Posted: 6/9/2026
Brock-Contreras earns award as SNR doctoral student
Sara Brock-Contreras's concern for groundwater quality and other Nebraskans has earned her an award locally and an ear nationally.
Named the recipient of 2026 Graduate Student Meritorious Award in the School of Natural Resources, Brock-Contreras has managed the state's Know Your Well program as a doctoral student and has met face-to-face with congressional members about the importance of groundwater quality.
"Sara has truly raised the profile of our Know Your Well program to a national level," her advisor, Dan Snow, said.
The director of the Water Sciences Laboratory at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Snow noted Brock-Contreras traveled twice to Washington D.C. with funds from the American Geophysical Union and met Sen. Deb Fischer, Rep. Mike Flood and others. She communicated to them or their aides the need to maintain funding for science programs like Know Your Well, which works with citizens to monitor the safety of their well water and remediate when necessary.
Brock-Contreras has served as the program coordinator for the Know Your Well program since starting graduate school in January 2022 and has carried a full course load.
"She quite literally hit the ground running, regularly driving to northeast Nebraska to ensure the high school science and vocational agriculture teachers and students participating were provided with adequate supplies and training to sample test over 80 domestic wells in her first year," Snow said.
She has recruited teachers and students from 15 schools, adding approximately 200 high school students to the Know Your Well program, contributing to involvement of over 40 schools in it, Snow said.
In the program, high school students test nearby wells for nitrate, which can cause blue baby syndrome and other health problems. They send samples collected to the university's Water Sciences Laboratory to see if the water is safe to drink, defined as having no more than 10 milligrams of nitrate per liter.
While managing the Know Your Well program and training teachers and regional leaders in it, Brock-Contreras has performed her doctoral research on citizen science. She has been looking at how non-experts, especially high school students, are affected by the experience sampling and testing water and how they can influence the way others use natural resources like water.
She has been surveying students a year or two after they take part in the Know Your Well program and students up to 10 years after taking part in a similar program, the Shell Creek Watershed project.
"One of my findings so far is that people may not remember the science, but they remember the experience, and it makes them much more open to valuing that science and using it and creating space for it later on," she said.
Many of the students in the Shell Creek Watershed project have gone on to become teachers and scientists, she said.
For herself, Brock-Contreras said she hopes to continue with the Know Your Well program as a postdoctoral scholar or program coordinator once she graduates in May 2027. She has taken training in writing grant proposals to aid in maintaining and expanding the program.
She has also taken a leadership role at the university, serving as a co-chair of the Graduate Student Association of the School of Natural Resources and leading several of its initiatives.
"Her contributions extend beyond her research, and her dedication to community-building and service is deserving of recognition," said Catherine Chan, another doctoral student in the School of Natural Resources.
Brock-Contreras said she was flattered to be nominated for the award, which showed a match between what she has been trying to do and what others perceived her to be doing.
"I know there's a lot of well-rounded grad students out there, and so, it was just nice to be nominated, but when I won, I was like, 'Wow, that's something else.' I didn't really know how to process that," she said. "It was pretty cool."
