Striving for Success: Sea Lab Graduate Students


After the hoardes of college, high school and middle school students leave this summer, one group will remain to burn the midnight oil – the graduate students. This diverse group of M.S. and Ph.D. students, some of whom live on the Sea Lab campus, are rapidly becoming a more visible segment of the Sea Lab community due to their academic achievements, career attainments and service to the public.
 
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Former graduate student Kevin Kirsch (in sunglasses), now with NOAA, assisted with stranded pilot whales in the Florida Keys recently.
Since the Sea Lab is not a degree-granting institution, each graduate students receives his/her degree from a “home institution,” one of the Sea Lab member universities with graduate programs. Still, his/her academic coursework, research activity and faculty mentor are based at the Sea Lab. There are currently 37 Sea Lab graduate students, and more are expected to enroll when the Sea Lab’s full faculty complement arrives later this year.
 
Accolades in the form of grants and awards have been rapidly forthcoming. Recently, Nancy Hilbun received a scholarship from the International Women’s Fishing Association; Boon Harada received a Sigma Xi grant and Derrick Blackmon received his second PADI grant for research.

Additionally, this year the Sea Lab Graduate Students hosted the 2003 Gulf of Mexico Graduate Student Symposium. This conference allowed students the opportunity to practice presentations prior to professional meetings and degree defenses, and to network with graduate students and faculty throughout the region. This year’s conference was deemed by all to have been a great success.

No less important are the contributions the graduate students have made to our community, earning them a Special Recognition Award from Sea Lab Director Dr. Crozier recently. Among the many volunteer efforts in which they participate, of special note are the Alabama Coastal Cleanup, of which they serve as zone captains every year, and the Young Women in Science “Horizons” Workshop, where female students were especially encouraged to teach small marine ecology workshops for young women (ages 10-16) in order to act as role models.
With the career success of so many graduate students (see side story, “Where are they now?”), the Sea Lab is becoming one of the premier institutions in the nation, if not the world, for graduate research and study.