Special Career Awards

Wayne Gabriel

My parents were born near the end of the Great Depression and moved to Houston, Texas in 1952 from farms less than 45 miles away, and started their careers with nothing more than their education, and willingness to learn and work. I was a city boy who spent a lot of time on weekends with grandparents and relatives on the farm and in the country.

After graduation from Spring Branch High School in Houston in 1972, I attended Sam Houston State University for two years taking the required courses for a Bachelor of Science degree in Agriculture, and all the science and ag courses I could take. I was paying my own way through college by working at a grocery store when I wasn’t taking college courses or studying, and then as a welder’s assistant in a factory that made steel vessels for refineries. I also worked on a dairy and did construction work.

I transferred to Texas A&M University (TAMU) in the fall of 1974, took the Basic Soils course Agronomy 301, and joined the soil judging team. I was confident that I could make a career in soils after how I performed soil judging. I took all the required courses to get a degree in Agronomy and met the requirements of 15 hours of soils courses to qualify as a Soil Conservation Service (SCS) soil scientist with the USDA. In the summer of 1975, I served as a student trainee with SCS in Bellville, Texas, assisting with all kinds of conservation planning, and soil survey. My starting salary was $7,596.

In May of 1976 I got my BS degree in Agronomy and moved to my first full time SCS duty location to work on the Soil Survey of Val Verde County, Texas. One of my coworkers in Del Rio, Texas, was Mike Golden, who later became director of soil survey. Another coworker became state soil scientist, and another state conservationist in Texas. I had some great mentors and mapped 707,000 acres of soil surveys of rangeland in and out of the Chihuahuan Desert in my 3 years there. I was also the coauthor of this soil survey publication of two million acres.

I moved to the Web County soil survey and mapped 480,000 acres in the Rio Grande Plains with all hyperthermic soils and mostly rangeland near the Chihuahuan Desert.  I worked with Russell Sanders to complete the survey of 2 million acres. Russell was trained to map on a plane table and alidade, and made the transition to mapping with aerial photography soon after. Russell retired after we finished the mapping, and I recompiled and transferred all of the soil surveys from 1:20,000 to a scale of 1:31,680 and finished writing the manuscript at Pearsall, my next duty location. It took me 6 months to finish Webb County, while I trained and directed our new staff, John Galbraith and Drew Groves. 

Leadership always moved project leaders as soon as the mapping was reported and assigned mapping goals at the next project location. This put a lot of stress on us. It might have been good for the agency accomplishments but it was tough on project leaders. To finish a whole soil survey all at the same time for mapping, compilation, correlation, and the manuscript was impossible. They also moved your staff as soon as the last acre of mapping was eminent to another project, leaving the project leader holding the bag of responsibility and he or she was soon moved.

I finished the Frio County Soil Survey mapping, 180,000 acres mapped myself, and made a lateral move to a GS-11 Area Soil Scientist position in Uvalde, Texas. I finished the Frio County soil survey at this new location. As Area Soil Scientist, in addition to providing Technical Soil Services to 16 counties, that grew to 22 while I was there, I was also the project leader for the 2 million acres of soil survey of Edwards and Real Counties. We completed the soil survey with a permanent staff of one, Lynn Loomis, and a few mapping details. I managed to complete 1,135,000 acres of soil surveys on this project myself and on some mapping details in West Texas, to help complete the initial mapping of Texas in 2012. It took several years to complete this survey after I was promoted to a Soil Data Quality Specialist GS-12 in Temple, on Mike Golden’s staff. I will complete my career as a 2.5 million-acre mapper.

I converted our MLRA Office (MO) data from SSSD to NASIS and managed the State, MO, and Regional Databases they evolved into until March of this year. I was a member of the team that designed and built Web Soil Survey (WSS) and personally coined the name that was accepted. I briefed the National Soil Survey Center staff on WSS development when we started, telling them we planned development from start to finish in nine months. Their response was it could not be done. They were right, because it took us 12 months. WSS was developed by a team of soil scientists and conservationists in Texas and a team of programmers led by Kelly Dodge. WSS transformed our soil data delivery system, and with improvement and maintenance, it is still functional!

