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\u201cWisconsin will become the\u00a0\u2018go to\u2019 destination for students, scientists, policymakers and thought leaders in water,\u201d\u00a0said Val Klump, dean of the 51ÁÔÆæ School of Freshwater Sciences and chair of the search committee. \u201cWhen you build upon the combined intellectual firepower and infrastructural assets of the\u00a0University of Wisconsin System, you will have a platform for addressing challenges in water resources that is\u00a0unequalled anywhere in the country.\u00a0We are delighted to bring Marissa on board.\u00a0Her expertise and enthusiasm to lead this initiative is exactly what we were looking for.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jablonski has coordinated\u00a0sustainable development projects around the world, including\u00a0water distribution and sanitation in Guatemala, textile wastewater treatment in rural India, and environmental safeguarding of food security activities on the African continent.<\/p>\n
An alumna of UW-Milwaukee, where she earned her master\u2019s and doctoral degrees in engineering, Jablonski also has worked in the public policy sphere. She recently completed a two-year Science Technology & Policy Fellowship with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). In that role, she served at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which implements global\u00a0humanitarian efforts to strengthen U.S. security.<\/p>\n
On one project during her AAAS\u00a0fellowship, Jablonski worked with a consortium of hotels in Phuket, Thailand, through the U.S. embassy to help them reduce their reliance on single-use plastics. The model she created, including training of employees, resulted in a drop of 4.4 million single-use plastic water bottles and 1.6 million straws in six months.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen it comes to meeting global freshwater needs, a great place to start is to gather communities, industries, governments and educators \u2013 all people who share water, and introduce a framework to communicate across divisions,\u201d Jablonski said. \u201cThen, you can collectively arrive at brilliant collaborative solutions. I look forward to implementing this strategy to advance the Freshwater Collaborative of Wisconsin.\u201d<\/p>\n
While a graduate student at UW-Milwaukee, Jablonski helped to start\u00a0the student chapter of Engineers Without Borders and continues to serve as a mentor. She also created and teaches a complementary course that gives students from different disciplines the opportunity to cooperate in designing a water distribution system \u2013 including the community outreach plans and evaluation methodology \u2013 that are then implemented in Guatemalan villages.<\/p>\n
From 2015-17 she was a lecturer in the 51ÁÔÆæ Masters of Sustainable Peacebuilding degree program,\u00a0where she\u00a0instituted courses focusing on community engagement in international development fieldwork.<\/p>\n
A native of Elm Grove, Jablonski earned her bachelor\u2019s degree in natural resource management and Spanish at UW-Stevens Point. She is a current board member of the Institute for Conservation Leadership and CannedWater4Kids.<\/p>\n
The Freshwater Collaborative of Wisconsin aims to enroll hundreds of new undergraduate and graduate students, attract between $10 million and $15 million in new research funding from federal and private agencies, and create 650 jobs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Environmental engineer Marissa Jablonski was named as executive director of the Freshwater Collaborative of Wisconsin, a first-of-its-kind statewide research hub around freshwater topics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3151,"featured_media":83382,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","uwm_wg_additional_authors":[]},"categories":[202],"tags":[],"section":[139,143],"display_categories":[],"related-coverage":[264],"uwmnews-feed":[152],"class_list":["post-83384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-releases","section-science-technology","section-water-environment","related-coverage-water","uwmnews-feed-freshwater-sciences"],"yoast_head":"\n