WSU Professor receives Honors Eccles Fellowship

Weber State University Associate Geography Professor and Great Salt Lake Researcher Daniel Bedford is this semester's recipient of WSU's Honors Eccles Fellowship. Bedford, an England native and graduate of Oxford University and the University of Colorado, became interested in the Great Salt Lake when he moved to Utah in 2002. "When I arrived at Weber State in '02 I didn't know much about the Great Salt Lake," Bedford said. "I started digging into existing research and found some interesting stuff, but not a whole lot." His interest in the salty lake grew as he researched further. "The more I looked at it, the more interesting it became," he said. Judy Elsley, honors director at WSU, said she felt this fellowship is beneficial to students and faculty alike. "The Faculty Eccles Fellowship benefits students as they get a new class, and connects faculty research to the Weber community," Elsley said. "I thought Dan's research seemed so appropriate with our campus, living right on the edge of the Great Salt Lake and not a lot of research, or even a class about it." The honors geography course Bedford teaches this fall takes field trips on four Saturdays in the semester to the Great Salt Lake to experience the lake first-hand. "It doesn't make sense to stay in our classroom," Bedford said. "Since this is right in our own backyard, we need to get out and experience it. When you're actually there, that has a much more powerful effect. I take an experience approach to teaching the class." Bedford said the Friends of the Great Salt Lake, a nonprofit organization, asked people to describe the Great Salt Lake. "The four most common descriptions of the lake were 'big,' 'salty,' 'stinky' and 'buggy,'" Bedford said. "This tells us that as a community and society we don't know much about the lake." Most Utahns are not aware of the benefits the Great Salt Lake provides, such as a multi-million dollar industry for brine shrimp, mineral extraction and its importance as an environmental resource. "Rather than it's sort of stinky, I haven't really known very much about the lake before this class," said Chris Bentley, a WSU BIS senior and member of Bedford's class. "It's such an icon for the state and region; it's ridiculous that I haven't known anything about it that I'm learning. "An interesting fact about the Great Salt Lake most people aren't aware of that comes to mind, is that the lake actually supports some of the greatest populations of migratory birds because of the brine shrimp population. So if the Great Salt Lake wasn't there the birds would have to find somewhere else to store up enough energy to make their migration. I wish more students could learn what I'm learning about the Great Salt Lake. It's a force on all of us whether we want it or not. From the air we breathe to the water we drink to the animals we coexist with, the lake affects us." Bedford's Great Salt Lake field trips are not exclusively for students enrolled in the class. Anyone can attend to explore and learn more about the Great Salt Lake. For more information contact Daniel Bedford at dbedford@weber.edu.