Future Leaders Spotlight: Florida Sunshine Chapter

The SWANA/Hickman Future Leaders program was created to answer the question, “Where will future leaders of the solid waste and materials management industry come from?” These SWANA chapters have the answer! Let’s take a look to see how they created dialogue and partnerships with the universities, community colleges, and institutes in their areas.

Chapter Contributors: Wei Liu - CDM Smith, Nathan Mayer - Solid Waste Authority of Palm Beach Co, William Gendusa – CDM Smith, and Keith Howard – HDR, Inc.

Part I

Q: Why did you decide to partner with local universities?

A: The SWANA Florida Sunshine Chapter’s involvement with local universities was the result of a natural synergistic relationship with Hinkley Center for Solid and Hazardous Waste Management (Hinkley Center) and the efforts of Bill Hinkley.

Established by the Florida legislature, the Hinkley Center has two primary missions: conduct academic research about solid waste and transfer the research results to the public and private. The Hinkley Center would eventually be hosted at the University of Florida, providing the Hinkley center with ready access to scholars and researchers of the solid waste field. SWANA Sunshine Chapter exists as a natural bridge between the university and working solid waste professionals for the solicitation of research ideas and public dissemination of research results.

The foundations of this university partnership were laid and cemented by Bill Hinkley. Bill Hinkley was a regulator for, at the time, the Florida Department of Environmental Regulation and one of the primary authors of the Florida, 1988 Solid Waste Act. Mr. Hinkley was a strong proponent of conducting scientific research prior to rule-making. Mr. Hinkley was also a SWANA member and heavily promoted and maintained the strong ties between academia and SWANA. He was such an impactful figure that the Hinkley Center was named after him. We are still feeling the impacts of his efforts today.

Over time, this partnership of interaction and collaboration has strengthened and evolved, but always centered around a shared goal of environmentally-sound waste management. The student design competitions, spearheaded by SWANA’s own Nathan Mayer,  were created to be in-line with the academic course work in mind, in order to engage students who are likely to become future solid waste professionals. SWANA’s Florida Sunshine Chapter was able to support these students with financial assistance and providing a public forum where students can further explore solid waste careers.

Join us next time as we talk with the Florida SWANA Chapter on how they engaged university students in their programming.

For more information on the SWANA/Hickman Future Leaders Program, contact struxon@swana.org.