The EWRI Communications Council has worked to put together a series of questions to get to know our members so that we can feature our members in a “member spotlight.” We’ll be sharing these quarterly interviews, and hope that you enjoy getting to know our membership! If you’re interested in participating, please contact EWRI!
This month, we are sitting down with Dr. Jianpeng (Jim) Zhou, P.E., BCEE, F.EWRI, Chair of EWRI Technical Coordination Executive Committee (Tech ExCom), to hear about how he became involved with EWRI.
How did you originally get involved with ASCE/EWRI?
I joined EWRI nearly 20 years ago after I moved from Canada to US to take an environmental engineering faculty position at my current university, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. I started to get actively involved with EWRI by joining in the Residuals Management Technical Committee of the Water, Wastewater, and Stormwater Council at EWRI’s 2006 Congress in Omaha, Nebraska. Ever since, I have been involved in a range of EWRI committees and programs at both national and local levels.
What benefits have you realized?
Getting involved with EWRI has realized tremendous professional benefits to me in many ways. EWRI’s strength in both environmental and water resources helped me to expand my technical background and capabilities from water and wastewater engineering into stormwater and green infrastructures. Such professional growth helped me to develop and obtain a number of research grants on stormwater management for urban communities, roads and highways, resulting in publications in journals and conference proceedings, and for government agencies. These works also led to my assignments with a number of World Bank and Asian Development Bank funded infrastructure projects on watershed-based environmental management and water pollution control, and low impact development.
My active involvement with various EWRI committees, councils, my local chapter, and currently the Tech ExCom, the learning from the people I met through EWRI have provided me excellent experience and development in leadership, which have greatly helped my work at the university especially during the time when I served as the chair of my Civil Engineering Department.
What committees do you participate in?
I started with the Water, Wastewater, and Stormwater Council, served as its Residuals Management Technical Committee’s secretary, vice-chair, chair, and past chair between 2006 and 2012; as the Council’s secretary, chair, past chair, and Tech ExCom representative between 2010 and 2018. Then, I became increasingly involved with the International Council, served as its International Participation Committee’s vice-chair, chair, and past chair between 2016 and 2022. During that time, I led the development and forming of the International Linkage Task Committee in 2019 and served as its chair between 2019 and 2023.
I was elected to the Tech ExCom in 2021 to serve as its vice-chair. Since 2023, I have been serving as the Tech ExCom chair and a member of the EWRI Governing Board. In addition to my service at the national level, I have been actively involved in EWRI St. Louis Chapter, served as its secretary/treasurer, vice-chair, chair, and past chair between 2016 and 2023.
What advice would you give to someone considering becoming involved in ASCE/EWRI?
EWRI is a welcoming professional community. It offers plenty of opportunities for anyone who wants to get actively involved at either national or local level. We can learn about EWRI from various information sources, talk to our peers who are already involved in the Institute, simply show up and volunteer our service to the Institute through various committees and activities.
What is your favorite project you’ve worked on in your career?
One of the most interesting projects I worked on is my USEPA funded Community Rooted Green Infrastructures for Urban Water Improvements project. In addition to technical evaluation on the performance of field-scale green infrastructures for reduction of stormwater in combined sewers, this project involved in environmental education and training for an economically disadvantaged community, outreach to and engagement with the local citizens, building partnership and collaboration among stakeholders that included federal and local government agencies, a large wastewater and stormwater service utility, a non-governmental organization, the neighborhood association, and the residents. Findings from this project were in part published in an ASCE/EWRI journal. The multidisciplinary nature and the broad knowledge base required for carrying out this project made the work very enjoyable and the experience very rewarding.
What is something that surprised you with a project?
I found myself often get surprised with the work I did: sometimes from underestimating the complexity of the work, sometimes from learning about new perspectives and ideas that I haven’t even thought about, sometimes from decisions that resulted in unintended consequences. What I learned from these surprises are that I must stay open-minded, keep on learning, continue to improve myself and the work I do.
What is one piece of advice you would give to your younger self?
Looking back, I would do what I have done with active involvement in and engagement with professional societies like EWRI, reaching out to my peers, asking for advice and guidance, and offering my service to others and to the Society/Institute.