Specialist Group on Use of Macrophytes in Water Pollution ... - IWA

INTERVIEWING PROFESSOR OTTO STEIN
Probably most people know you as the professor of SSF CW
processes, Otto Stein from Montana State University in the USA.
But many may also know you as a joyful person at our conferences,
often photographed and always in for a laugh. The serious professor
seems to be hidden, maybe in the research papers or in your works
in Kenya? Maybe it‘s time to find out more about you. For starters,
I wonder:
Where in your life did things definitely turn in the direction that resulted in this position?
When anyone has been in academia as long as I have, your career will necessarily take a few
unanticipated turns, but my getting into wetlands was rather
accidental, but perhaps fate driven. I was hired into and
Agricultural Engineering position here at MSU right after
completing my PhD in Civil Engineering (hydraulics) with a
focus on erosion and sediment transport; I think because I had
a Master‘s degree in Agronomy and a BS in Environmental
Science. But the program (like many agricultural engineering
programs in the USA) had few students. So one of my first
charges was to revive the program and I felt that it was
important to move away from a very traditional irrigation and
machinery focus to a focus on ‗rural water issues‘. I convinced
my chair that I should teach a course on rural water quality
engineering rather than agricultural structural design since I
didn‘t (and still don‘t) know anything about that. The problem
was that I didn‘t know anything about rural water quality
either! To learn more, I enrolled in a two-week short course
on the topic, which ended up having a major focus on treatment wetlands. While there, I
convinced myself that my diverse academic training with hydraulics, soil science, organic
chemistry, plant science and microbiology was a asset and since the TW field was so new (I think
that was in 1992) I decided to look at research opportunities as well as incorporate TW into the
What does this world need most at
the moment? More time to get to
know the rest of the people on our
planet. It is really hard to vilify folks
you know, and most of our
problems would go away.
What does our own (waste) water
world need most at the moment?
More composting toilets.
1958: born in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania
1990: PhD in Civil Engineering
from Colorado State University
and Assistant Professor Montana
State University
1996: first wetland research grant
1998: first wetland publication
2006: promoted to Professor
2006: Faculty Advisor to
Engineers Without Borders
new class. That eventually lead to a grant that was funded in
1996 and my career started moving away from erosion to
wetlands. In 2000, when I went to my first IWA wetlands
meeting in Orlando, Florida. I finally met all the people
whose papers I had been reading. I also realized that not only
were they great scientists and engineers with much to learn
from, but they really knew how to have fun too … Well I
knew then that I had found ‗my people‘ and I was going to
make a commitment to keep returning. I haven‘t missed a
meeting since and have never been disappointed in the
learning or camaraderie that goes on �.
___________________________________________________________________________
8 IWA <strong>Specialist</strong> <strong>Group</strong> on Use of Macrophytes in Water Pollution Control: Newsletter No. 37