DETROIT, Mich. -- The Air and Waste Management Association (AWMA) has chosen Ralph Kummler, interim dean of the Wayne State University College of Engineering, to receive its 2002 Waste Management Award.

In selecting Interim Dean Kummler for the award, the AWMA Board of Directors cited Wayne State's exemplary graduate program in Hazardous Waste Control. The graduate certificate program, another program in Hazardous Materials Management on Public Lands, and a full master's of science degree program, were all developed by Kummler.

The certificate programs are designed to educate professionals from varying areas about how to apply their science to the regulatory area. The program has attracted more than 3,000 professionals -- chemists, geologists, physicists, medical professionals, and attorneys as well as engineers.

"He (Kummler) personally established credibility for the program and designed it to respond to the growing need for better trained professionals, recognizing that they would make a real difference in improving the effectiveness of waste management practices," wrote Grant Trigger, member of the East Michigan Chapter of AWMA, in the chapter's nomination letter.

Kummler is currently serving his third term as a member of the Michigan Environmental Science Board since he was first appointed by Gov. John Engler in 1995. Much of his research has involved local environmental problems, including studies of the Rouge and Detroit Rivers and air quality in the metro Detroit area. Last year, he concluded an evaluation for the International Joint Commission on the status of air toxins in the Detroit-Windsor air shed.

Kummler first joined the WSU chemical engineering faculty in 1969. He served as chair of chemical engineering from 1974 to 1993. And he was associate dean for research from 1997 to 2001. He was appointed interim dean last May upon the departure of Dean Chin Kuo. Kummler received his bachelor's in chemical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1962 and Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Johns Hopkins University in 1966.

The AWMA Waste Management Award was established in 1989 and presented at the AWMA annual conference, this year in Baltimore, Maryland, on June 26 .