from vision to reality - university of maryland center for ... vision to reality... · from vision...

From Vision to Reality

Strategic Plan

of the

University of Maryland Center for Environmental

Science

2004


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Contents Page

Summary ....................................................................................................................... iii 1. Introduction........................................................................................................................... 1 2. Boundaries Crossed ......................................................................................................... 2 2.1 The Long Now .............................................................................................................. 2 2.2 Implementation of Crossing Boundaries ...................................................................... 3 2.3 Self Study...................................................................................................................... 3 2.3.1 Overview.......................................................................................................... 3 2.3.2 Evaluation of successes of initiatives .............................................................. 4 2.3.3 Research strengths ........................................................................................... 5 2.3.4 Client Consultations......................................................................................... 6 2.4 External Review............................................................................................................ 7

3. Evolving Challenges and Opportunities for Environmental Science .......... 8 3.1 Global Environment...................................................................................................... 8 3.1.1 New directions in environmental science ........................................................ 8 3.1.2 Observing systems ........................................................................................... 8 3.1.3 Ocean policy .................................................................................................... 9 3.1.4 Climate change ................................................................................................ 9 3.2 Chesapeake Bay and Watershed Restoration................................................................ 9

4. Science and Education Strategy................................................................................ 11 4.1 Strategic Directions..................................................................................................... 11 4.1.1 Science to support ecosystem based management......................................... 13 4.1.2 Multi-scale ecosystem restoration ................................................................. 16 4.1.3 Linking observations and forecasts from mountain to sea ............................ 19 4.1.4 Regional consequences of climate variability and change ............................ 21 4.2 Evolution of the Integration and Application Network .............................................. 25 4.3 Education .................................................................................................................... 28 4.3.1 Graduate education ........................................................................................ 28 4.3.2 Environmental science education .................................................................. 34 4.3.3 New educational enterprises .......................................................................... 35

5. Institutional and Resource Requirements ............................................................. 37 5.1 Faculty Productivity.................................................................................................... 37 5.2 Effectiveness and Efficiency of Administration and Support..................................... 38

5.3 Coherence and Identity ............................................................................................... 39 5.4 Development ............................................................................................................... 40 5.5 Collaboration and Leadership ..................................................................................... 41 5.6 Funding ....................................................................................................................... 42 5.7 Facilities...................................................................................................................... 43

6. Tracking Progress............................................................................................................ 45 7. References........................................................................................................................... 47


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Summary

This strategic plan of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES), From Vision to Reality, sets a course for the remainder of the decade that addresses tremendous needs for environmental science, while taking into account the fiscal realities of a research institution within a public university system. It is based on unprecedented analysis and reflection that included a detailed Self Study, an External Peer Review, and extensive discussion and crafting by the Center’s faculty and administration.

The strategic plan builds on a previous plan, Crossing Boundaries, completed in 2000 and is adapted through consideration of our strengths and progress, new directions and developments in environmental science, and the demand for science to serve global, national and regional needs for environmental and natural resource management. Four strategic directions are developed and implementation steps, requirements, and measurable outcomes articulated for each. These are meant to guide the Center’s research, service, and graduate educational programs down exciting and highly pertinent pathways. While all our scientific activities will not be confined to these directions, they provide common themes on which our scientists can collaborate and add value to their individual efforts. The four strategic directions are:

§ Science to support ecosystem based management

§ Multi-scale ecosystem restoration

§ Linking observing systems and forecasts from mountain to sea

§ Regional consequences of climate change and variability.

In the 2000 strategic plan, UMCES made a major commitment to enhance its capability for integrating environmental science across disciplines and environments and applying this science in serving society. The Integration and Application Network (IAN) was established and its work has been well received by management agencies and decision makers. The current plan lays out a strategy for more effectively engaging the knowledge and resourcefulness of the UMCES faculty in IAN programs and infrastructure.

