November 07, 2005
Association honors Roy Heidinger
CARBONDALE, Ill. -- Roy C. Heidinger, professor emeritus and longtime director of the Southern Illinois University Carbondale Cooperative Fisheries Research Laboratory, was inducted in absentia into the Fisheries Management Section Hall of Excellence during the American Fisheries Society annual meeting in Anchorage, Alaska.
Heidinger received a plaque, and an identical plaque will hang in the Hall of Excellence at the Ak-Sar-Ben Aquarium in Gretna, Neb. The fisheries society is the field's oldest and largest professional association.
Heidinger, author of more than 210 technical reports and other publications in journals, books and monographs, initially focused on managing black bass but gradually expanded to include warm-water, cool-water, endangered and exotic species found in Midwestern rivers and reservoirs.
His many accomplishments include developing a new means for determining fish ages, helping develop a widely used method for tagging recently hatched fish and fingerlings, and devising stocking strategies that gave pond owners more control of fish stocks.
Despite his retirement in 1999, Heidinger continues with research projects involving fish in power-cooling reservoirs, channel catfish in the Wabash River and wetlands restoration. He also is finishing an indexed bibliography and synopsis of biological data on largemouth bass and is working with colleagues on a book on Illinois fish.
Celebrating faculty excellence is among the goals of Southern at 150: Building Excellence Through Commitment, the blueprint for the development of the University by the time it celebrates its 150th anniversary in 2019.