This Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) award will train a new generation of scholars to use integrative, cross-disciplinary, and cross-scale approaches to investigate problems of ocean change. Intellectual Merit: Human activities are causing physical and biological changes in the ocean. Some of these changes threaten the persistence of contemporary marine ecosystems and the societies they support. The scale and likely consequences of ocean change are substantial, but ocean change is difficult to observe and invisible to many sectors of society. A key innovation is to frame research questions in a problem-driven, socially-defined context. Trainees will collaborate to explore ocean conditions, biological and ecological responses to changing ocean conditions, their impacts on human institutions and welfare, and opportunities to build resilience in this social-ecological system. The research performed by trainees will enhance our understanding of change in the ocean and its impacts on ecosystems and social institutions.
Broader impacts of the program arise from the coupled-systems approach. Trainees will emerge prepared to address problems of ocean change from a coupled social-ecological perspective, communicate with diverse groups, establish credibility inside and outside academics, and fairly represent uncertainties inherent in the study of ocean change. In so doing, they will serve societal needs and help to transform the way society views the ocean and the changes induced by human activity. We will seek to broaden participation from underrepresented minorities, especially those from coastal tribes, Alaska natives, and Pacific Islanders, and in so doing, we will serve communities and cultures likely to be among the first affected by ocean change.
IGERT is an NSF-wide program intended to meet the challenges of educating U.S. Ph.D. scientists and engineers with the interdisciplinary background, deep knowledge in a chosen discipline, and the technical, professional, and personal skills needed for the career demands of the future. The program is intended to catalyze a cultural change in graduate education by establishing innovative new models for graduate education and training in a fertile environment for collaborative research that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries.