Education is a large and important part of the UMCES mission. Strategies are provided to strengthen graduate education within the Center by empowering the Graduate Faculty Council, seeking new sources of support for graduate students, tightening the course curricula, and raising the identity of an UMCES graduate education. Under the 2000 strategic plan, the Center greatly enhanced its environmental science education programs aimed at schoolteachers, K-12 students, and the general public. The Center will continue down this path by working with the K-12 sector and University System of Maryland (USM) universities to improve the numbers of well-qualified teachers, improving the environmental literacy of young citizens of the Chesapeake Bay region, and expanding the awareness of and external support for its environmental science education activities. Resource limitations require that not only must the Center generate more revenues from its educational activities, but also that USM institutions engage in efficient collaborations. Consequently, the Center will explore and develop new educational enterprises, including delivery of web-based and short courses to serve undergraduates and degree and non-degree programs to serve the continuing education needs of environmental professionals.

The circumstances also require improvements in faculty productivity and the effectiveness and efficiency of administrative and support functions. The Center’s faculty members and laboratory directors will manage faculty contributions in discovery, integration, application and


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teaching through collaboratively developed portfolios for each faculty member, with an objective of increasing faculty productivity by 20 percent, as measured by publications, publication impact, and external research support. The administration will enhance its capacity for expanding and efficiently managing sponsored research, obtain periodic appraisal of administrative services from the faculty, and streamline functions to yield at least a 10 percent increase in efficiency.

The Center will continue to improve its coherence and identity by providing assistance and incentives for inter-laboratory collaboration, expanded external communications, and developing an appropriate “theme” focus in it public relations. The Center’s development efforts were reactivated under the 2000 strategic plan and now must grow to significantly increase private fund raising to yield a base of $2 million per year by the end of the decade. UMCES will also strengthen its collaborations with other USM institutions and build new ones. New dimensions in collaboration include a University of Maryland Ocean Science Institute, graduate training in urban environmental issues, and Internet-delivered course offerings.

While efforts will continue to secure reinvestment in the Center by the state of Maryland, it is clear that the Center must be more aggressive and resourceful in attaining other sources of revenue for its activities. These sources include increasing grant and contract awards to at least $30 million per year, fuller realization of indirect cost recoveries from sponsored research, and appropriate reimbursements for instructional services. A laboratory addition and a new information and communication services building at the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory are slated for completion during this planning horizon. The Center’s most urgent capital need is a new, highly capable vessel to support cutting edge research in the Chesapeake Bay. Finally, the Center will develop a plan for a Horn Point Heritage Reserve for the conservation and public appreciation of the 840 acre Horn Point Laboratory campus.

For each of the elements of the strategic plan, measurable outcomes have been specified for six-month, eighteen-month, three-year, and five-year benchmark periods. The Center will assign the responsible parties for each outcome and will assess progress at each of these time horizons.


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1. Introduction

This is a very challenging time for American public higher education. Because of falling tax revenues in the early 2000s, states throughout the nation have decreased their share of the costs of higher education and, in many cases including Maryland, have actually reduced funding levels. The financial burden is shifting to the students, whose ranks are swelling with the baby-boom echo. Universities are being asked to become more efficient with the resources provided—to “operate more like a business.” At the same time, environmental science institutions such as the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES) are being challenged to provide answers and directions regarding recalcitrant and complex problems. Why, for example, aren’t we making more progress in restoring the Chesapeake Bay? What are the risks associated with introducing a nonnative oyster to the Bay? And, how do we protect the environment and conserve resources on a planet whose populations are still rapidly growing and whose climate is already beginning to change?

Faced with state budget cuts, under-funded new facilities, and increasingly pressing needs for the informational and human products of our endeavors, the faculty and administration of the Center concluded that it was time to develop a new strategic plan that recognized these new fiscal realities as well as continuing demands and opportunities. It is not that we felt that our last strategic plan, called Crossing Boundaries, was not on the right track, but that it needed updating and refinement.

This new strategic plan is the result of the most thorough, inclusive and consultative process ever undertaken in the Center’s nearly 80-year history. Through intimate collaboration between the Faculty Senate and administration, we undertook an in-depth Self Study, which included revealing analysis of our productivity and consultation with our principal clients. Then we shared the Self Study with a visiting External Review Committee, consisting of nationally prominent experts selected by and reporting to the Chancellor of the University System of Maryland. Finally, we used the results of the Self Study and recommendations from the External Review to fashion the strategic plan.

