The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering is pleased to announce that Dr. Stephanie Bolyard, Ph.D., Research and Scholarship Program Manager at the of the Environmental Research & Education Foundation (EREF), has been granted courtesy faculty status at the college. Dr. Bolyard has MS and PhD degrees in Environmental Engineering from the University of Central Florida, and over a decade of academic and professional engineering experience in wastewater permitting, environmental compliance, and solid waste management. Prior to joining the Environmental Research & Education Foundation, Bolyard worked for Brown and Caldwell and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.
EREF is a non-profit that focuses on funding and directing scientific and educational initiatives that impact the solid waste community and the communities they serve. In her role as research and scholarship program manager, Bolyard manages internal scholarship and grant programs, as well as conducts literature reviews and is responsible for the dissemination of technical information that can be understood by the broader solid waste industry. She has also led the development of a solid waste management eTextbook tailored towards undergraduate and graduate students. Bolyard has three years of undergraduate teaching experience and has written numerous peer-reviewed articles, one of which was recently listed in the top 10% of papers published in 2020 in the Journal of Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology. She has been successful at co-authoring research proposals funded by the National Science Foundation and Hinkley Center for Solid and Hazardous Waste Management. Bolyard’s research interests include solid waste management, analytical chemistry, advance spectroscopic techniques, photolysis, biological and advanced oxidation processes, domestic wastewater treatment, and nanotechnology. Her professional background has allowed her to bring engineering experience into the classroom, as well as understand firsthand how her research impacts not only industry but also society.
Dr. Bolyard has held numerous leadership roles in professional organizations, including the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors, Air & Waste Management Association, International Waste Working Group, American Academy of Environmental Engineers and Scientists, and the Water Environment Federation. She is currently an Associate Editor for the Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association and was recently elected to serve on the Board of Directors of the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors Foundation. She was an ATHENA International Emerging Women Leader Fellow, and a former National Science Foundation East Asia and Pacific Summer Institute Fellow. In 2015 Stephanie was selected as a member of the inaugural top 30 Under 30 Alumni class at the University of Central Florida.
As a courtesy professor, Dr. Bolyard will serve on graduate committees for environmental engineering students, organize seminars on solid waste management research, and conduct workshops tailored towards writing successful research proposals.