May 30, 2000

Highlights

• Shannon Newby passed her qualifying exams today.
• Peter Rona was an invited lecturer at the University of Lisbon and carried out field work in the active mine of the world class Neves Corvo massive sulfide deposit in southern Portugal as part of a collaborative project with faculty and graduate students of that university comparing active with ancient hydrothermal mineral deposits (May 10-14). The following week (May 16) he visited the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR) in Hannover, Germany, where he lectured on, "New Directions in Seafloor Hydrothermal Research".
• GPO Faculty Meeting
  • Faculty of the GPO and the graduate student representative, Tracy Wiegner, met on May 26. Oscar Schofield, Chair of the Admissions Committee, reported that applications to the program had increased by 30% over the previous year and quality of the applicants was very high. Six students were admitted to the program, five of whom will begin their formal studies in September. The sixth is deferring entry for one year having taken up a fellowship in the science writing program at Columbia University. Sybil Seitzinger will take the lead in organizing a welcoming event for the new students in September.
  • Modifications to the Degree Requirements with respect to the Ph.D. Qualifying Examinations, which were originally proposed by Clare Reimers and the Scholastic Review Committee a year ago, were unanimously approved. Amended copies of the Degree Requirements will be sent out to all Program faculty and students in the next several weeks.
  • An ad hoc TA Committee (Karl Nordstrom and Tracy Wiegner) presented a draft report on the principles that should be followed in allocating TA support and teaching responsibilities to program students. They will modify the report in light of the ensuing discussion and in response to further input from faculty and students.
  • Copies of information made available at the meeting and informal minutes are available on request from the GPO Program Secretary, Shannon Bowman (bowman@imcs).

Meetings Attended

• Paul Falkowski was at the Dept. of Energy Review for Ocean Carbon Sequestration last week. The meeting examined various scenarios on carbon sequestration, including direct injection of liquified CO2 and iron fertilization. If you're interested look at the web site
• Judy Weis attended a conference on "Sustainability of wetlands and water resources" at the University of Mississippi, where she presented some of our work on metal fluxes in wetland plants (Spartina and Phragmites). An interesting combination of freshwater and marine people attended. Judy's next trip is a vacation to Indonesia - for about 3 weeks.

Let's Welcome

• Dr. Yong Park, a chemical oceanographer from Inha University, Korea, is on sabbatical for 6 months at IMCS. Dr. Park is working with Paul Falkowski and Oscar Schofield on characterizing dissolved organic carbon from the Middle Atlantic Bight. Dr. Park specializes in fluorescence spectroscopy and chromatography. He received his Ph. D. from SUNY/Stony Brook in 1982. His office is room 103D.