Wheaton wins Sea Grant funding for new lecture series
Monday, September 1999
Wheaton College recently won funding from the National Sea Grant College Program for a new Marine Conservation Biology Lecture Series that will bring researchers to campus to talk about their work and its potential to solve environmental problems threatening the world’s oceans.
The lecture series, which will be free of charge to the college’s students and to the public at large, is slated to begin spring 2000. Over the course of two years, it will bring six eminent marine scientists to campus. News about each lecture in the series will be announced as details become available.
"This new lecture series will expose Wheaton students to research efforts that are enriching our understanding of the marine environment and how we conserve marine resources. This is especially important as more of our students choose to study environmental science," says Associate Professor of Biology Scott Shumway, co-director of the environmental science program at Wheaton. "The researchers who will come to campus will represent a broad range of specialties within the field and have broad appeal to our students and the general public."
The new Sea Grant lecture series comes as Wheaton’s programs in environmental science and environmental studies, begun within the last five years, grow in popularity and prestige with students. It also marks the second marine science lecture series that Sea Grant has sponsored at Wheaton. The program underwrote a Marine Ecology and Conservation Biology Lecture Series in 1996 through 1998. The new series will emphasize the application of various subdisciplines with biology (such as fisheries science, botany or molecular genetics) to environmental problems threatening marine ecosystems and their inhabitants.
This new lecture series will complement classes in marine biology, environmental science, ecology, animal behavior, evolution, genetics and microbiology. The college also is affiliated with several prestigious marine biology programs for undergraduates, including the Maritime Studies Program of Williams College and Mystic Seaport and the Semester in Environmental Science at the Marine Biological Laboratory of Woods Hole. And with interest in marine science and environmental science growing at Wheaton, students have recently completed internships at the Mystic Aquarium, the New England Aquarium, the Massachusetts Department of Fish and Wildlife and the National Park Service.
The National Sea Grant Program encourages the wise stewardship of our marine resources through research, education, outreach and technology transfer. Sea Grant is a partnership between the nation's universities and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that began in 1966, when the U.S. Congress passed the National Sea Grant College Program Act. Today, the 29 Sea Grant Colleges are focused on making the United States the world leader in marine research and the sustainable development of marine resources.