Crossing Boundaries made reference to the crossing into a new century and across boundaries between scientific disciplines, student and teacher, and scientist and decision maker. Importantly, that strategic plan articulated a vision of also crossing the boundaries between air, land, fresh water and the ocean to create a more holistic environmental science. In evaluating our progress, the External Review Committee observed: “UMCES as a whole is a vision that is in the process of becoming a reality.” The goal of this new strategic plan is to fully achieve that vision. While some might find From Vision to Reality an odd title of a strategic plan for an institution that is nearly 80 years old, it reflects the Center’s comfort with both its accomplishments and the need for continued strides toward its bold and challenging goals.


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2. Boundaries Crossed

2.1 The Long Now To be successful an institution needs to have an understanding of its history (what did it go

through), a realistic appraisal of its present (why it is the way it is), and a vision for its future (what might it be and how might it get there). This is what limnologist Steven Carpenter refers to as “the long now” when applied to ecosystem studies.

The University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science marks its origins with the founding of the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory by Professor Reginald Truitt in 1925. Through its various positions as a small college laboratory, a state research and education agency, and (for the past 42 years) a multi-campus institution of the university system, the Center has, at its core, served its patroness, Maryland. It has a rich tradition of excellent research, education and public outreach related to Maryland’s natural resources and environment, pursuing its statutory mission “to develop and apply a predictive ecology for Maryland.”

The Center addresses this mission at its three laboratories: the original Chesapeake Biological Laboratory (CBL), the Appalachian Laboratory (AL), established in 1962, and the Horn Point Laboratory (HPL), founded in 1973. Beginning about 1980, HPL and CBL underwent substantial growth in faculty and facilities, broadening and deepening of research strengths in the marine sciences, expanding sponsored research, and increasing involvement of its institutional leaders and faculty in national and international activities. During the 1990s a major commitment was made to expand and strengthen the faculty and facilities of the Appalachian Laboratory in order to develop a prominent program of watershed studies to balance and contribute to the estuarine and marine programs of the coastal laboratories. Furthermore, since that time UMCES has maintained a leadership role in strengthening and nurturing the University-wide graduate program in environmental sciences (Marine-Estuarine-Environmental Sciences or MEES).

Since 1999, UMCES has been the responsible institution for administration of the Maryland Sea Grant College Program on behalf of the University System of Maryland. Although UMCES is fiscally and programmatically accountable for Sea Grant, that program has an independent mission in partnership with many other public and private institutions and appropriately has a separate strategic plan.

The present and future parts of the long now are covered in the Self Study, External Review and the Strategy itself.


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2.2 Implementation of Crossing Boundaries Virtually no strategic plan is ever fully executed, particularly

in a time of resource constraints. Nonetheless, to a surprising degree the strategic plan developed in 2000, Crossing Boundaries, has been followed, yielding numerous accomplishments:

§ Ernest Boyer’s framework for faculty scholarship in the multiple dimensions of discovery, integration, application, and teaching has been gradually understood and accepted. It is has been used as the template for evaluating and rewarding faculty performance.

§ The Integration and Application Network (IAN), its major initiative, was begun and considerable resources invested in it.

§ The environmental science education capabilities at the Appalachian Laboratory and the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory were rebuilt and the Center’s efforts there and at Horn Point were integrated with Maryland Sea Grant in an Environmental Science Education Partnership (ESEP).

§ The Center reestablished a capability in private fund-raising by hiring a Vice President for Development.

§ The Aquaculture and Restoration Ecology Laboratory (AREL) was constructed and has been occupied, doubling the research space at HPL.

Advances in connecting the previous thrusts in scientific discovery were diffuse and less obvious, although no less real. Incremental gains made also made in increasing the rigor and excellence of graduate education within the Center. Evaluation of the Center’s programs of discovery and graduate education were the major focus of the Self Study in addition to specific evaluation of outcomes from the IAN and ESEP initiatives.

