Environmental work honored
Photo courtesy of Maryland Department of the Environment May 12, 2017
UD alumna receives Tawes Award for water management project in Maryland
University of Delaware alumna Susan Scotto-Dyckman dedicated her career to improving the environment after earning a master’s degree in marine policy in 1982 from UD’s College of Marine Studies, now the College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment (CEOE). After a few jobs early on, she spent 25 years working for the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE).
On Monday, May 8, the MDE, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and the Maryland Petroleum Council recognized Scotto-Dyckman with the 2017 Tawes Award for a Clean Environment.
The award, named for former governor and first secretary of DNR J. Millard Tawes, recognizes “outstanding efforts to enhance Maryland’s environment over a period of time or with a single project.”
While Scotto-Dyckman said her years of service to MDE made the award more meaningful, she was nominated for a project she led in retirement.
Since leaving MDE, Scotto-Dyckman has volunteered with the Baltimore Community ToolBank, a nonprofit that rents work tools to other nonprofits at inexpensive rates. The practice increases the financial health and capability of its clients to make bigger impacts throughout the community while preventing waste.
To improve the ToolBank’s neighborhood and help the Chesapeake Bay watershed, Scotto-Dyckman led a year-long effort to plant rain gardens and install a system of cisterns that prevent 450,000 gallons of storm water runoff from the ToolBank’s property each year.
Instead of washing pollutants off city streets and into Maryland’s waterways, the rain that falls on the ToolBank’s property now either filters through a rain garden or is collected and used for washing tools and watering trees along the neighborhood’s boulevards. The project also is a model for other organizations.
Scotto-Dyckman has always felt an obligation to give back, saying it was “an ethic promoted in grad school [at CEOE]. You have a responsibility to engage with your community.”
That ethos carried through her marine policy degree and into her work at CEOE as a marine resource management specialist for the Delaware Sea Grant (DESG) College Program, which uses the latest science to benefit local communities.
Scotto-Dyckman has remained active with CEOE, serving on the Dean’s Advisory Council for the past three years and using her experience to help shape the college’s strategy for the future. In addition to the education and experience she received from CEOE and DESG, Scotto-Dyckman met her husband at UD and their daughter graduated in 2015 with a major in neuroscience.
“It made such a difference in our lives,” she said of UD. “I absolutely believe in giving back.”
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