CLEAR LAKE – Dr. John S. Jacob has received the Southern Region Excellence in Extension Award for “expanding university engagement and Extension education to address urgent and emerging urban development issues.”
Jacob is a Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service and Texas Sea Grant environmental quality and coastal community development specialist based in Clear Lake. He directs the Texas Coastal Watershed Program.
Jacob was one of five regional honorees at the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities annual meeting in Orlando, Florida recently.
He was cited for “building the Texas Coastal Watershed Program from a single grant in 1997 to a six to 10-member staff today with close to a $1 million annual budget, representing at least a 5-to-1 return on investment,” according to Dr. Gary D. Ellis, head of the Texas A&M University recreation, park and tourism sciences department where Jacob also serves as professor.
The Texas Coastal Watershed Program provides information for decision-making purposes to local governments and citizens about the impacts of land use on watershed health and water quality on the Texas Gulf Coast.
“Dr. Jacob exemplifies the qualities recognized by this prestigious award,” said Dr. Douglas Steele, AgriLife Extension director. “True watershed management must span both natural resource and human dimensions of science and policy. He has built a cutting-edge program that embodies the kind of successful urban programming that Extension needs much more of, if it is to remain relevant in the coming decades. His work is a splendid example how the Extension model can be extended to a much broader urban audience that we have hitherto reached.”
More information about the Texas Coastal Watershed Program can be found at http://tcwp.tamu.edu/.
Also honored with regional awards were Henry English, University of Arkansas-Pine Bluff, 1890 Institutions Region; Rick Funston, University of Nebraska, North Central Region; Richard VanVranken, Rutgers Cooperative Extension of Atlantic County, Northeast Region; and Madeleine Sigman-Grant, University of Nevada, Western Region.
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