CONTACT: Vincent Salters(850) 644-1934
August 2001
FSU ELECTED TO PRESTIGIOUS OCEANOGRAPHIC CONSORTIUM
TALLAHASSEE, Fla.--Last month, Florida State University joined a select group of American oceanographic institutions that plan oceanographic research and help manage the study of ocean sciences on a global scale.
Along with Stanford University, FSU was elected to the now 16-member Joint Oceanographic Institutions (JOI). As a member, FSU joins such prestigious organizations as the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography of the University of California-San Diego and the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University.
"Selection as a member of JOI, an exclusive internationally-recognized organization, is truly a feather in FSU's cap," said FSU Vice President for Research Raymond Bye, who will represent FSU on the JOI board of governors. "It is a tribute to our outstanding faculty and a recognition that many of our programs have reached national and international levels of distinction."
JOI is the program manager for the Texas A&M University-operated Ocean Drilling Program (ODP), an international partnership of scientists and research institutions organized to explore the history and structure of the Earth through scientific drilling of the ocean floor. ODP is the largest international geoscience research program in the world and study areas range from ocean floor volcanism to global climate change.
The FSU department of geological sciences' participation in ODP projects was the impetus for the university's election to JOI. Both FSU faculty and students have sailed on the two-month research cruises that it sponsors.
"FSU has had faculty members conduct research on 15 ODP cruises," said Vincent Salters, an associate scholar/scientist at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory. "Over the years, 40 FSU graduate students have sailed on the cruises. The cruises usually carry around 10 to 15 U.S. scientists and a similar number of scientists from abroad. For students this sea-going experience is an especially exhilarating experience. It gives them the opportunity to conduct research as a team member in an interdisciplinary group of top-rated scientists. Since ODP started in 1985, FSU faculty or students have been on over one third of all cruises."
ODP and its forerunner, the Deep Sea Drilling Program, has been in continuous operation since 1968 with funding from the National Science Foundation and the science foundations of 22 participating nations.
The other members of JOI are the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences and Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey; the University of California, Santa Cruz; the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology of the University of Hawaii; the University of Florida; the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science at the University of Miami; the College of Literature, Science & the Arts at the University of Michigan; the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University; the Graduate School of Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island; the College of Geosciences and Maritime Studies at Texas A&M University; the Institute for Geophysics at the University of Texas at Austin; and the College of Ocean Fishery Sciences of the University of Washington.
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