Center For Lakes Gets Huge Boost From Lilly
In Tenth Year, Group Sees A Sense of Permanence
May 24, 2017 at 5:42 p.m.
By Dan [email protected]
But on a sunny, breezy March day in its 10th year, the organization saw a confluence of two major gifts that will likely help propel the environmental research center to a higher water mark.
First there was the groundbreaking of the future Dr. Dane A Miller Science Complex on the campus of Grace College, funded chiefly by Biomet co-founder Dane Miller and his wife through the Dane and Mary Louise Miller Foundation.
That coincided with a separate announcement of a gift from Lilly Endowment Inc., which will help support the newly renamed Lilly Center for Lakes & Streams.
Along with support from members of the Lilly family — who have homes on Lake Wawasee — and other supporters, the Lilly Center can now depend on a regular funding source that is expected to further boost the organization.
The Indianapolis-based private philanthropic foundation has a long history of supporting colleges, including Indiana, Purdue and Penn State universities.
That Grace College was able to line up support is viewed as an astounding achievement for the small private school.
“For Grace College to have the Lilly name on one of our research centers is just almost unimaginable,” said Andrew Flamm, vice president of advancement at Grace College.
The endowment and name bring with them a standard of excellence and a sense of gravitas, said Dr. Nate Bosch, director of the Lilly Center.
“It ensures that we are permanently here in this community to look after our lakes and streams. It gives us that sense of permanence and sustainability,” Bosch said
The new influx of financial support is expected to free up money for more effective educational programs and an increased research presence, Bosch said.
“Our momentum, our trajectory, is moving really fast,” Bosch said last week in his office in the Encompass residence hall, which will serve as a temporary office until the group moves into the new science center in about 18 months.
An Evolving Group
The idea for a center began about 11 years ago when a resident of Lake Wawasee came to the Kosciusko County Community Foundation and expressed a need for a research center that could provide strategic solutions to different issues with lakes and streams, plus do educational programs and coordinate at the county level on different projects.
The Community Foundation approached Grace College, which was in the midst of starting an environmental science program, and then-college president Ronald Manahan quickly embraced the idea.
These days, the center has three full-time and three part-time employees, plus as many as 20 unpaid student staff during the school year. Paid staff receive checks through the college but are funded through grants and community support.
Much of the staff work involves testing and education.
They’ve made it a mission to study the biggest lakes in the county. Specifically, they sample 12 sports lakes every week during the summer, as well as 18 streams that feed Winona Lake, Tippecanoe and Wawasee every two weeks year round.
As a result, the center is able to claim with confidence that Kosciusko County lakes are the most studied in the state.
The testing allows the center to see if the condition of the lakes is getting better or worse, track efforts to improve the lakes and provide a strategy for identifying new threats more quickly, Bosch said.
In 2015, the group’s educational programs engaged more than 7,000 K-12 students from 27 schools.
Engaging Personality
Bosch grew up in Holland, Mich., near the shores of Lake Michigan. He graduated from Trinity Christian College outside of Chicago and obtained a Ph.D. in limnology (aquatic ecology) at the University of Michigan. After that, he worked as a researcher with a focus on Lake Erie and the rivers that stream into the lake.
In 2009, he was hired by Grace to run the one-year-old lakes and streams organization and began shaping the program around three focuses: research, education and collaboration.
Flamm credits Bosch’s relationship with the Lilly family in securing support.
“As one of the Lilly members called it, he has been ‘pleasantly persistent’ in developing a relationship with them,” Flamm said.
“Nate is a unique person in that he is both a researcher, but is extremely friendly and engaging,” Flamm said.
Bosch said he had a role, but notes that he’s also networked with other families, corporations and private groups, including the Dekko Foundation and the K21 Health Foundation to secure support.
“It’s been great to have lots of different folks come alongside and see the value of what we’re doing and partner with us,” said the 37-year-old Bosch.
Under Bosch, the center has undertaken numerous projects.
The Lilly Center oversaw an impact study that showed lakes contribute more than $313 million annually to the local economy through everything from local boat sales to gasoline and dining.
The center is also responsible for organizing and hosting the Northern Indiana Lakes Festival, which returns this weekend to Center Lake.
River Cleanup
The group has also led what is viewed as the first extensive effort to rid the Tippecanoe River of logjams across a 30-mile stretch in Kosciusko County. As of last fall, canoeists and kayakers can traverse the entire stretch of river in the county.
Bosch considers the river one of the most important in the country. According to the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, the river is considered “the river of lakes,” and is nourished by 88 lakes, including some of the state's largest.
The project began about three years ago after the center was contacted by Lake Tippecanoe Property Owners, who expressed concern that the lake was flooding because of backups along the river.
