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Maass-White Visiting Scholar Fellowship

The Maass-White Visiting Scholar Fellowship is designed to ensure that today’s water resources challenges benefit from innovative thinking of the nation’s top academics, and to promote a deeper understanding of real-world water resource problems by those in academia. The fellowship honors the late Arthur Maass and Gilbert F. White – two scholars who had a revolutionary impact on the practice of water resources planning and management.

Their ideas on floodplain management and the principles of water resources management are more relevant and accepted today than when they were published decades ago. No other scholars in the twentieth century had more influence on the Corps of Engineers. 

Recognizing the importance of scholarship in water resources management, the Maass-White fellowship is offered annually to a scholar whose works promote innovative, substantive reforms in water resources policy research or analysis.

How To Apply

To apply for the Maass-White Visiting Scholar Fellowship, contact: Director, IWR

Maass-White Fellow

Professor Emeritus Richard Vogel as 2017 IWR Maass-White Fellow

IWR is proud to announce the appointment of Professor Emeritus Richard M. Vogel, from Tufts University, as this year’s Arthur Maass-Gilbert White Fellow. This fellowship program was established in 2001 to honor Professors Arthur Maass (Harvard U.) and Gilbert White (U. Colorado), two leading intellectuals in the water resources field who laid the foundations for modern water resources planning and management in the United States. 

Professor Emeritus Richard M. Vogel joins a long list of notable water resources academicians and practitioners who were Fellows at IWR.  They include, in chronological order starting in 2002: Dr. Peter Loucks (Cornell); Dr. Peter Rogers (Harvard); Dr. Len Shabman (RfF); Dr. Gerry Galloway (U. Maryland); Dr. Y. Haimes (U Virginia); Dr. Ken Strzepek (MIT); Dr. Denise Reed (U. New Orleans) and Dr. Eugene Stakhiv (Johns Hopkins U.).  Dr. Vogel, along with these other scholars have contributed substantially to the evolution of the Corps’ planning, evaluation and analytical procedures which conformed with the principles laid out by Professors Maass and White.

In September 2017, Professor Vogel converted from professor to professor emeritus and research professor in the department of civil and environmental engineering after 33 years on the faculty at Tufts University.  He is a former director of the interdisciplinary graduate research and education program in Water: Systems, Science and Society, at Tufts University.  He received his BS in systems engineering and his MS in environmental science, both from the University of Virginia. He received his Ph.D. in Water Resource Systems Engineering from Cornell University in 1984.    Professor Vogel’s research experience has covered a broad range of topics relating to: hydrology, water resource engineering, natural hazards and environmental statistics.  Most of his research involves the application of statistical and systems approaches to the solution of applied problems in the field of hydrology and water resources engineering.  He has advanced the practice and science of hydrology and water resource planning and management by providing statistical foundations for solving problems relating to a range of problems relating to: reservoir operations, water supply, floods, droughts, water quality, watershed modeling, watershed management and environmental statistics.  He has also extended and transferred basic innovations in the field of hydrology and water resource engineering to advance the state of practice for the frequency analysis of a range of related natural hazards including earthquakes, landslides, winds, as well as bird and plant extinctions.

He is the author of 145 peer reviewed publications, 132 in peer-reviewed scientific journals and 13 book chapters.  He has a Google Scholar h-index of 53 with 10,022 Google Scholar citations.     In 2009, he was awarded the Julian Hinds award from the American Society of Civil Engineers for his advancement of the practice and science of water resources planning and management.  He was the contributing editor for the ASCE Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management for over a decade.  He was editor of the AGU Water Resource Monograph series and editor of the AGU National Report to the IUGG - Contributions in Hydrology - 1991-94.

Professor White argued in his 1942 dissertation, Human Adjustment to Floods, that non-structural flood damage reduction measures should be used if their costs and impacts compared favorably to structural measures. He is considered the father of floodplain management.

Professor Maass published Muddy Waters in 1951, an exposé of the relationship among the Corps, Congress and special interests. He led the Harvard Water Program from 1955 to 1965. In 1962, he and others from the Program published Design of Water Resources Systems: New Techniques for Relating Economic Objectives, Engineering Analysis, and Governmental Planning. This book promoted the use of simulation modeling and multi-objective analysis and furnished many of the ideas that were later incorporated into Principles and Guidelines.

Past Fellows

  • Dr. Daniel (Pete) Loucks, 2002-2003
  • Dr. Peter P Rogers, 2003-2004
  • Dr. Leonard Shabman, 2004-2006
  • Dr. Gerald Galloway, 2006-2007
  • Dr. Yacov Y Haimes, 2007-2008
  • Dr. Kenneth Strzepek, 2009-2010
  • Dr. Denise Reed, 2011-2012
  • Dr. Eugene Stakhiv, 2014-2015