National Science Foundation Grant Brings Together Big Fish for Regional Oceanographic Center

- By Anne-Marie Kent

New England is home to major organizations and scientists devoted to ocean research. UMass Boston's Environmental, Coastal, and Ocean Sciences and Urban Harbors Institute researchers are among them. Boston is also home to the New England Aquarium, which is also a major center of ocean research and public education. About an hour south of Boston, there is also the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) of Cape Cod.

Thanks to a $2.5 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant, these three major organizations will join forces to increase the public's knowledge of the ocean and how it affects the atmosphere, land, and human activities. Together, they will form the New England Regional Center for Ocean Science Education Excellence (NER-COSEE), one of seven new centers across the nation. COSEE's mandate is to ensure that the public is better able to understand the significance of topics such as global warming, sea level rise, fisheries depletion, coastal pollution, and dozens of other public policy issues that are centered in the Earth's overwhelmingly dominant habitat – the oceans.

Leading the University of Massachusetts team will be UMass Boston's Dr. Robert Chen, an active coastal ocean researcher, who will oversee education efforts in K-12 schools, citizen science projects, and undergraduate education, as well as developing content for a Master's of Education degree program with an emphasis in environmental and ocean sciences. Members of the team have their own charge for the project: Dan Brabander will lead an effort to reform large, general education courses in oceanography; Curtis Olsen will act as a liaison to the UMass Intercampus Graduate School of Marine Sciences and Technology; Robert Brown will act to link Boston with New Bedford's network of ocean educators; Robert Stevenson will develop interactive programs where schoolchildren will carry out research on climate change and invasive species; and Rick Atkins and Karen O'Connor of the Center for Teaching and Learning will offer professional development in ocean sciences for middle school teachers. Carolyn Levi of the New England Aquarium will direct the center, working closely with Chen, aquarium colleague Billy Spizter, and WHOI's Deborah Smith.

The goal of the center is to promote quality ocean science education by developing a cohesive community with access to the resources and support needed to educate their audiences. Key features of the center's strategy include: networking and training among broad groups of educators, developing workshops that bring educators and researchers together, and building a resource center to provide support and follow-up to the ocean science education community. Another major focus will be to help bring science closer to the public. Researchers will be provided with the means and opportunity to effectively communicate their work and results to a broad audience of educators and journalists. Educators and journalists will benefit, in turn, from access to cutting-edge research.

"The work of the COSEE network as a whole will promote better understanding of the key role that the ocean plays in global environmental cycles and processes," said James Yoder, director of NSF's Division of Ocean Sciences.

Image: The New England Regional Center for Ocean Science Education Excellence's team at the University of Massachusetts: (From left to right) Front row: Dan Brabander of the Environmental, Coastal, and Ocean Sciences Department (ECOS) and Rick Atkins of UMass Dartmouth. Second row: Karen O'Connor of UMass Dartmouth and ECOS's Robert Chen and Curtis Olsen. Not pictured: ECOS's Robert Stevenson. (Photo by Harry Brett)