Marine Education Fellowship

Hello! For the past 8 weeks, the Sea Grant office has been abuzz with National Marine Educators Association (NMEA) conference planning. I couldn’t really describe a “regular” day in my marine education fellowship because no two days have been alike. I’ve ventured through Portsmouth to meet with businesses and collect generous coupons for our conference attendees (one business donated 700 free beers!). I’ve been out on a cruise around Great Bay with 30 passionate adults who wanted to learn science and willingly collected water samples, discussed pH, and analyzed real-time data on their smartphones. I’ve been developing interactive marine science curriculum, which included playing with play-dough, reaching out to some of my favorite former teachers, and brainstorming with some incredible marine science educators at the NMEA conference. I’ve been working alongside amazing volunteers, the Marine Docent educators, many of whom are retired teachers who cannot simply give up teaching or stop themselves from learning new things everyday. I’ve been peacefully working in Excel by myself one day and then meeting dozens of incredible people from all over the world the next.

Look below to see more! I've posted updates from my fellowship in chronological order, starting with "Gyotaku and Ocean Acidification".

~Maggie :)

NMEA Conference: The Finale!

Week 8:

The conference has arrived! I went to a Sea Grant educators network meeting this weekend and met some really awesome people. I also got to mention the Marine Careers website and the educators were very willing to help update and expand it. My appreciation for Sea Grant has continued to grow throughout my fellowship. Meeting educators from all over the country was amazing! Everyone shared an update from their Sea Grant program, which gave other educators great ideas to improve their own educational programming. People provided advice, formed connections, and caught up on each other’s lives. Some have been in their Sea Grant educator position for decades!

I have been tasked with “crisis management” for the conference, which mostly involves helping attendees figure out where they’re going and dealing with technology issues. I’ve gotten to work alongside Marine Docents again and we have lovely chats while waiting for the rush of attendees to visit our raffle table. At the end of the week, I attended a lobster boil where I met conference attendees in a less formal setting. We scrambled out on the rocks in the intertidal and talked about the differences between the rocky coast in NH and Maine and the smooth sandy beaches of New Jersey. Everyone was still learning from each other, even after the formal conference events had ended. Despite being involved in conference planning for a mere 2 months, I was a little emotional when it ended. So much work, time, and careful planning were involved--to see it all pan out and witness attendees’ enjoyment was surreal.

Left Brain, Right Brain

Week 7:

The conference is next week and the anticipation is tangible! I visited several Portsmouth businesses to collect coupons for the welcome bags we will give to conference attendees from and have written to thank each business. We stuffed the welcome bags with goodies and coupons, which involved walking around a large table in a line to place each item into the bags, all while listening to music and eating baked goods. 

On a long-term projects note, I’ve been working with a hefty historical dataset (~740,000 rows of data; about 50 years of monitoring!) from Shoals Marine Lab for the high school curriculum. Aside from the human interaction aspect of meeting lots of new people, I get to sit quietly on my computer and work in Excel. When I’m done sorting and filtering data, it should be easy to use and understand in the marine science curriculum. I’ve never worked with an Excel dataset this big before, so it’s been a really fun challenge. I’ve discovered features I never learned about in my four years of college.

Eco Cruise

Weeks 5 & 6:

I went on the Great Bay Eco Cruise this week, which was attended mostly by adults who had a marine science background. I wasn’t sure what to expect as we set sail on the Gulf Challenger with 30 adults who seemed to already know plenty about marine science. I had been to an event focused on youth education, but I wasn’t sure how adult education would work. They all shared their knowledge, networked with each other, and had a wonderful time pointing out familiar landmarks along the ride. Some were local, but hadn’t been out on Great Bay in years and were noticing all the changes in the landscape that had happened since. There were stations to collect samples with a plankton tow and measure pH, dissolved oxygen, and other water quality parameters. We compared samples from the coast (more ocean influence) to the Bay (more freshwater influence) and then visited the Jackson Estuarine Lab. I met some wonderful people who had successful careers in the marine field and happily gave me advice about being a recent graduate.

My other long-term projects are going well. My mentor is bringing the curriculum I’ve worked on over to Appledore Island where marine educators will read it and provide feedback/suggestions. I recently worked with two Marine Docents to create a seacoast activities guide for the NMEA conference attendees. We’ve suggested different activities for people who are visiting the area for the first time, which is a high proportion of the ~400 anticipated attendees. We’ve suggested outdoor activities, food, music & arts, shopping, and kids’ activities. This project was marketing-focused and I really enjoyed finding pictures and writing little blurbs for each suggestion. One of my mentors put the guide on the conference website and it was really satisfying to see our work online for people to use and enjoy. The guide will also be printed out for the information table at the conference, which is now only 2 weeks away! I’ve been shielded from the conference stress, but the planning committee has been working on the conference for over a year!

Marine Careers!

Weeks 3 & 4:

My fellowship started with super fun events and now I’m working on a lot of research projects. I have my own desk at Sea Grant where I can sit and work. It’s also right on the way to the water fountain, so people are always walking by to say hello. I’ve been working on a marine careers website, which involves doing some research to identify good contributors to the website and crafting some survey questions to be sent to future Sea Grant collaborators. We’d like to update the website, which has been stagnant for years, and get some help from other Sea Grant programs who have connections to people with cool marine jobs. The website is awesome and, since I’ve spent plenty of time on there, I’ve gotten some great career advice from the profiles.

I’ve also started working on high school marine science curriculum, which has been a great opportunity to get creative. It’s tough to make the lessons interactive when the students can’t actually go out to the intertidal, so I’ve been brainstorming the best ways to make it fun (play-dough? Building a model with boxes? Fun coloring projects?). Stay tuned because I haven’t totally figured it out yet!