I wrote hundreds of our own check reports to find and correct data errors and served on the team that developed the Data Integrity Reports we have today. I completed the final correlation of Young County in 2003, Greer County in 2005, Santa Fe County in 2008, and the amendments to 9 soil survey areas where we did maintenance and updates for 11 military bases. I served as the Soil Data Quality Specialist in charge of Zapata County, McMullen County, Guadalupe Mountains National Park, Carlsbad Caverns National Park, MLRA 70 portion of White Sands Missile Range in NM, two MLRA update projects for the Opelousas Louisiana MLRA soil survey office, and MLRAs 78, 81, 82, 83, 133B, 87, 80B, 80A in Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Oklahoma, MLRA 70 in New Mexico and represented the state soil scientist for quality control in MLRA 42 including the soil surveys of Brewster County Main Part, Big Bend National Park, Presidio County, and Fort Bliss in Texas.

I provided the principal leadership for the soil survey maintenance and updating of projects and completion of the soil survey areas in Texas that had Army or National Guard bases. The approach we implemented maintained and updated the whole survey area so that we could also provide updated soil information to the public through SSURGO for whole survey areas and counties, rather than just the military bases. This became the approach for all of our soil survey updates and maintenance work on special projects, even for recent Coastal Zone Soil Surveys in Texas.

I have been a Senior Regional Soil Scientist since 2016, and have been blessed with a long string of great supervisors in the past including, most recently, Drew Kinney and Jo Parsley.

Much more was accomplished working with fellow employees and customers, and much more could be said. I have completely enjoyed this career with the SCS and NRCS. I worked with great professionals, and some of the best natural resources scientists in the world, within and out of the soil science discipline. My career was intellectually challenging and used all the knowledge and skills I developed before and after college graduation. I have been truly blessed with this career path and know I picked the right one.

Our personal investments from my salary in this career, and sale of a 100-acre ranch I bought in Temple 19 years ago when I transferred there, allowed me to purchase a 279-acre cattle and wildlife ranch at Leon Junction, TX where we live, with adequate funds left for ranch maintenance and for retirement, plus I will receive my Civil Service pension. This has been a dream come true for me and my wife Amber. I resigned in March and will retire in September with a total of 50 years and 4 months of creditable service, plus 2.5 more years added from unused sick leave.

My philosophy has been to keep learning, work hard, keep up with technology, be creative, develop better techniques, always strive for quality in mine and others’ work, and not count the days until you can retire. Count the days and years after you can retire.  Work long enough in a position to correct your own mistakes and others’. Take good care of your health. I missed some opportunities to improve and maintain my health in the last 11 years. Don’t let it happen to you, regardless of when you retire. Best regards to all.

Roy Vick

I entered NC State University in 1972, thinking I wanted to be an engineer. Calculus did not agree with me. My second love was natural resource management, and I found a home in the soil science department. All it took was SOILS-200 and I was hooked.

My first job was as a county soil scientist in Pulaski County, Virginia.  I was supervised by the SCS party leader. First day on the job, I got to describe a profile of the Frederick Series in a borrow pit. I had never set foot in MLRA 128 - Appalachian Ridges and Valleys. I realized later that the principles of soil genesis and pedology would apply anywhere in the world. I was hired by the Soil Conservation Service in December 1976 as a GS-5. That’s all they were offering and I gladly accepted.

After two years, I was transferred to Albemarle County, VA to help complete a survey that had dragged on for years. They brought in four of us. New territory included the Blue Ridge (MLRA130), Southern Piedmont (MLRA136) and Northern Piedmont (MLRA 148). The party leader, JB Carter, was a WWII Marine Corps veteran who fought in the South Pacific (read this as tough but still gentle). He didn’t care to know anything about Soil Taxonomy, so he relied on us, and we learned a lot. The cover photo for the county soil survey publication is of Monticello. Thomas Jefferson chose the best soils in the county, Davidson Soil Series, a Rhodic Paleudult weathered from the basic metamorphic greenstone in the Blue Ridge.