2.3 Self Study 2.3.1 Overview

The Self Study examined financial trends, research strengths, faculty productivity, graduate education, the Integration and Application Network, environmental science education, development, effectiveness and efficiency of administration and support, and the Center’s governance model. In addition, it included a summary of a more in-depth client consultation. Under each topic, findings were presented and recommendations made for the strategic planning process. While many of these recommendations shaped the Strategy presented in this plan, others were too specific for inclusion at the strategic level. They will not go unheeded but will provide guidance moving forward. Only the findings regarding the investment initiatives, research strengths and client consultation will be separately summarized in following sections. A brief overview of the remaining topics is provided here.

The Center has become increasingly dependent on external sources of support as a result of the lack of any real growth in state support since the early 1990s coupled with


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success in attracting external research support. Presently state funding contributes less than 36 percent of the operating budget. Reductions in state funding during fiscal years 2003 and 2004, coupled with increased operating costs associated with the new AREL facility, have created an acute problem. Furthermore, state support is unlikely to increase in real terms in the near future. Either operations will have to be downsized, additional efficiencies realized, or additional unrestricted revenues gained from indirect cost recoveries, donations or sales of services. This new fiscal reality must be a consideration in the Center’s new strategy and faculty and staff should be kept well informed about the fiscal circumstances.

The UMCES faculty has been successful in attracting substantial funding for research, producing significant publications, training graduate students, and serving the scientific community. As in any organization, there are those who are achieving at the highest level in all categories, and those who perform below the average in one or more categories. Effective direction of the key intellectual resources of the faculty must involve means to: meaningfully measure productivity on both collective and individual levels; collaboratively develop reasonable expectations concerning productivity within the mix of multiple responsibilities for research, teaching and service; assist faculty members to reach their full potential during different stages of their career; and reward excellence and exceptional performance.

UMCES has developed a successful graduate program. The Center’s laboratories are home to 111 students who are enrolled in a number of different graduate programs throughout the University System of Maryland; 55 are enrolled in thesis-based Masters programs and 56 are studying at the Ph.D. level. In 2004, UMCES graduated 11 MS students and 3 PhD students. Our students take a diversity of courses during their degree programs, from biological oceanography to ecotoxicology to hydrology. This training provides a solid foundation such that graduates are successful by a diversity of measures. Most publish a peer-reviewed paper from their MS thesis and four or more papers from their doctoral dissertations. UMCES students also frequently win awards when they present their work at national and international meetings. Our graduates hold prestigious appointments in academia, state and federal government, industry and the non-profit sector. More than a third of our MS students follow careers in government; a further 12 percent go on to further graduate education. At the PhD level, almost half go into government and approximately one-third go into tenure-track academic employment.

Evaluation of administrative services revealed that these services are spread across Center Administration and the laboratories in complex ways, largely related to geographic dispersion and reporting requirements. Mapping of functions and key interactions within and between functions provides an important basis for locating opportunities for improved efficiency and effectiveness, particularly with the aid of modern information and telecommunications technology. In light of the Center’s growing dependence on external funding, the capacity for attracting and managing sponsored research support should be enhanced.

The Center’s status as an independent research center has served the System and the State well and should not be changed without compelling evidence that an alternative governance structure would result in significant improvement in effectiveness in execution of its statutory mission. Nonetheless, the Center should work to strengthen its relationships with other USM institutions in order to bring the System’s full expertise to bear on critical environmental and natural resource problems of the State.

2.3.2 Evaluating success of initiatives Regarding the Crossing Boundaries initiatives, the Self Study found that:

§ The IAN is on the right track but had too ambitious an array of objectives that needs to be narrowed. It has produced some high visibility products and been warmly


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welcomed by outside clients, but UMCES faculty members generally felt that they had not yet been effectively involved in IAN. To be fully successful, IAN should engage the UMCES faculty to a greater degree; an IAN Steering Committee should be activated to determine priorities and provide oversight.

§ The Environmental Science Education Partnership has greatly expanded the reach of the Center’s programs, particularly in teacher training. ESEP was able to attract $1.1 million in external support for its activities and built partnerships with federal and state agencies, school districts, and public education organizations. Sustaining the program financially will be a perennial challenge, requiring active promotion of our programs and products.

