Prize Pupils
For the last 25 years, Sea Grant education has been making a difference.
That's what a recently completed survey of former UW Sea Grant-supported graduate students shows. Over the past several years, UW Sea Grant located all but 56 former students. Their activities today show the enduring value of their Sea Grant experiences.
The survey revealed the following:
- In the last 25 years, Wisconsin Sea Grant-supported students have received 396 graduate degrees (152 Ph.Ds and 244 Master's degrees);
- These graduates work in 46 of the 50 United States as well as 31 foreign countries; and
- Forty-two percent of survey respondents currently work in the private sector, 35 percent in the academic sector, and 21 percent in the public sector. Judging by their vitae, the Wisconsin Sea Grant-trained graduates have become national assets. They have moved into the executive suites of major corporations, become senior scientists in government laboratories, started their own businesses, become professors and been elected to public office.
Positions held by these former students range from a laboratory director for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to an eighth-grade science teacher to a director of environmental health and laboratories for a Midwestern city of 200,000.
Former Sea Grant student Bob Owen, now a professor of marine geochemistry at the University of Michigan, estimates that to date he has taught oceanography to more than 3,000 undergraduates and instructed 500 more in his summer geology field research course. In addition, he has taught marine geochemistry to 100 graduate students and served as major professor for eight Ph.D. students and 15 Master's students, some of whom have received support from Michigan Sea Grant during their studies.
Another former Sea Grant-supported student, Carol Zimmerman, obtained a Ph.D. in oceanography and limnology and is now an exploration geophysicist with the Exxon Exploration Company in Houston.
"My Sea Grant experience was the stepping stone and training ground for all my Exxon work since 1980," Zimmerman said. "I'm the author of two U.S. patents which were a result of my Sea Grant experience. And I also learned discipline, how to manage research projects, and tenacity. Equally important, I learned from the ground up with hands-on experience."
And that experience is invaluable, according to David Weininger, president of Daylight Chemical Information Systems, a multimillion-dollar California-based company that provides databases, search systems and other computer tools for chemists worldwide. "Sea Grant played a key role in the development of my career," Weininger said. "My Sea Grant work provided me with the unique experience of exploring problems in a multidisciplinary framework - of working on aspects of a problem that a chemist working alone couldn't possibly do." "The guiding philosophy of the UW Sea Grant education subprogram," said UW Sea Grant Assistant Director for Administration Mary Lou Reeb, "continues to be that education - especially graduate education - is a risk-free investment with an excellent rate of return."
- Laurence Wiland
Zebra Mussel Conference Proceedings
Proceedings of the 5th International Zebra Mussel and Other Aquatic Nuisance Species Conference are now available.
The nearly 600-page document contains the papers of the 37 authors who participated in the conference, held in Toronto last Feb. 21-24. The cost is $65.00 Canadian. To order, contact Elizabeth Muckle-Jeffs at 1-800-868-8776.
Looking ahead, the 6th International Zebra Mussel and Other Aquatic Nuisance Species Conference will be held March 5-7, 1996, in Dearborn, Mich.
Highlighting current research into the biology, impact and control of zebra mussels, the meeting is expected to draw nearly 600 delegates representing academia, government, industry and utility companies. For further information, contact Elizabeth Muckle-Jeffs at 1-800-868-8776.
26-29 o c t o b e r
Environmental Risk and Native Knowledge Systems for Native Communities of the Great Lakes Basin, Buffalo, N.Y. Contact: David Greene, New York Sea Grant, (716) 652-7874.6-11 n o v e m b e r
Fifteenth Annual Symposium of the North American Lake Management Society, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Contact: Murray Charlton, (905) 336-4758.8-10 n o v e m b e r
HACCP Training, Humacao, Puerto Rico. Contact: Steve Otwell, Florida Sea Grant, (904) 392-1991.27-30 n o v e m b e r
Zebra Mussel Workshop '95: Prevention and Control at Public Facilities, New Orleans, La. Contact: Larry G. Sanders, U.S. Army Engineer Waterways Experiment Station, (601) 634-2976.
Linda Campbell / Communications Office
University of Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute
Goodnight Hall, 1975 Willow Drive
Madison, Wisconsin 53706-1103, U.S.A.
Telephone (608) 263-3259
FAX (608) 262-0591
or email us at lecampbe@seagrant.wisc.edu
This page created September 1995
Last updated 21 December 1995. T. Yao and J. Eischens
All contents copyright 1995 University of Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute
Designed by Tina Yao tlyao@seagrant.wisc.edu