I was selected to be a party leader (yes, the working title at the time) in the Roanoke, Virginia area, which took me back to the sedimentary geology of MLRA 128. As part of the original NRI 1982, the primary sample units (PSUs) needed soil maps. I had 7 counties with no soil survey and a hundred scattered 115-acre PSUs to map. This was the most difficult mapping I did in my career. It was like being dropped into an area with a blindfold on and figure out the soils, and then jump to the next PSU. I did work on several initial surveys and completed the Botetourt County publication.

Seven SCS soil scientists were uprooted and moved to the Atlantic Coast Flatwoods (MLRA 153A) in 1988 to map cropland because of the new Farm Bill and the conservation compliance requirements. There were 3 county surveys in a cluster now in progress, and I had one of them. We had details in each winter from places such as Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Montana. I didn’t care too much about the coastal plain, although soil catenas were fun to identify. 

I applied for the assistant state soil scientist job in South Carolina and was selected. I knew nothing about the city of Columbia but I was ready to move on. A great experience, I was the soil correlator, manuscript editor, database manager, and their first GIS specialist.

I was selected as state soil scientist for the Caribbean Area in 1992. There was an ongoing update in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and I got to see some fascinating soils in that semi-arid climate and get my skin shredded by numerous species of shrubs and trees with many shapes and sizes of thorns. In 1994, we started the first update in Puerto Rico in the Lajas Area. It has some of the best Vertisols you’ll ever see. I had the opportunity to participate in a detail assignment to Northeastern Brazil to help EMBRAPA to design and market a U.S.-style soil survey to the states and political entities in that part of Brazil.

With the 1995 agency reorganization, I used my return rights to move into a soil data quality specialist job in the newly created MO 14 in Raleigh, NC. I was manager for the new NASIS database and learned everything I needed to edit and improve the data, although States preferred to edit their own data as that was the alignment at the time. I was assigned MLRA 136 Southern Piedmont in Georgia and Alabama, where there were many initial surveys underway and the first county update in Georgia. I was glad to enjoy great cooperation from the universities with Dr. Larry West and Dr. Joey Shaw. I was also assigned MLRA 153A (Tidewater Area) and saw more Histosols than I care to ever see again.

In 1999, I was selected for the position of state soil scientist/MLRA leader for North Carolina and MO 14. MO 14 covered from New Jersey to northern Florida to eastern Alabama. I was blessed to have the best QA staff one could hope for. As state soil scientist, I had surveys in the Blue Ridge (MLRA 130) and was served by great staff in MO 13, Morgantown, WV. I got to work with this new professor at NC State University, Dr. David Lindbo. I loved visiting the field and seeing the various soils across the region. I had the chance to see more of the world when I went on a four-week detail to sample soils in northwest Tanzania. The same principles of soil genesis I had learned while mapping carried over to my understanding of those soil landscapes.

In 2012, I was selected for the newly created position of associate director for soil operations at NHQ in Washington DC. The position was designed to manage the soil survey regions and the new soil survey regional directors with the 2013 soil survey realignment to the new Soil Science Division.

It has been an honor to serve the agency and the soil survey program in many capacities.  Maybe you can tell that the best part of my career has been in mapping and seeing soil landscapes across the nation. While the last part of my career has been involved in program management and supervision, the enjoyable parts have been reviewing projects and reading project reports. The love of the technical part of soils has been the best part of my career.

Career Achievement Awards

John Kempenich

I grew up on a ranch/farm outside the community of Bowman, ND.  Since a very young age, I had an interest in soils. I think it was my 6^th grade year when I became involved with 4-H Land Judging, then during my high school years I was part of the FFA Land Judging Team. In my youth, I competed individually and on teams that were successful and received several awards. I remember traveling to Oklahoma City twice for the national contest during my 4-H and FFA participating years. I still remember during the days of the contests the presence of the dark green SCS pickups with some having the side mounted soil probes (mid-late 1970s).

This passion I had for soils carried me into pursuing a college degree in Soil Science. Then it so happened that a year or two before I arrived at NDSU, a Collegiate Soil Judging club had been established. During this period of time from the early to mid-1980s, I learned and grew a greater appreciation for our soil resource. This adventure has served me well in my 38 years working for the USDA-SCS/NRCS. During the summer months while attending college, I worked for a farmer/rancher north of Rhame, ND gaining practical experience in agriculture. Also, during this period of time, I give all glory and thanks for my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who transformed my life into what it is today. 