§ Accomplishments from the development initiative thus far include the establishment of a prominent and effective Board of Visitors for the Center and a modest, but significant increase in fund raising, particularly individual and foundation donations to support infrastructure and programs at the new AREL facility. Greater interaction with the faculty and more assistance to the Center’s other laboratories and the Sea Grant program are required at this stage.

2.3.3 Research strengths The research portfolio of the Center looks different from most other academic institutions. It

is less of a Noah’s ark of scientific entrepreneurs, but also perhaps less catholic and more regionally focused. This is neither by chance or neglect, but is an outcome of our efforts to serve both of two core legislative mandates, to develop and apply a “predictive ecology” for the State of Maryland and to “achieve and sustain national eminence,” the overall expectation for the University System of Maryland.

In examining the Center’s research enterprise, the Self Study identified notable research strengths on which to build or redirect to meet strategic goals. Areas of notable research strengths were identified based on our self-appraisal of productivity and national competitiveness. These are broad, interdisciplinary areas that span the research of multiple members of the UMCES faculty. Most, but not all, UMCES faculty members fall comfortably within these research areas. Some faculty members contribute to more than one research strength. The five areas of notable research strength are as follows:

§ Interdisciplinary Research in Estuarine and Coastal Dynamics. For over 20 years the Center has had a nationally significant program related to the biological, physical, and geochemical dynamics of estuaries and the coastal ocean. This was a result of a concerted effort to build a program by recruiting established scientists in that area to attract external research funding and provide scientific knowledge needed by our principal clients, the citizens of Maryland. This research activity is particularly robust at the Horn Point Laboratory (HPL), but faculty at the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory (CBL) play an important role. Even Appalachian Laboratory (AL) scientists have contributed to research on coastal dynamics.

§ Fisheries Ecosystem Science. Since the founding of CBL in 1925 UMCES has been engaged in fisheries research because of the strong interest in the living resources of the Chesapeake Bay and nearby coastal waters. Presently, our fisheries research is strongly “ecosystem-based,” including work at the forefront of multispecies and ecosystem process modeling and fisheries habitat restoration studies. While our present capabilities are focused at CBL, there is broad expertise across all three laboratories, including shellfish studies and aquaculture at HPL and freshwater fish studies at AL.


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§ Environmental Chemistry and Toxicology. Environmental chemistry and toxicology research programs are also focused at CBL, but environmental chemistry permeates virtually all aspects of research on ecosystem processes at the laboratories and some freshwater toxicological research is conducted at AL. The Center’s strengths in this area are a result from investments in new faculty positions and facilities initiated in the 1980s.

§ Ecology of Terrestrial Landscapes and Watersheds. The Center’s research strength in terrestrial landscapes and watersheds is emerging as a result of strategic investments in faculty positions and facilities initiated in the mid-1990s because of the regional demand for scientific knowledge regarding the functioning of watersheds draining to the Chesapeake Bay and implications of changing land use patterns in the region. This strategic redirection has allowed the research at the AL to become much more interdisciplinary and tied into the research in the estuary at the other laboratories. Our capabilities in this area are concentrated at AL, but landscape and process studies are also conducted on coastal plain watersheds at HPL and CBL.

§ Cycling, Transport and Effects of Nutrients. Research on the cycling, transport and effects of nutrients is equally distributed among the three laboratories because of the truly crosscutting nature of this theme. The research is inherently interdisciplinary and both laterally integrated (involving atmospheric, terrestrial, riverine, estuarine and oceanic processes and also sources, transport, sinks and effects) and vertically integrated (involving fundamental science, applied research, monitoring, modeling, through management decision systems). The Center has extraordinary depth and breadth in this area, placing it in a position both to serve regional needs and to apply this expertise to different parts of the country and the world to address problems cause by enrichment of the biosphere.

Of course, these five areas of strength have connections in the ecosystem, which provide an opportunity and even a requirement for interaction among faculty members engaged principally in one area or another. We see this potential and realized interactivity, along with a critical mass in each area as a strategic advantage for the Center going forward.

