SMETHPORT — Jeffrey Trulick, a 1986 graduate of the Smethport Area Junior-Senior High School who now works for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, will deliver the commencement address at his alma mater on June 1.
In high school, he played the trumpet in the marching band and was a member of the National Honor Society, graduating with honors.
Following high school, Trulick continued his education at the Behrend Campus of The Pennsylvania State University, where he majored in biology. After two years, he transferred to the university’s main campus in State College and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in biology in 1990. He was a member of the Biology Club at PSU.
Trulick has also completed coursework at the Notre Dame of Maryland University in Baltimore.
Since September 2008, Trulick has been a community planner in the Office of Water Project Review at the headquarters of the USACE, an agency of the United States Department of Defense that is responsible for planning, building and operating locks and dams, designing and constructing flood control projects, dredging for waterway navigation and carrying out environmental regulations and ecosystem restoration.
Since joining the USACE in February 1992, Trulick has been promoted to positions of increasing responsibility.
For his first six years with the agency, Trulick was a biologist with the Operations Division, Baltimore District. While serving as a regulatory project manager for projects of varying scale and complexity, he was also responsible for field identification of aquatic resources, documenting jurisdictional boundaries for the Clean Water Act regulations, assessment of aquatic resources and evaluation of impacts of land development projects proposed for these projects.
In December 1998, Trulick moved to the corps’ Planning Division as a biologist, serving there until June 2007. While there, Trulick identified, documented and analyzed the impacts to the human environment stemming from the Corps’ water resources projects. He conducted field identifications of natural and other resources in project areas.
From June 2007 to September 2008 when he was also in the Planning Division, Trulick was an economic and environmental team leader when he prepared technical documentation in support of water resources project reports, environmental documents and project partnering agreements and other civil works documentation.
In his current position, Trulick conducts policy reviews of documentation of national scope and significant complexity of the National Environmental Policy Act, checks environmental compliance, reviews water resource project reports, and interprets and applies planning policy guidance. “Besides overseeing training courses at the headquarters to be certain they contain the latest content and up-to-date information on the latest laws, I teach these courses several times a year,” Trulick said.
He has co-authored the article, “Adaptive Management and the Regulatory Permitting Process for Water Resource Projects,” for a professional publication.
Trulick joined the Society of Wetland Scientists in 1995 and is now rounding out his two-year term as president.
He also holds membership in the Virginia Association of Wetland Professionals.
A member of the PSU Eberly College of Science Alumni since 2006, Trulick is now the organization’s vice-president.
He is married to Michele Gomez, who is also a biologist for the Army Corps of Engineers. They are the parents of two children: Adam 18, and Catarina, 14.
Trulick’s father, Larry, taught English at Smethport High for 40 years. He retired in 2008.