After graduating from college, USDA-SCS had a hiring freeze. I then started my career in the field of Agronomy working for Centrol of Minot as a Field Scout/Consultant trainee in the Newburg, ND area. In this career field, I gained experience and learned valuable information in the ag industry from soil testing for nutrients, calculating and prescribing fertilizer rates, as well as pesticide formulations and prescriptions, while learning to work with the farming community.

After the hiring freeze was lifted in early 1987, I was then hired and started my career with the SCS as a Soil Scientist at Wishek, ND in the south-central part of the state. This was the time of the 1985 Farm Bill implementation that introduced the Food Security Act that is still in existence today. What this meant for soil scientists was to have a completed soil survey on all the farmland in the United States so a conservation plan could be established on all highly erodible land. During my tour of duty at Wishek, I assisted a soil scientist detailed to the area in adjusting to the mapping concepts that had been, and were being, established in the two-county soil survey. After several years working on the National Cooperative Soil Survey in Logan and McIntosh Counties, I was then transferred to the western part of ND (Dickinson, ND) in 1990 to assist on the Cooperative Soil Survey in Billings County. During this timeframe another milestone in my life occurred: my bride Cindy and I were united in marriage. We will celebrate our 35^th wedding anniversary this fall.  

By 1991, all the cropland soil surveys were completed, and in 1992 I transferred to a soil conservationist after the state began to reduce the number of soil scientists. Starting in 1992, I spent many years as a soil conservationist working in the counties of Adams, Billings, Dunn, Hettinger, Slope, and Stark. I did spend a few years as a district conservationist working in Hettinger and eastern Slope Counties. For a thirteen-year period I gained knowledge in the use and application of the soil information collected over the years of the Cooperative Soil Survey in the conservation planning process of our natural resources. These years were valuable in working with many farmers and ranchers, NRCS, SCD staff, and guiding staff in realm of soils. During this timeframe two other milestones occurred: the welcoming into our family of two beautiful daughters. I was also involved in a ranching operation part-time with my brothers for fourteen years. 

In 2005 I transferred back to the NRCS Soil and Plant Science Division as a soil scientist and later to the senior soil scientist in the Dickinson MLRA SSO where I remained until 2022. During my years working with the National Cooperative Soil Survey, I updated soil surveys that encompassed southwest ND, northwestern SD, and portion of eastern Montana where I encountered, described, and investigated many soils, and provided technical soil services in Major Land Resource Areas 54 & 58C. During my tenure in the Dickinson MLRA SSO, I had the pleasure of working with many seasoned staff members and I was able to share the knowledge gained over the years with younger eager staff members. 

Now in my current position as a resource soil scientist in Dickinson, ND, I have been able to work directly with NRCS and SCD Field Office staff, and other Area and State Specialists. This also gives me the opportunity to work closer to the farm and ranch community who work directly with our natural resources as stewards of the land. The onboarding of newer staff members has also given me a great opportunity to share the knowledge learned over the years traveling through the western part of ND. I have also been blessed by the Lord over the past several years in gaining a son-in-law and in this past year the addition of a grandson into our family.

In my leisure time, I enjoy serving when needed in the community. I have served on various boards and currently as an Elder at Evangelic Bible Church. I have, and will continue to, participate in my daughters’, grandson (grandchildren), and family events, gardening, canning, and restoring old items. 

I’m very honored and humbled to be chosen for this award. It has been a pleasure serving people over the years. I thank those that made this possible, it is greatly appreciated. 

Kevin Godsey

Kevin has worked since he was 13 in various roles including dishwasher, chef, emergency medical technician (EMT), actor in outdoor theater, voluntary fireman, biology assistant, taxidermist, high school chemistry teacher, and soil consultant. He has a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology, Ecology, Chemistry, Agriculture and industrial education. He earned a Master of Science degree from University of Columbia, Missouri in Forestry and Ecology with an emphasis on soil. 

