Report:

Conference Proceedings

Expanding Opportunities in Ocean Sciences

IV. CHARGE: Dr. Nancy Foster, Deputy Administrator, NMFS

Dr. Ambrose Jearld of NOAA/NMFS introduced Dr. Nancy Foster, deputy administrator of the National Marine Fisheries Service. Dr. Foster also welcomed the participants, noting that the conference was a result of discussions that took place at the NOAA University/Partnership Conference. "When the folks who were busy convening this meeting actually put out the call for attendees, we were pleasantly surprised and really encouraged at the number of people that responded. In fact, we were only able to seat about 75% of the people who showed an interest in coming, because we wanted to keep the meeting small enough so that it could be a real working meeting."

In underscoring the necessity of this conference, Dr. Foster shared a few statistics. In 1990, in this country, only about 3% of the enrolled graduate students were minorities. The National Research Council reports that among the population of employed oceanographers, only 7.7% are minorities. The Joint Oceanographic Institutions, Inc. reports that of their associated universities only 2.5% of the student population are minorities. "Look closer to home in NOAA and in the National Marine Fisheries Service, since 1986, we've hired 436 employees under the job description Fishery Biologists and only 6.6% of those were minorities. Even worse than that, we've hired 1,607 of what we call Biological Science Technicians. These are folks without as much training as the Fisheries Biologists and only 8% of those were minorities. So we haven't been making great strides forward in this area."

She then gave the group its charge: "We view this meeting as a terrific opportunity," she said, "we have two days that we can spend trying to learn from each other....In my agency, the NMFS, we have experienced a new commitment to diversity. Dr. Foster emphasized the importance of capitalizing on personal contacts made at the meeting, "It's absolutely true that nothing in the world is more effective in making a change in the way we do business than the personal commitment of people who are in positions to make decisions about the way we do business....I hope that when we leave this conference we will be able to look back and say that this was one of those rare meetings that actually made a difference."

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(Modified Nov. 24 2004)