Current Article

Ames DOT specialist to be honored

Reprinted courtesy of the Ames Tribune, April 30, 2009. By Bob Zientara, AmesTrib.com

Michael Pawlovich, a specialist with the Iowa Department of Transportation in Ames, will be honored by the Iowa Transportation Museum Friday, May 1, in Grinnell as an “Iowa Transportation Hero.”

The ceremony will take place at the Grinnell High School auditorium.

The Grinnell-based museum has several other connections to Ames.

Local resident Ian MacGillivray, a native of Canada who worked for the DOT in Ames for 25 years, is vice president of the museum’s board.

He said two other Ames residents, retired engineers Stan Ring and Lowell Richardson, started the museum project in 1999 “and were joined by many others interested in preserving Iowa’s transportation history.”

MacGillivray said that the Grinnell location was chosen in 2001, after the founders invited Iowa communities to bid for the project.

The museum, now in the development stage, will be in a building where Spaulding automobiles were manufactured between 1900 and 1916.

Pawlovich, who was nominated for his award by a co-worker, maintains a Web page for the DOT: www.iowadot.gov/crashanalysis/.

The site includes various tools researchers can use to reconstruct and investigate traffic crashes. Pawlovich’s office also responds to crash data requests.

Pawlovich is a South Dakota native who has lived in the Ames area for 20 years. He and his family now live in Nevada. He is a 1994 graduate of Iowa State University and earned master’s and Ph.D. degrees in 1996 and 2003.

In addition to his research, Pawlovich also prepares work for the Governor’s Traffic Safety Bureau and for upper management of the DOT, is a source of information in the investigation of accidents and their causes, and prepares and submits accident data to the Iowa Division of Motor Vehicles.

He also works with the Ames-based Institute for Transportation, formerly known as the Center for Transportation Research and Education.

Friday’s ceremony in Grinnell begins at 10 a.m. and will feature Iowan Peggy Whitson, a NASA astronaut, and former Gov. Robert Ray. Other speakers include Nancy Richardson, director of the Iowa DOT and transportation museum board president Gerry Schnepf.

For more, visit: www.transportationheroes.org/ or www.iowatransportationmuseum.org/.http://www.amestrib.com/articles/2009/04/30/ames_tribune/news/doc49f9bc000f1e0260070853.txt