Kevin is both an SSSA Certified Professional Soil Scientist and Soil Classifier. He is over 30 years into his soil scientist career which he started as a cooperative soil scientist with the Missouri Department of Natural Resources in 1992. He contributed to three initial soil surveys prior to being hired by the NRCS as a soil scientist in 2002. During his soil scientist career, he has worked on five initial soil surveys in Southeast Missouri and two in Wyoming. In total, he mapped about a half million initial acres. In addition, with over 250 SDJR and update projects, Kevin has improved countless millions of acres within MLRAs 116A, 116B, and 116C. In addition, Kevin created over 50 ecological sites for MLRAs 117, 118, 119.

Kevin became interested in GIS, another tool to dig into soils data. He created a process to heads up digitize the soil survey in Arc view that cut the time to publication and was the first to be SURRGO certified. He also created several GIS tools to integrate NASIS with ArcMap.  When he was introduced to NASIS and SQL, he was curious how we could use this tool to improve soil survey. He created the program for the HEL tool, wrote the SQL Library for soil data access, hundreds of queries, reports, interpretations, calculations and validations in NASIS.  He updated all of the NASIS documentation and put links directly in NASIS. He created an automation tool to export soil surveys to the staging server. He is presently updating the NASIS data model to hold all the DSP data.

Scientist of the Year Awards

John Hammerly

John Hammerly is a Soil Data Quality Specialist for the North Central Region, located in the Waverly, Iowa soil survey office. His interest in soil science can be credited to growing up near Newton, Iowa on a family farm where the beauty of soil conservation was on full display among the many contoured fields. In 2005, while studying Agronomy with a truly exceptional group of soil science professors, he began his NRCS career at the soil survey office in Washington, Iowa as a soil scientist student intern. 

After graduating from Iowa State University in 2007, he gained experience from SPSD staff as a young soil scientist at soil survey offices in Storm Lake, and Atlantic, Iowa. He also helped complete soil surveys on details to Lake, Cook, and Crow Wing counties in Minnesota. A short time later in 2017, he joined the regional staff in Indianapolis, Indiana as a Soil Data Quality Specialist. Here, he strengthened his database knowledge and developed skills writing R and SQL computer code. Now in a leadership role for Soil Survey Database Focus team, he strives to work with the other members of the team to make our NCSS data and databases better, and to teach others the beauty of soil and soil data. He currently resides in Jesup, Iowa with his wife Tiffany and eight-year-old son Henrick, where they enjoy traveling and exploring the outdoors.

Matt Bromley

After learning about NRCS at a career fair during my junior year at Michigan State University, I accepted a position as a student trainee soil scientist in Marquette, MI. Two summers spent learning how to describe and map soils in neighboring Alger County solidified my desire to pursue a career in soils after graduation. In 2001, I started working full-time on the initial survey of Alger County and fell in love with the rewarding challenge of mapping the highly variable glacial deposits found in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Days spent mapping along the shores of Lake Superior in Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore certainly helped seal the deal. After completing Alger County, I was relocated to assist with the completion of the initial survey of Schoolcraft County. During this time, I also had the opportunity to complete short mapping details to Isle Royale National Park.  Along the way, I learned so much from the experienced soil mappers who supervised me including Larry Carey, Chuck Schwenner, Joe Calus, and Greg Whitney.

My next move in 2006 was to the recently established Grand Rapids, MI MLRA Soil Survey Office where I took a position as a Soil Scientist-GIS Specialist. With the initial survey of Michigan nearly complete, our focus turned to updating existing soils information. However, before the state was officially completed, I was able to experience short details to assist with the mapping of the Detroit Metro Area. In 2011, I became the MLRA Soil Survey Leader in Grand Rapids. This shift along with the responsibilities of managing an office and supervising staff came with an adjustment period, but I enjoyed the new challenges. Over the years I’ve felt very lucky to have supervised several bright and talented younger soil scientists as they begin their careers.

Around this time, the MLRA office staff in the state received additional training on wetland determination and we began assisting the NRCS Michigan State Office with the high workload related to wetland compliance required for USDA program. This work continues to be a major component of our annual workload. I also enjoyed opportunities to complete short details over three years to assist with the initial mapping of White Mountains National Forest in New Hampshire. Recently I’ve been reinvigorated by working with Francine Lheritier and her great team as the Soil and Plant Science Division establishes standards and procedures to characterize dynamic soil properties. Providing information on changes in soil properties based on changes in ecological states and communities is another exciting way to improve the data available to users of soil survey.

