Message from AAWRE President Jim Barton

Dear Fellow Diplomates: I am very honored to have the opportunity to serve you as the 2021-22 AAWRE President. I would like to thank the immediate Past-President Findlay Edwards and the outgoing Past-President Vijay Singh for their outstanding leadership and service to our Academy. We’ve made significant strides in many key areas thanks to their dedication and hard work. I would also like to welcome our new AAWRE Board members David Williams and the EWRI 2022 President Holly Piza. 

Two of my key goals as President are to: (1) continue to improve communication about board certification with AAWRE throughout the engineering community; and (2) expand the benefits of board certification for all of you. Recent examples of our work in these areas include:

• Producing our first video about board certification with AAWRE, which can be viewed here.
• Continued development and expansion of our AAWRE LinkedIn company page, which you can follow here.
• Collaboration on overall Academy marketing efforts through the recently formed CEC Task Committee on Marketing and Messaging, which is producing a new PowerPoint presentation and other marketing materials.
• Sponsoring bi-monthly technical webinars to share knowledge and information.

Your active support and participation are very critical to the success of AAWRE.  We have many opportunities for you to provide support, including:

1. Recruit your well-qualified colleagues and friends to apply to become Diplomates to join the ranks of one of the most select group of water resources engineers in the world. The requirements are a P.E. license, 10 years of professional experience of which 8 years after the first P.E., and post-undergraduate degree OR 25 years of professional experience. We need you to help us grow, and we have many different resources that you can use, including PowerPoint presentations, video, brochures, and other materials.
2. Follow us on our AAWRE LinkedIn page and let us know when you are making presentations or have other accomplishments that we can highlight on this page.
3. Support our technical webinars as a participant or presenter.
4. Provide us with testimonials or other “proof points” that demonstrate where employers have shown preference or have mentioned board certification in their hiring and/or promotion, or where clients have expressed preference or consideration of board certification in RFQs/RFPs.
5. Volunteer to serve on one of our many committees listed here. Please send us an email if you would like to participate in any of these.

An important aspect of our board certification program is to recognize outstanding professional engineers through our AAWRE awards program. We will soon be requesting nominations for our 2022 awards program, and would encourage you to nominate your colleagues for these awards. As a reminder, we have the following three award categories: (1) Outstanding Research & Innovation Award; (2) Outstanding Practitioner in Water Resources Engineering Award; and (3) Service to the Academy Award. These awards provide an excellent opportunity to recognize your colleagues. For more information about these awards and the nomination process.

In early October, you should have received your D.WRE board certification renewal notice for FY2022. If you have not already done so, please renew your board certification at your earliest convenience. As a reminder, the renewal deadline is December 31, 2021. To those who have already renewed, we appreciate your continued support of AAWRE.

Kind regards,

James Barton, P.E., D.WRE (Ret.)
AAWRE President