By Ronica Stromberg
Ever since retiring, Robert Diffendal seems to be working everywhere.
The professor emeritus of 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 he retired in 2003. He topped this year’s activities off on December 12 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 University of Nebraska-Lincoln sophomore or junior based on need. The association chooses each year’s Wisherd recipient from almost 600 members for their volunteer service. Of course, with the vast reach of his service, Diffendal may have had a leg up on the competition.
"I'm everywhere," the 84-year-old said.
Since quitting work (wink, wink), he has traveled the state to give talks on fossils, minerals and rocks. He has led field trips, edited other professors' 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, Nebraska.
Read the full article at https://snr.unl.edu/aboutus/what/newstory.aspx?fid=1205