• Three-peat: Baylor student again wins national honor for research

    Stephanie Wong

    Not once, not twice, but three times has this Baylor Bear received a national award for her research.

    For the third time in six years, Baylor doctoral candidate Stephanie Wong, MS ’12, has won the Farvolden Award from the National Groundwater Association for her studies. In 2015, she claimed top honors for her research paper, “Insights in Karst Groundwater-Stream Interactions Using Dissolved Natural Radon Concentrations, Central Texas.”

    In laymen’s terms? “I examined groundwater and stream interactions in Bell County in Central Texas,” Wong explains. Central Texas’ groundwater is especially important to study, she says, because it’s not only a local drinking water source, but also the home of a threatened species of salamander.

    Wong is a doctoral candidate in geology, specifically concentrating on hydrogeology — the study of groundwater in the soil and rocks of the Earth’s crust. After earning her bachelor’s degree in her hometown of Ottawa, she went looking for a graduate geology program at a Christian university where faculty were conducting relevant research. Her search led her to Baylor, where her research has practically served Central Texans (both people and salamanders).

    Winning this award is no small accomplishment. Only four recipients in the nation are chosen each year; being one of those four recipients three times is an even greater achievement.

    Sic em, Stephanie!