Capacity-Building Activities of the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research

Venu Ittekkot and Ed Urban

• Participation of developing country scientists in SCOR groups

• SCOR Committee on Capacity Building• Travel Grants• POGO/SCOR Visiting Fellowships for Oceanographic

Observations• Modest Dues for Membership in SCOR• Continuing Professional Development and Capacity

Building Resources in National and International Marine Agencies and Programs

• Library Support• SCOR Visiting Scholars• Regional Graduate Schools of Oceanography

SCOR Capacity-Building Activities

Participation of Developing Country Scientists in SCOR Groups

• This is SCOR’s most important approach to capacity building!

• However, we could do better; only 20% of the members of our working groups, scientific steering committees, and other groups are from developing countries and countries with economies in transition.

• SCOR has relatively few members and contacts in Africa, southeast Asia, and the Middle East.

• Regional Graduate Schools of Oceanography (discussed later) may help identify new participants.

SCOR Committee on Capacity Building

• SCOR established this group in 2006 to integrate and expand SCOR’s capacity-building activities.

• Current Members: Venu Ittekkot (Chair, Germany), Alfonse Dubi (Tanzania), John Farrington (USA), Vivian Lutz (Chile), Shubha Sathyendranath (POGO), Jilan Su (China-Beijing), Tatsuki Toda (Japan), and Jing Zhang (IMBER) 

• Provide direction for all of SCOR’s existing capacity-building activities: participation of scientists from developing countries and countries with economies in transition in SCOR activities, POGO-SCOR Fellowship Program, travel grants, and provision of reports to libraries in developing countries.

• Guide and assist SCOR Executive Director in development of new capacity-building activities, particularly the Regional Graduate Schools of Oceanography activity.

• Assist SCOR-sponsored projects in developing their capacity-building activities.

• Help SCOR arrange funding for existing and new capacity-building activities.

• Assist SCOR in interacting with regional and international groups related to capacity building in ocean sciences, such as the ICSU regional centers, START, IOC regional programs, etc.

SCOR Committee on Capacity Building

Terms of Reference

SCOR Travel Grants

• Possible through a continuing grant from NSF since 1984; US$75000 per year.

• All SCOR-supported projects and some affiliated projects have benefitted, through funding for open science meetings, summer schools, and other special meetings.

• Meetings approved in 2008: Humboldt Conference, ASLO 2009, GEOHAB Modeling Workshop, Summer School on Automated Plankton Identification, GLOBEC OSM III, IMBER Global Carbon Synthesis Meeting, IAPSO/SCOR session on Ocean Mixing at IAMAS-IAPSO-IACS General Assembly, SOLAS OSM and Summer School, PICES Summer School on Satellite Oceanography and SCOR-relevant session at PICES annual meeting.

POGO/SCOR Visiting Fellowships for Oceanographic Observations

• Has been a joint program of POGO and SCOR since 2001. IOC participated at the beginning.

• About 100 fellows have been funded since 2001.

• Priority is given to applications that deal with any of the following topics: Argo floats; fixed-Point time-series observations; large-scale operational biological observations, including biodiversity; emerging technologies for ocean observations; data management; coastal observations/coastal zone management; and ocean and coastal modeling.

• We receive a lot of applications for research, rather than observation, projects. We turn these down, but there is obviously a demand for fellowships to learn research methods.

Modest Dues for Membership in SCOR

• A country picks its dues category, I to V, when it joins SCOR.*

• The lowest level of dues in 2009 is US$1975.

• The benefits of all dues-paying countries is the same, regardless of their category.

*Note: National SCOR Committees, not the nations themselves, are members of SCOR. Since SCOR is a non-governmental organization, the scientists participating represent themselves and their scientific communities, not their national governments.

Web Portal to the Capacity-Building Activities of Projects and Organizations

Conducting/Funding/Coordinating Ocean Science

Library Support

SCOR sends the reports of its working groups and other publications to 43 libraries in 33 nations: Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, Bulgaria, Chile, China-Beijing, Croatia, Cote d'Ivoire, Cuba, Egypt, Estonia, Fiji, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Korea, Lithuania, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Pakistan, Peru, Poland, Philippines, Romania, Russia, South Africa, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, and Vietnam.

SCOR Visiting Scholars

• In March 2009, SCOR requested expressions of interest for the first SCOR Visiting Scholars.

• SCOR is seeking individuals interested in teaching, mentoring, and networking in a developing country for several weeks to months, individuals who do not need salary support (retired, on sabbatical, independently wealthy, etc.).

• SCOR will provide airfare and insurance (if needed): host institution is expected to provide some local support.

Regional Graduate Schools of Oceanography

• An RGSO would be a network in a developing region that brings together, from within and outside the region, a critical mass of resources for regional ocean science education.

• The RGSO would build on existing institutions in the region, not substitute for them, and would feature short-term classes, and laboratory and field activities, that would contribute toward a student’s degree at their home institution.