2.3.4 Client Consultation Twenty representatives of client organizations gave UMCES excellent marks for its

research and for the relationship most of its faculty members have developed with clients. They repeatedly noted that UMCES is “at the top of the heap” both nationally and internationally with regard to the quality of its work. They believe that UMCES keeps itself removed from politics and therefore has high credibility with regard to the independence and non-bias nature of its work. Faculty members were praised for their ability to draw conclusions from the research to aid clients in the answering of management questions. Participants noted that UMCES has over the past five years developed an ever-better capacity to interface with policy makers. Clients appreciate and value UMCES’ ability and willingness to tackle complex questions, look at issues from an interdisciplinary point of view, and assist with the identification of emerging issues that


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Selected Emerging Issues Identified by Clients

Economics Risk analysis Sea-level rise Ecosystem-based fishery management Urban BMP effectiveness Forest management Sediment loading and processes Air-water interface Growth and sprawl Cumulative impacts Thresholds and carrying capacity

need scientific attention. And finally, UMCES faculty members were praised for their sensitivity to the issues and willingness to work within timeframes required by management agencies.

The clients identified a number of emerging issues that they felt needed to be addressed and on which UMCES could make important contributions. They indicated that UMCES could play a major role in taking knowledge gained in other places and applying it to the Chesapeake region and that they would also like to see UMCES play a stronger role in bringing other expertise (e.g., engineering, finance, agriculture, and the social sciences) in the University System to the fore. They gave high marks to the concept of IAN and offered numerous suggestions regarding roles it could play. The clients also supported the notion that the role UMCES plays in environmental education should be based on improving science literacy. They expressed strong sentiment for improved communication with UMCES and noted their appreciation for the opportunity to express their views via the Client Consultation. Finally, they felt that the UMCES leadership was visible and accessible but recommended that the laboratory directors become more engaged in interactions with the regional management community.

2.4 External Review The External Review Committee, chaired by Dr. John Farrington, Vice President for

Academic Programs and Dean of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, provided a report that was candid, supportive, and most helpful to the development of this strategy. The Committee’s concluding summary stated:

The University System of Maryland is very fortunate to have an organization such as UMCES among its institutions. UMCES is clearly among the leading research institutions of its kind, with a very strong national and international reputation, with first-rate faculty and facilities, and with an emerging, high quality, graduate education program.

The Committee found that the quality and productivity of the Center’s work is comparable to our peers and its contributions in public service rank as high, or higher, than almost any other higher education institution, but recommended that the identity and role of graduate education within the center be articulated more clearly. It concluded that while the implementation of the Integration and Application Network (IAN) has the potential to strengthen the position of UMCES in many ways, it is important at this stage that IAN gain greater “buy-in” from the faculty. The Committee opined that to remain successful in the future UMCES would have to become more resourceful in broadening its funding base through expanded research, perhaps with the addition of research faculty members; private fund raising; and reimbursements for instruction. There were numerous other observations and recommendations made that were itemized, taken under consideration in our planning, and occasionally referenced in the strategy.


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3. Evolving Challenges and Opportunities in Environmental Science

3.1 Global Environment Previous strategic plans included “environmental scans” of the emerging issues and science

initiatives that might provide targets and opportunities for the Center’s scientific programs. Most of these directions are still current—jobs not yet completed, as it were. However, many new assessments, plans and initiatives have been recently unveiled, grouped as follows:

3.1.1 New directions in environmental science Environmental predictions and helping society to find sustainable futures have become

even more prominent requirements for environmental science. The National Council for Science and Technology identified requirements for Ecological Forecasting, including understanding ecosystem composition, structure and functioning; monitoring status and trends; and improving prediction and interpretation tools. The National Science Foundation released Complex Environmental Systems, a ten-year outlook for environmental research and education that emphasized the development of environmental synthesis to frame interdisciplinary research questions across spatial, temporal and societal scales. The Ecological Society of America offered an appraisal of Ecological Science and Sustainability for a Crowded Planet. It recommended research initiatives to build on existing programs, facilitate large-scale experiments and data collection, and link science to solutions. ESA emphasizes the need to improve interactions among researchers, managers and decision makers—very much in line with the Center’s strengths and continuing efforts.

