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Date 6-26-06
Contact Tammy Stafford 228.688.7663
HANCOCK
COUNTY—In late May, three prestigious scientists
visited a variety of University of Southern Mississippi facilities
on the Gulf Coast to conduct an external review of the School of
Ocean and Earth Sciences (SOES). SOES comprises the Department of
Coastal Sciences and the Gulf Coast Research Laboratory in Ocean
Springs; the Geography and Geology Departments in Hattiesburg; the
Department of Marine Science at Stennis Space Center; and the J.L.
Scott Marine Education Center.
The review team included Drs. Robert Gagosian, director of Woods
Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Mass.; Otis Brown,
dean of the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science
in Miami, Fla.; and Kumar Mahadevan, director of the Mote Marine
Laboratory in Sarasota, Fla.
“We were very fortunate to have reviewers of the stature of Drs.
Gagosian, Brown, and Mahadevan. The review team worked extremely
well together. They praised the SOES review process and were favorably
impressed by the caliber of the USM faculty, staff, and students,”
said Dr. Steve Lohrenz, chair of both the Department of Marine Science
and the SOES executive committee.
Lohrenz also noted the importance of the SOES external review in
helping Southern Miss maintain its prominent standing as a flagship
university in marine sciences for the state of Mississippi.
The first stop on the coast for these scientists was the John C.
Stennis Space Center, where the team visited the Southern Miss Department
of Marine Science and the Center of Higher Learning. Later that
afternoon, the SOES team toured the interim location of the Gulf
Park campus now in Gulfport and ventured to former and interim sites
of the J.L. Scott Marine Education Center. During the second day
of the external review, the team visited the Gulf Coast Research
Laboratory. The SOES executive and external review committees concluded
the two-day review with a question-and-answer and planning session.
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