By Bianca Prohaska. Going into my fellowship position, I knew I would travel a lot, lead our collaborations with India, and  provide support for our work with China. What I didn’t realize is how quickly I would get to start my work and get traveling! Read about my experiences in India, Ireland, Hawai'i, France, Malaysia, and...

By: Alison Agather. In 1912, over 1,500 people lost their lives when the RMS Titanic collided with an iceberg and sank. But what does the Titanic have to do with my fellowship role in the National Weather Service’s Ocean Prediction Center?

By Madi Harris Speed-walking down 5th Avenue in my suit while fighting early Manhattan summer humidity was not the morning I had planned for myself. Expecting the early Amtrak train from D.C. to New York to be on schedule may have been my own naivety, but I now found myself tempting a late arrival for my very first meeting at the United Nations...

By Lisa Kim I never expected my Knauss Fellowship to land me in South Korea. Yet, there I was, full of anxious excitement on a bumpy car ride in the narrow streets of the country I was born in. I looked in the rear view mirror to make sure my hair was neat and my button down shirt was straight. I got out of the car, and saw an old woman, tears in...

My position as the Knauss Policy Fellow working on the GEO Blue Planet Initiative has required organization, flexibility, creativity, teamwork, and comfort with (lots) of learning on the job. The thing above all that has helped me to navigate these challenges is my role as a Dungeon Master (abbreviated as DM) in Dungeons and Dragons. I thought it...

By Roxanne J Carini
In graduate school, I would quip that I studied everything about the ocean, except what lived there! So, imagine my surprise when I wound up at the Marine Mammal Commission for my year-long Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship.  Falling in love with the world of marine mammals didn’t take long! But, not for the...

By Katharine Egan A few weeks ago, I was sitting in the wet lab on the NOAA Ship Nancy Foster watching a video feed from the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) that I helped to deploy. The pilot guided the ROV into shallower waters, and I was quick to identify the corals as these depths. I thought about what I was doing this time last year: sitting...

By: Alicia Wilson While spending my first field season of graduate school on the coastal barrier islands of Georgia, I thought I was lucky to witness a record number of loggerhead sea turtle nests for the state. Three years later, as I watch from my fellowship in D.C., I am even more amazed. Loggerhead sea turtle ladies are kicking butt in...

By Liz Berg As a Congressional and Legislative Affairs Fellow with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), I act as a liaison between the FWS and Congress. One of the issue areas I work on is the conservation of pollinators, including the monarch butterfly. I have responded to inquiries from staff who work for Senators, House...

By Zac Cannizzo “Not for you. You just don’t have the mind for science.” The words of my 8th grade science teacher when I asked to be placed in Biology for my freshman year. It hurt. I always liked science, and I loved biology. Some of my earliest memories are watching Jack Hanna’s Animal Adventures. From a young age, I...

By: Andie Chan. I pressed my SCUBA mask to my face as I back rolled off a small catamaran into the warm tropical waters of the Florida Keys. It was my first time SCUBA diving for my Ph.D. research, and I was eager to prove myself. I was starting a project on increasing our understanding of the reproduction and population sizes of pillar corals...

In the academic world, communication comes in the form of peer-reviewed papers, theses or dissertations, seminar talks, conference talks, and posters. All long format and so deep into the science that you’re no longer certain what language they’re speaking. So, what do you do when you’ve been trained in those styles of...

I hit Submit. I felt anxious. I felt nervous. But, I also felt excited. I had just taken a leap from my comfort zone to a world of unknown. Four months later, I found myself in tears as I read “Good News! You have been selected as a Finalist for a 2019 Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship.” I was going to transition from academia to...

Growing up as an army kid, home was just wherever the military decided to stick my family, never a place I lived. But, as I was walking home from my third day as a Hollings Scholar at NOAA’s Pacific Island Fisheries Science Center (PIFSC) in Pearl Harbor, HI, it hit me that this strange new place actually “felt” like home, it was...

For the past five years, my typical field day was spent waist deep in marsh mud wielding the tools I needed for success: sunscreen, bug spray (lots of it), and a GPS.  My work day as an environmental scientist and salt marsh ecologist is a very different world from the one I recently jumped into as a Knauss Fellow in NOAA’s Office of...

Annapolis. Honolulu. Oakland. Charleston. Minneapolis. St. Petersburg. Gloucester. My desk is in Silver Spring, but we also work in Saipan, Stennis, and Seattle. Working with NOAA’s Office for Coastal Management means working with regions across the nation’s states and territories and sometimes changing my surroundings, virtually, every...

“Look! This is where we live?! I can’t believe we’re still on Guam! It’s so beautiful!” That was the genuine reaction of a middle schooler as our bus climbed a hill, revealing to us a breathtaking view of Sella Bay in southern Guam. We were en route to our first stop on the Humatak Watershed Adventure, which I was...

If someone told me a year back that I’d roll out of bed, wear formal clothing I’d never owned previously, and walk into work (with my own desk and everything), I would have laughed my loudest! Prior to 2019 I was the typical graduate student, living the lab life in my jeans and sneakers, and never having heard of the Knauss Fellowship....

As the air horn blew, I couldn’t help but laugh. Even NBC News caught me laughing. During a committee hearing, Representative Cunningham (D-SC) wanted to illustrate that seismic airgun blasting in the Atlantic ocean would be as loud and disruptive to the endangered North Atlantic right whale as his air horn blast was to the hearing.

The Sea Grant John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship is a one-year paid immersive policy experience that provides a unique educational and professional experience to graduate students, but what does that mean? Who are Knauss Fellows and what do they do?