NF-POGO Centre of Excellence Year 2 Report

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Many/most of the scholars had not had a course in „general oceanography‟ when theyarrived for the CofE Programme. Most indicated that such a course was not offered intheir home country as part of the university curriculum. Year 2 will start with amodule on Oceanography. The text will be Exploring the World Ocean by SeanChamberlin and Tommy Dickey. The course will be team taught by BIOS faculty.McGraw-Hill, the publisher, has agreed to provide gratis copies of the text.More of the Scholars in attendance for year 2 of the CofE had already had acourse in General Oceanography. However, this was still a valuable addition tothe Programme. Students are able to hone their English skills, get to know eachother, and settle in for the harder/more advanced courses to follow.The module on Physical Oceanography was modified (and shortened) in year 1 at thelast minute, due to BIOS faculty scheduling conflicts. A complete PO module isscheduled for year 2.This was one of the more successful modules this year.To summarize, changes implemented following year 1 of the CofE were generally very positive.4.2 Year 2 Changes to be Implemented in Year 31. Several Scholars commented on the slow turnaround on their assignments during somemodules. There was also concern that some modules did not provide sufficient feedbackon “English skills” (i.e., Scholars wanted comments about the science as well ascomments about their ability to write/speak English).2. One of the year 2 Scholars had a very low ability to communicate verbally in English.His writing skills were also weak (in English) but satisfactory. This situation did notimprove for several weeks until we were able to find a local tutor who spoke his nativelanguage. Still, this was very rough on the student and he went through some hard times,not feeling part of the group, not able to fully participate in the programme. Our solutionfor this is to conduct telephone interviews with top ranking students before they areofficially accepted into the programme. We were able to implement this change into ouryear 3 selection process and results of telephone interviews were forwarded to membersof the POGO Selection Committee prior to their meeting in London in March 2010.5.0 Out Years5.1 Year 3 ScholarsWe are pleased to announce that the NF accepted a proposal from POGO to support a third yearof the CofE at BIOS starting in August 2010. A call for student applications was announced in2009. Applications were due 30 January 2010. Applications were received from 109 studentsfrom 38 countries. The applications were reviewed by faculty at BIOS (see Section 2.2.2 fordetails) and a list of suggested finalists nominated. Members of the POGO Executive Committeemet in London on 31 March 2010 to make final decisions about which students to accept. A listof finalists and alternates was forwarded to NF for review. We are pleased to report that 10 NF-POGO Scholars have been accepted (see Table below) and that we are well under way in termsof getting the requisite work permits, transportation visas, etc.16
Details on the 10 students selected to be NF-POGO Scholars during the year 3 of the CofE.Name Nation Gender Age Home InstitutionMaria Fernanda ColoGianniniBrazil F 25 Universidade Federal do Rio Grande, BrazilRafael Jose Rasse Venezuela MInstituto Venezolano de Investigaciones27Cientificas, VenezuelaPham Thi Phuong Thao Vietnam F 27 Institute of Oceanography, VietnamGayatri Dudeja India FIndian National Centre for Ocean Information24Services, Hyderabad, IndiaLuis Guaman Ecuador M 32 University of ConcepcionAkpetou KouameCenter for Oceanographic Research of Abidjan,Cote d'Ivoire M 34LazareCote d'IvoireMuhammed Fatih Sert Turkey MMiddle East Technical University/Institute of26Marine Sciences, TurkeyYosra Khammeri Tunisia F 25 National Institute of Agronomy, TunisiaEvgeniya Klimchuk Russia FMoscow State University of Lomonosov, Russian24FederationMaziar Khrosavi Iran M 27 I.R. of Iran Meteorological Org, Iran5.2 Keeping the Network Active (What Next for Current NF-POGO Scholars?)We realized during year 1 of NF-POGO CofE that it was important for the Scholars to haveaccess to digital libraries and personal laptop computers when they return to their homecountries. The CofE was able to provide both of these to year 1 Scholars and thankfully NFagreed to continue to support year 2 students in the same fashion. Briefly, this gives studentsunlimited access to all the digital library assets of the MBL/WHOI digital library consortium.The laptop computers, from Dell, contained many software programs used throughout the CofEas well as the many manuscripts, working papers, presentations and related scientific documentsaccumulated during the 10 month training programme. The end result was an extremely finetuned set of applications for ocean observatory work on a laptop computer; the type ofapplications that all young Scholars need and could use on a daily basis when they return to theirhome country5.3 Training Programme in a Developing CountryWe have also initiated efforts to provide a Training Programme in a Developing Country as partof the year 3 CofE. Dr. Stewart Bernard (Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in SouthAfrica) has agreed to help organize and coordinate the next Training Programme. He will do thisin concert with Drs. John Field and Frank Shillington (University of Cape Town, South Africa).Plans are still very tentative but the general idea is to coordinate this Training Programme withother initiatives so that it can be put into a local and strategic context. Other programmesinclude: the national Operational Oceanography initiative; the African Centre for Climate andEarth Systems Science, which is developing a strong ocean modeling capability; Europe-AfricaMarine Net, which is an EU Seventh Framework project focusing on African Marine EarthObservation (EO) capacity building; and the Applied Marine Science M.Sc course at theUniversity of Cape Town. The focus will be such that it integrates with larger African needs,such as the science development plans of GOOS-Africa (GOOS is the Global Ocean ObservingSystem). As pointed out by Dr. Bernard, “The hard part in an African context is to try and frame17
Page 2 and 3: Executive Summary of Year 2 Activit
Page 4 and 5: To facilitate the review process, B
Page 6 and 7: 2.3 Course ModulesThe course module
Page 8: 2.4 Guest Lectures and Seminars8/27
Page 11 and 12: Gustavo FuentesKathleen SilvanoBenn
Page 13 and 14: 2.11 CofE Graduation CeremoniesThe
Page 15: incorporate more laboratory and/or
Page 20 and 21: September 2009) and SAFARI'10 works
Page 22 and 23: Invited by the Abdus Salam Internat
Page 24 and 25: Appendix 1. Application Form for th
Page 26 and 27: Summary of your current work (~200
Page 28 and 29: If you are selected as a NF-POGO Sc
Page 30 and 31: Appendix 2_B. NF-POGO Scholars who
Page 32 and 33: Appendix 5. Commencement Speech Giv
Page 34 and 35: discovered that I was not cut out t
Page 36 and 37: Report for Training Programme for D
Page 38 and 39: 1. IntroductionThe topic of the 200
Page 40 and 41: Each of the three teams had at leas
Page 42 and 43: Eliliane Vasconcelos CorrêaUnivers
Page 44 and 45: Valeria SeguraInstituto Nacional de
Page 46 and 47: F. Gerald PlumleyBermuda Institute
Page 48 and 49: Friday, September 25AM: -(L) HPLC,
Page 50 and 51: 10. Appendix 5: Trainee Presentatio
Page 52 and 53: 11. Appendix 6: Selected Photograph
Page 54 and 55: Back in the lab, students and instr

NF-POGO Centre of Excellence Year 2 Report

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?