the alumni nominees are.  A graduate student recently remarked that becoming familiar with our distinguished alumni nominees and award winners gave him a much greater sense of what he might accomplish as a graduate of FWCB.  To all of our nominators – know that your “behind the scenes” efforts are central to achieving the goals of this award.
 
Of course, honoring one of our alumni each year and celebrating his or her extraordinary accomplishments culminates in the annual award ceremony. I am pleased to announce that Dr. John J. Magnuson is FWCB’s 2017 Distinguished Alumnus.  For more than a half century, Dr. Magnuson has been a pioneer and field-shaping aquatic ecologist whose work has had significant policy implications. He is an international authority on the ecology of freshwater lakes and their role in landscape level ecosystems.
 
John received a B.S. in 1956 and a MS in 1958 in Fisheries and Wildlife Management. Following his PhD from the University of British Columbia, he joined the University of Wisconsin Zoology faculty in 1968, where he served for 32 years.  John and his research team— including an astounding 108 MS and PhD students – were highly productive and influential, publishing more than 350 scientific papers. John’s research advanced our knowledge of climate change and variability, community ecology and invasions and extinctions, crayfish ecology, fish behavior and ecology, fisheries science and management, lake ice, landscapes and oceanscapes, limnology and pollution ecology, long-term ecological research, thermal ecology of fishes, tuna biology and ecology, and winter ecology of fishes. Dr. Magnuson spearheaded long-term research on lakes for twenty years. He served in many key leadership positions including founding director of the UW’s Center of Limnology, director of the ecology program at the National Science Foundation, president of the American Fisheries Society, and Chair of the National Academy of Science Committees addressing marine fisheries and biodiversity. His pioneering leadership as the first co-chair of the “Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts” and as a lead for aquatic assessments by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have been central to linking aquatic science to policy-making over the past decade. 
 
Dr. Magnuson’s visionary leadership and science have earned him many accolades, including a Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 as part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). We are honored to present him with our alumni award this year and welcome him back to campus.
 
Please join us in September—we look forward to seeing many FWCB alumni, friends, students, staff and faculty at the lecture and reception. It’s a great time to renew friendships and reconnect with the FWCB community.