Program Update: National Oceanographic Partnership Program – June 2012
The Interagency Working Group on Ocean Partnerships (IWG-OP) met on June 12 at the Consortium for Ocean Leadership and discussed the following topics:
- IWG-OP’s role in the National Ocean Policy Implementation Plan: The IWG-OP will examine ways in which they can contribute to the milestones associated with the Coordinate and Support priority objective. The IWG-OP will be discussing potential opportunities at their next meeting;
- A Workforce Management Study mandated through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the America COMPETES Re-authorization Act;
- Potential partnerships with the National Ocean Sciences Bowl (NOSB);
- Partnership opportunity with the IOOS U.S. Modeling Testbed project; and
- Findings from a study on Early Career Professional Development: The findings include responses from an informal survey collected from graduate students, graduate educators, employers, and early-career employees, which asks respondents to rate eight skills as important/not important to academic and non-academic careers. The survey results will be presented at the Ocean Sciences Educators’ Retreat (OSER) in September 2012.
The Federal Renewable Energy Working Group (FROEWG) met June 28 and the IWG-OP’s Biodiversity Ad Hoc Group will meet on July 19. The IWG-OP will hold their next meeting at Ocean Leadership on July 10.
The Interagency Working Group on Facilities and Infrastructure (IWG-FI) met at Ocean Leadership on June 22 and heard updates from their various working groups on their progress in completing National Ocean Policy milestones. The IWG-FI’s Federal Oceanographic Fleet Working Group (FOFWG) and the Fleet Schedule Portal Working Group (FSPWG) held a joint meeting at Ocean Leadership on June 13. Both groups received feedback from the IWG-FI leadership on their projects and will meet again in mid-July. The Subcommittee on Unmanned Systems (SUS) co-chairs held a teleconference on June 13 to discuss ways forward. The group will meet again on September 12. The IWG-FI will hold their next meeting at Ocean Leadership in mid-September.