The center turned to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and three state agencies to seek guidelines in organizing the project, then contacted relevant county departments and lake associations for Center and Pike lakes.
To fund the work, they obtained $100,000 in grants from the state and secured another $20,000 from local sources to pay for contractors to work on the bigger logjams.
At the same time, a small collection of volunteers led by Ed Roberts was beginning its own work on the river and was told to contact Bosch. They began coordinating efforts.
The final two of an estimated 280 logjams were removed last fall, and Bosch estimates volunteers did about half of those.
The group has since gained status as a nonprofit group and is known as P4C, Paddlers For Conservation.
On Saturday, the group gathered for what is now viewed more as a maintenance phase and worked to remove nearly two dozen trees on the river south of Oswego that were felled over the winter.
They expect to do three or four cleanups a year going forward.
“Because of the ash borer killing of the ash trees, there is just a ton of dead ash all along the river, and they just keep dropping,” Roberts said.
“If we don’t stay on top of it and do three or four clean-ups a year and keep them cleaned out, then what we’ve did in the last two or three years will be pretty much worthless,” Roberts said.
Removal of logjams has been addressed over the years by the Lake Tippecanoe Property Owners, but the work by the various groups is making a difference in the amount of flooding, said past president Mark Ennes.
Ennes points out that numerous groups have had an interest in improving the river and lakes with various missions over the years.
“There’s some overlap there, but at the end of the day, I think we’re all very interested in making sure the water quality in our county is enhanced and maintained,” Ennes said.
Benefiting A Watershed
Another group the center works for is The Watershed Foundation, which has focused on preventing pollution in lakes and streams by focusing on land management within the Tippecanoe Watershed. The watershed includes that includes parts of Noble, Whitley and Kosciusko counties.
The group has been in existence for 20 years and has been working with the Lilly Center since the center’s inception, according to Lyn Crighton, president of the foundation.
She said the center has had a “huge impact” in increasing “the awareness of importance of the lakes to our community and the need to actively protect and improve the water quality.”
“The economic impact study, I think, is one of their biggest accomplishment,” Crighton said.
The Watershed Foundation is now taking on a new project after being encouraged by the state to expand their area of coverage beyond the watershed, which is mostly southwest of the existing watershed and includes Warsaw and Winona Lake.
The foundation is now working to prepare a plan of action that assesses the added area and develops a plan to carry out goals. They turned to the Lilly Center to provide monitoring.
But on a sunny, breezy March day in its 10th year, the organization saw a confluence of two major gifts that will likely help propel the environmental research center to a higher water mark.
First there was the groundbreaking of the future Dr. Dane A Miller Science Complex on the campus of Grace College, funded chiefly by Biomet co-founder Dane Miller and his wife through the Dane and Mary Louise Miller Foundation.
That coincided with a separate announcement of a gift from Lilly Endowment Inc., which will help support the newly renamed Lilly Center for Lakes & Streams.
Along with support from members of the Lilly family — who have homes on Lake Wawasee — and other supporters, the Lilly Center can now depend on a regular funding source that is expected to further boost the organization.
The Indianapolis-based private philanthropic foundation has a long history of supporting colleges, including Indiana, Purdue and Penn State universities.
That Grace College was able to line up support is viewed as an astounding achievement for the small private school.
“For Grace College to have the Lilly name on one of our research centers is just almost unimaginable,” said Andrew Flamm, vice president of advancement at Grace College.
The endowment and name bring with them a standard of excellence and a sense of gravitas, said Dr. Nate Bosch, director of the Lilly Center.
“It ensures that we are permanently here in this community to look after our lakes and streams. It gives us that sense of permanence and sustainability,” Bosch said
The new influx of financial support is expected to free up money for more effective educational programs and an increased research presence, Bosch said.
“Our momentum, our trajectory, is moving really fast,” Bosch said last week in his office in the Encompass residence hall, which will serve as a temporary office until the group moves into the new science center in about 18 months.
An Evolving Group
The idea for a center began about 11 years ago when a resident of Lake Wawasee came to the Kosciusko County Community Foundation and expressed a need for a research center that could provide strategic solutions to different issues with lakes and streams, plus do educational programs and coordinate at the county level on different projects.
The Community Foundation approached Grace College, which was in the midst of starting an environmental science program, and then-college president Ronald Manahan quickly embraced the idea.
These days, the center has three full-time and three part-time employees, plus as many as 20 unpaid student staff during the school year. Paid staff receive checks through the college but are funded through grants and community support.
Much of the staff work involves testing and education.
They’ve made it a mission to study the biggest lakes in the county. Specifically, they sample 12 sports lakes every week during the summer, as well as 18 streams that feed Winona Lake, Tippecanoe and Wawasee every two weeks year round.
