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GENERAL

The Robert N. Farvolden Award is used to honour outstanding contributions to the disciplines of earth science and engineering that emphasize the role or importance of groundwater.

CRITERIA

The Award is presented to an individual or group to recognize excellence in one or more of the following broad areas of hydrogeology: research and publication, professional practice and education, and service to the professional community or public, either nationally or internationally.

A nomination describing the contributions of the candidate(s) must be submitted to the Secretariat in accordance with the procedure and schedule listed below. The Award Selection Committee may reject, without further consideration, any nomination that, in their opinion, does not adequately detail the contributions of the candidate(s).

ELIGIBILITY

Candidates for the Award normally must be members of the Society at the time of nomination. Members of other professional organizations such as the Canadian National Chapter of the International Association of Hydrogeologists may be nominated with the approval of the Award Selection Committee.

AWARD SELECTION COMMITTEE

The members of the Award Selection Committee are chosen by the Executive of the Division from among the Executive and membership of the Division. The Committee consists of either three or five members and a non-voting Chairperson who co-ordinates the nomination and selection process.

The Chairperson of the Committee is the Chairperson of the Division, or a member of the Executive designated by the Chairperson of the Division. All of the decisions of the Committee are made on a simple majority basis in which voting is administered by the Chairperson of the Committee.

AWARD AND FUNDING

The Award is in the form of an engraved and framed certificate, provided and paid for by the Society.

NOMINATION AND SELECTION PROCEDURE AND SCHEDULE

A call for nominations appears, each year, in the CGS News section of the March issue of Geotechnical News and may also be distributed to the membership of the Division via e-mail. Any member of the Society may submit a nomination for the Award to the Secretariat by June 1.

All of the nominations that are submitted to the Secretariat by the deadline are transmitted to the Chairperson of the Division by June 15 and to the Award Selection Committee by June 30.

The Committee evaluates the nominations either in person or by telephone, facsimile, or e-mail and reports their conclusions to the Chairperson of the Division by July 15. The Committee may, at their discretion, elect to not present the Award during the current year.

The Chairperson of the Division reports the decision of the Committee to the President and Secretariat by August 1 and advises the successful candidate(s) verbally and in writing, encourages the winner(s) to attend presentation of the Award, and asks for confirmation by August 15.

PRESENTATION

The Award is presented during the awards ceremonies at the annual conference by the Chairperson of the Division, or a member of the Executive of the Division or the Society designated by the Chairperson.

Every year, in conjunction with the Canadian National Chapter of the International Association of Hydrogeologists (CNC/IAH), the Canadian Geotechnical Society presents the Robert N. Farvolden Award to an individual or group to recognize excellence in hydrogeology in one or more of the following areas: research and publication, professional practice and education, and service to the professional community or public, either nationally or internationally. The Award is presented each Fall at the annual meeting of the CGS and IAH. Previous winners were Garth van der Kamp (2005), John Gartner (2003), Joe Toth (2002), John Cherry (2001) and Robert Chapuis (2000).

Bob Farvolden was born in Forrestburg, Alberta in 1928, helped establish the Groundwater Division at the Research Council of Alberta in 1960, completed his Ph.D. with George Maxey at the University of Illinois in 1963 and later taught there. He returned to Canada in the 1967 teaching at the University of Western Ontario, where he became the first professor of hydrogeology in any Canadian university. However, it was his move to the University of Waterloo in 1970 that lead to the establishment of the hydrogeology program at Waterloo. This lead to his hiring in 1971 of the group that was to become the core of the Waterloo hydrogeology faculty: John Cherry, his former student at Illinois then teaching at the University of Manitoba, Peter Fritz then at the University of Alberta, and Emil Frind, who had with worked with Bob Farvolden and introduced groundwater flow modeling into Canada by simulating the dewatering operations during the relocation of the Welland Canal in the late 1960s (Canadian Geotechnical Journal, (1970) 7:194-204). Bob Farvolden received the Maxey medal of the Geological Society of America in 1992 and played an important role in developing hydrogeological education programs in Mexico and Costa Rica during the last years of his life. He died of cancer in 1995. To many of us, he is the father of modern Canadian hydrogeology.

A nomination for the Farvolden Award must describe the contributions of the candidate(s) and be submitted to the Chair of the CGS Hydrogeology Division or the President of the IAH-CNC in accordance with the procedure and schedule listed below. Each nomination will be considered by a newly-appointed Award Selection Committee comprising Professor Ed Sudicky of the University of Waterloo, Garth van der Kamp of the National Water Research Institute in Saskatoon, Professor Joe Toth, formerly of the University of Alberta, and the authors of this article. This Committee may reject, without further consideration, any nomination that, in its opinion does not adequately detail the contributions of the candidate(s).

The nominee (or nominees in the case of a joint nomination) may be a specialist or a generalist working in academia, or for a government agency or in consulting. The nominee(s) should display a similar integrity, mentorship, or similar unselfish leadership that distinguished Robert N. Farvolden in his career. The nomination should be supported by additional letters of support which must include at least two letters of support from outside the institution to which the nominee(s) belong(s). An appropriate nomination will include a summary of the person’s (or persons’) academic background, their mentoring and/or teaching credentials, their achievements during their career, and their contributions to Canadian hydrogeology through their leadership and participation. A single nomination submitted by June 15th of the Award year is sufficient to initiate and complete the annual process of selection on the basis of the nominee’s excellence in research and publication, or professional practice and education or professional service or some combination of these areas.

We call on Canadian hydrogeologists to submit nominations for the Farvolden Award to honour those colleagues who have displayed the very qualities that Bob Farvolden brought to our profession.

Richard Jackson
INTERA Engineering Ltd.
11 Venus Crescent, Heidelberg, Ontario, N0B 1Y0

Robert Betcher
Manitoba Water Stewardship
Winnipeg, Manitoba