3.1.2 Observing systems In 2003, G-8 nations affirmed at an Earth Observations Summit the need for timely,

quality, long-term, global observations to monitor continuously the state of the Earth, increase understanding of dynamic Earth processes, enhance prediction of the Earth system, and provide a basis for sound decision making. This global system would include the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) and the Global Terrestrial Observing System (GTOS). The development of ocean observation strategies in the United Sates led to plans for a sustained Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) that has been widely endorsed by the scientific community and by policymakers, including the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy. Legislation is pending in Congress to authorize the IOOS, which would include Regional Associations for coastal ocean observations, all under the management auspices of a national office, referred to as Ocean.US. Meanwhile, the National Science Foundation has begun initiatives to create Ocean Research Interactive Observatory Networks (ORION), a National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) and Long-Term Hydrologic Observatories. It is clear that environmental observing system will be a major area of focus and investment in the coming years.


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3.1.3 Ocean policy Two major commissions have issued reports calling for a substantial overhaul of the United

States ocean policy, both stressing ecosystem-based management as the foundation approach with which to integrate competing uses and responsibilities. UMCES scientists contributed significantly to the deliberations of both the privately funded Pew Oceans Commission and presidentially appointed U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy. The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, the Center’s most significant external sponsor, has also emphasized protecting, restoring and managing the use of coastal resources through ecosystem-based management as one of the four mission goals in its 5-year research plan. Both ocean commissions stressed the guiding principles of sustainability, ocean-land-atmosphere connections, preservation of marine biodiversity, a precautionary approach, adaptive management, and best available science and information. All of these principles have important implications for how UMCES can best contribute to the nation’s ocean and coastal policies. The commissions also called for a much greater effort to improve education and public awareness as the cornerstone of an improved ocean stewardship effort.

3.1.4 Climate change Since Crossing Boundaries, the reality of climate change has

been made more apparent, both with regard to growing evidence of the changes that have actually taken place (temperatures rising, glaciers retreating, latitudinal ranges of species shifting) and the strengthening scientific consensus about the nature of changes likely over this century and beyond. The 2001 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change made unambiguous statements about the changes that have taken place and the range of possibilities going forward. The U.S. National Assessment of the Consequences of Climate Variability and Change examined the potential effects of the anticipated changes on human well-being, resources, and regions of the country. UMCES scientists contributed to this National Assessment, as well as to technical reports on marine and terrestrial ecosystems commissioned by the Pew Center for Global Climate Change.

Putting aside the issues of appropriate policies regarding greenhouse gas emissions and climate change, it is increasingly clear that both environmental science and management must take into account the climatically variable and changing world with which we will be confronted. Understanding ecosystem responses to climate variability and change is, thus, an important element of the Strategic Plan for the U.S. Climate Science Program that was released by the Bush Administration in 2003.

3.2 Chesapeake Bay and Watershed Restoration Just as the Crossing Boundaries plan was completed, the states and federal agencies

comprising the Chesapeake Bay Program put into place the new Chesapeake 2000 Agreement (C2K for short), a multifaceted, far-reaching plan of action to restore and sustain the Chesapeake Bay and its watershed. The management objectives of C2K pose many challenges for UMCES science, from effective land conservation to water quality improvement to multi-species

Report prepared for the Pew Commission by UMCES scientists


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management of living resources to oyster, wetland and submerged vegetation restoration. While scientific advances have driven the evolution of the Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP), many important scientific questions remain, and the questions grow increasingly challenging as the complexity of interactions of components of the Chesapeake ecosystem have to be taken into account. In many ways, C2K is the world’s most ambitious attempt at ecosystem-based management as called for by the ocean commissions.

UMCES scientists played a lead role in developing the report of the CBP’s Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee entitled Chesapeake Futures: Choices for the 21st Century. The report develops, based on best available knowledge, three plausible scenarios for the future of the Chesapeake Bay over the next 30-50 years. The scenarios demonstrate that without expanded efforts the gains that have been made in the health of Bay ecosystems are likely to be lost due to population growth and development. On the other hand, significant improvements in the health of the ecosystem, similar to those embraced by the C2K Agreement, are achievable, although only with intensified efforts and applications on new and emerging technologies. While Chesapeake Futures presents no research agenda, it provides a framework for directing the Center’s scientific efforts to where the may assist the achievement of positive outcomes in environmental management and restoration.

