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.

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.

Maass-White Scholars

2009 – 2010: Dr. Kenneth Strzepek

2007 – 2008: Dr. Yacov Haimes

2006 – 2007: Dr. Gerald E. Galloway, Jr.

2004 – 2006: Dr. Leonard Shabman

2003 – 2004: Dr. Peter Rogers

2002 – 2003: Dr. Daniel (Pete) Loucks

How to Apply

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

• Director, IWR