Oregon Sea Grant and the Oregon Department of Water Resources are teaming up to offer a new graduate fellowship in well-water outreach. The application deadline is June 10.

The fellowship is available for a Masters level graduate student at an Oregon College or University who will develop and evaluate outreach and education approaches that improve the skills of well owners to monitor water levels and understand their water-use patterns.

The chosen applicant will receive a stipend of up to $2,500 a month for three months of full-time work at the ODRW office in Salem during the summer of 2008, plus a nine-month part-time stipend for the academic year beginning in fall 2008.  Frequent trips to Salem will be required during the school year, and the project involves  significant field work in the central Willamette Valley.

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Oregon Sea Grant has announced a new scholarship that will support one student working toward a graduate degree in any field of marine studies compatible with the program’s mandate and areas of interest.

Interested students from any Oregon University System institution have until June 20 to apply for the Robert E. Malouf scholarship, named for the program’s recently retired director.

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Oregon Sea Grant is pleased to announce the launch of a new series of audio podcasts, Communicating Climate Change. The podcasts will feature in-depth conversations with prominent social scientists whose work informs public communications about science. Joe Cone is the producer. The first conversation is with Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change:

http://seagrant.oregonstate.edu/blogs/communicatingclimate/

Given the importance of appropriate actions in response to climate change, successful communication with various audiences is vital and deserves to be informed by the best communication research. These podcasts will present some of that research through informal conversations with the researchers themselves. Complete text transcripts of the conversations will also be online.

Links on the web site guide listeners to subscribe to the podcasts via RSS, iTunes, or even email.

Oregon Sea Grant director Dr. Robert E. Malouf has announced he will retire Feb. 1 after 16 years leading the marine research, outreach, and education program based at Oregon State University (OSU).

Oregon Sea Grant is the largest of OSU’s institutes and programs. Malouf has had overall responsibility for all of Sea Grant’s activities, including its competitive grants, the Visitor Center of the OSU Hatfield Marine Science Center, and very active programs in communication, education and extension. Oregon Sea Grant employs more than 40 people on a budget that exceeds $5 million in state and federal funds annually.

Under Malouf’s leadership, Oregon Sea Grant has been consistently ranked as one of the very best Sea Grant programs in the nation in formal reviews. The last review (in 2005) put it simply: “Dr. Malouf has set a high standard for this program, and it has been met.”

The national review panel further cited the program as demonstrating several national “best management practices,” including strategic planning, decision-making, and program integration, all articulated and developed by Malouf.

The national recruitment and selection process for Malouf’s successor has recently begun. It is chaired by the OSU Associate Vice President for Research, Rich Holdren.

A native of Montana, Malouf’s affiliation with Oregon Sea Grant started in the program’s first year, 1968, when he received support as a new OSU master’s student in Fisheries. After earning his Ph.D. in Fisheries from OSU he joined the faculty of the Marine Sciences Research Center of the State University of New York (SUNY) at Stony Brook. While there from 1977 to 1991 he taught courses in marine fisheries, shellfisheries, and aquaculture. In 1987 he was named director of the New York Sea Grant Institute; he held that position until he succeeded Oregon Sea Grant’s original director, William Wick, on Wick’s retirement in 1991.

For more than 10 years Malouf served as a member of Oregon’s Ocean Policy Advisory Council and chaired the Council’s Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee. He has had numerous leadership positions with other state and national organizations.