As a result, the center is able to claim with confidence that Kosciusko County lakes are the most studied in the state.
The testing allows the center to see if the condition of the lakes is getting better or worse, track efforts to improve the lakes and provide a strategy for identifying new threats more quickly, Bosch said.
In 2015, the group’s educational programs engaged more than 7,000 K-12 students from 27 schools.
Engaging Personality
Bosch grew up in Holland, Mich., near the shores of Lake Michigan. He graduated from Trinity Christian College outside of Chicago and obtained a Ph.D. in limnology (aquatic ecology) at the University of Michigan. After that, he worked as a researcher with a focus on Lake Erie and the rivers that stream into the lake.
In 2009, he was hired by Grace to run the one-year-old lakes and streams organization and began shaping the program around three focuses: research, education and collaboration.
Flamm credits Bosch’s relationship with the Lilly family in securing support.
“As one of the Lilly members called it, he has been ‘pleasantly persistent’ in developing a relationship with them,” Flamm said.
“Nate is a unique person in that he is both a researcher, but is extremely friendly and engaging,” Flamm said.
Bosch said he had a role, but notes that he’s also networked with other families, corporations and private groups, including the Dekko Foundation and the K21 Health Foundation to secure support.
“It’s been great to have lots of different folks come alongside and see the value of what we’re doing and partner with us,” said the 37-year-old Bosch.
Under Bosch, the center has undertaken numerous projects.
The Lilly Center oversaw an impact study that showed lakes contribute more than $313 million annually to the local economy through everything from local boat sales to gasoline and dining.
The center is also responsible for organizing and hosting the Northern Indiana Lakes Festival, which returns this weekend to Center Lake.
River Cleanup
The group has also led what is viewed as the first extensive effort to rid the Tippecanoe River of logjams across a 30-mile stretch in Kosciusko County. As of last fall, canoeists and kayakers can traverse the entire stretch of river in the county.
Bosch considers the river one of the most important in the country. According to the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, the river is considered “the river of lakes,” and is nourished by 88 lakes, including some of the state's largest.
The project began about three years ago after the center was contacted by Lake Tippecanoe Property Owners, who expressed concern that the lake was flooding because of backups along the river.
The center turned to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and three state agencies to seek guidelines in organizing the project, then contacted relevant county departments and lake associations for Center and Pike lakes.
To fund the work, they obtained $100,000 in grants from the state and secured another $20,000 from local sources to pay for contractors to work on the bigger logjams.
At the same time, a small collection of volunteers led by Ed Roberts was beginning its own work on the river and was told to contact Bosch. They began coordinating efforts.
The final two of an estimated 280 logjams were removed last fall, and Bosch estimates volunteers did about half of those.
The group has since gained status as a nonprofit group and is known as P4C, Paddlers For Conservation.
On Saturday, the group gathered for what is now viewed more as a maintenance phase and worked to remove nearly two dozen trees on the river south of Oswego that were felled over the winter.
They expect to do three or four cleanups a year going forward.
“Because of the ash borer killing of the ash trees, there is just a ton of dead ash all along the river, and they just keep dropping,” Roberts said.
“If we don’t stay on top of it and do three or four clean-ups a year and keep them cleaned out, then what we’ve did in the last two or three years will be pretty much worthless,” Roberts said.
Removal of logjams has been addressed over the years by the Lake Tippecanoe Property Owners, but the work by the various groups is making a difference in the amount of flooding, said past president Mark Ennes.
Ennes points out that numerous groups have had an interest in improving the river and lakes with various missions over the years.
“There’s some overlap there, but at the end of the day, I think we’re all very interested in making sure the water quality in our county is enhanced and maintained,” Ennes said.
Benefiting A Watershed
Another group the center works for is The Watershed Foundation, which has focused on preventing pollution in lakes and streams by focusing on land management within the Tippecanoe Watershed. The watershed includes that includes parts of Noble, Whitley and Kosciusko counties.
The group has been in existence for 20 years and has been working with the Lilly Center since the center’s inception, according to Lyn Crighton, president of the foundation.
She said the center has had a “huge impact” in increasing “the awareness of importance of the lakes to our community and the need to actively protect and improve the water quality.”
“The economic impact study, I think, is one of their biggest accomplishment,” Crighton said.
The Watershed Foundation is now taking on a new project after being encouraged by the state to expand their area of coverage beyond the watershed, which is mostly southwest of the existing watershed and includes Warsaw and Winona Lake.
The foundation is now working to prepare a plan of action that assesses the added area and develops a plan to carry out goals. They turned to the Lilly Center to provide monitoring.
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