Gruntfest honored with White award

Eve Gruntfest, a research scientist at the Trauma, Health and Hazards Center at UCCS and professor emerita, recently was awarded the Gilbert White Public Service Award from the Association of American Geographers.

The award recognizes outstanding contributions to the advancement or welfare of geography. The AAG honor will be presented to Gruntfest on April 12 at the organization’s annual meeting in Tampa, Fla.

White was a distinguished professor at CU-Boulder and was considered one of the leading environmental geographers of the 20th century. Gruntfest was a doctoral student of White’s and received the award in recognition of her career achievements in the study of hazard warnings and response to natural disasters. She began her career with an important study of public response to the 1976 catastrophic Big Thompson Flood in Colorado and was a faculty member in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies from 1980 to 2007.