When not working, I enjoy spending time with my family and our dogs, traveling, trail running, section hiking the North Country National Scenic Trail, and attending live concerts. I am truly surprised and honored to have been nominated for this award.

Cooperator of the Year Award

Dr. Matthew C. Ricker

I grew up in Augusta, Maine and developed an interest in earth sciences as a child through outdoor activities like hiking, canoeing, and fishing. My first memories of looking at soil were from digging up worms to go fishing in our backyard, our house being built on fine-silty glaciomarine deposits along the margins of the Kennebec River valley. After high school I attended the University of Mary Washington (UMW) in Virginia. It was here that I took a general education class in geology which would set my path for the rest of my career. My senior year as a geology major, I met Dr. Ben K. Odhiambo who was the instructor for the two most important and influential classes I took as an undergraduate, fluvial geomorphology and environmental soil science. During this time, I also began to conduct field and laboratory research on soil erosion in the Virginia Piedmont. This time working with Ben really gave me the confidence to aspire to continue my education and attend graduate school to pursue my passion for field research. 

In 2007, I began an M.S. graduate research assistantship at the University of Rhode Island (URI) with Dr. Mark Stolt.  It was here that I learned about pedology and wetland science, two of my major areas of continued research. I worked on a project using multiple methods to understand how riparian soils function and specifically store carbon. During this time, I also acted as assistant coach for the URI soil judging team and learned skills I use today when coaching my own teams. After graduating with my M.S., and job prospects being very limited due to the economic crash of the time, I enrolled in a Ph.D. program at Auburn University with Dr. Graeme Lockaby. It was here that I learned much more about forest soil biogeochemistry and relationships between plants, microbes, and soils. Graeme was an excellent mentor who took the time to teach me about the processes surrounding scientific grant writing, program management, and mentorship for aspiring scientists. In 2014, I graduated with my Ph.D. and quickly realized, it was time to get a real job!

Shortly after graduating from Auburn, I accepted a tenure-track teaching position at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania. It was here that I really learned a lot about time management, interpersonal relationships, and advising/mentorship for undergraduate students. In four years at Bloomsburg I taught classes on environmental science, geomorphology, soil resource management, and wetland ecology with total enrollment of >600 students. My students and I also started the Bloomsburg soil judging team, which began as a weekend club activity. During my time with the team, we placed multiple students in the top 10 of regional soil judging contests and our team placed 1^st overall in the region in 2016. In addition to my teaching, I really enjoyed advising numerous undergraduate research students on soil-related projects. Most of our work at the time was centered around anthracite coal mining and the impacts of historical mining on soil properties. My passion for soil research was still very high and eventually I decided to make a switch and in 2018 I started work as an Assistant Professor of Pedology and Land Use at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. 

At NC State I teach field-based courses on soil morphology, genesis, and classification as well as soil judging. The remainder of my time (when not completing administrative tasks) is devoted to applied soil science research, specifically soil interpretations related to coastal zone issues. North Carolina has millions of acres of subaqueous estuarine environments we know very little about as well as vast subaerial landscapes projected to be impacted by sea level rise over the next century. In 2019 I met Greg Taylor from the Coastal Zone Soil Survey focus team (now Special Projects Office) and we began cooperative research projects centered on blue carbon accounting. Since that time, we have run thousands of coastal soil samples through my laboratory for coupled research and soil survey projects across the South region. This includes the first subaqueous soil surveys in North Carolina, updating tidal marsh official series descriptions, and creating new mapping concepts for subaerial landscapes undergoing salinization. These cooperative relationships are the backbone of NCSS and I am honored to be recognized for my participation in timely coastal research that benefits soil survey. 

When I am not working, I enjoy spending time with my wife Megan and 3-year-old son Silas as well as gardening, hiking, fishing, and exploring new places. I would like to thank the countless folks that have worked with me over the years on collaborative projects and those that nominated me for this NCSS award.