Natural Resources, School of
Document Type
News Item
Date of this Version
1-21-2025
Citation
Nebraska Today, https://news.unl.edu/article/diffendal-receives-wisherd-award-for-university-service
Abstract
Even though he’s retired, Robert Diffendal seems to be working everywhere.
The professor emeritus in the School of Natural Resources retains offices in three buildings. He reports to work at the Center for Great Plains Studies five days a week for about four hours a day. His list of volunteer activities around the state goes on and on, affecting, by his count, 21,088 people since 2003, when he stepped away from full-time faculty work. He capped 2024 at Nebraska Innovation Campus, where he received the Wisherd Award for Outstanding Service to the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
Chosen by the Emeriti and Retirees Association, the award recipient gets $500 donated in their honor to the ERA Scholarship Fund, which goes to a sophomore or junior based on need. The association chooses each year’s Wisherd recipient from almost 600 members for their volunteer service.
Diffendal has traveled the state to give talks on fossils, minerals and rocks. He has led field trips, edited articles and books, published maps and reports, served on graduate and other university committees, taught courses at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, attended national meetings of geological societies, traveled to archeological and geological sites around the world, served as a volunteer curator of the invertebrate paleontology collections of the University of Nebraska State Museum and taught grade schoolers at the SCORE Science Camp in Imperial.
“I’m everywhere,” Diffendal, now 84, said in regards to the vast reach of his service.
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