Despite this bold undertaking, there is growing concern that the pace of progress of Chesapeake restoration is too slow. In 2003, political scientist Howard Ernst and journalist Tom Horton published popular books that concluded that, even though strong scientific guidance had been provided, there was little sign of improvement, largely due to an over emphasis on process relative to outcomes in government programs. Even more recent newspaper accounts have criticized the CBP for relying too heavily on models rather than real-world evidence to represent progress. However, this discontent affords opportunities for UMCES to again lead the way toward more effective, science-based management and restoration of the Bay and its watershed.


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4. Science and Education Strategy

4.1 Strategic Directions Strategic directions were determined and shaped based on:

§ the previous strategic plan, Crossing Boundaries;

§ the Self Study, including the foundation strengths identified in the study;

§ bottom-up planning at the laboratory level, driven largely by the scientific interests of the faculty (science drivers); and

§ external assessment of how the Center’s scientific products will be used and its activities supported (use drivers), based on the environmental scan of research and management trends and directions as well as the client consultations.

Four potential directions were developed based on these considerations and presented as candidates to the External Review Committee. The Committee found that these directions represented a good plan reflecting appropriate goals and directions, but that there needed to be further discussion by the faculty of the strategic goals and directions. The meaning, scope, number and relationships of the following strategic directions were subsequently debated, revised and honed at laboratory faculty meetings, the April 2004 UMCES-wide Faculty Convocation, meetings of the Faculty Senate, and joint meetings of the Senate and the UMCES Executive Council:

§ science to support ecosystem-based management,

§ multi-scale ecosystem restoration,

§ linking observing systems and forecasts from mountain to sea,

§ regional consequences of climate variability and change.

To a significant degree, these strategic directions represent an evolution and refinement of the strategic thrusts included in the Center’s 1995 strategic plan, Toward 2000, and subsequent efforts to connect these thrusts in the 2000 strategic plan, Crossing Boundaries. There is a coherent emphasis on connections across ecosystems of the coastal landscape and seascape; environmental change; integrating research and observations to enable prediction; and sound science required for the management and restoration of ecosystems and resources. The strategic directions of the present plan refocus the Center’s scientific capabilities and interests more specifically to user needs and opportunities for gaining sponsor support.


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As depicted in the following conceptual diagram, the four strategic directions are supported by the Center’s foundation strengths and driven by both curiosity-motivated science drivers welling up from the faculty at the laboratories and use drivers that likely signal investments and application opportunities for the foreseeable future.

The foundation strengths are those identified in the Self Study. They have more or less a subject area focus and represent nationally prominent or emerging groups of experts within the Center in which there is a high level of interaction and collaboration. The science drivers reflect the themes for future development identified by the faculties of the individual laboratories. The use drivers reflect areas of strong demand in the management and policy areas and areas in which significant science investments are anticipated. These are discussed in detail in the earlier section on Evolving Challenges and Opportunities in Environmental Science. The objectives for implementing the new strategic directions are, then, to build on our strengths and marshal the faculty’s inspiration for scientific discovery, while collectively addressing the anticipated needs and opportunities for environmental science over at least the rest of this decade.

It is clear that the four strategic directions are neither tightly proscribed nor independent. Effective ecosystem-based management must include appropriate environmental observations and forecasts, for example. Therefore, our strategy must include mechanisms to link and integrate these directions.


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These strategic directions are intended to guide and focus the Center’s efforts in research, education and public service. But, the strategic directions developed here are not meant to include everything the Center does. Much of our research will continue to be conducted by individual investigators producing a steady stream of basic discoveries. Although some of this research will undoubtedly contribute to one or more of the research directions, not all of the Center’s research will or should be expected to. Similarly, much of our graduate education will still be founded on building strengths in the scientific disciplines and developing the research skills of our students.

We intend to use the research directions in three ways:

1. to guide faculty recruitment and other investments by identifying key needs that increase the capacity to accomplish Center-wide objectives,

2. to focus skills and resources on marshalling the Center’s expertise and advancing the effectiveness and efficiency of its research, education and service, and

3. to represent and market the Center’s competitive capabilities.

4.1.1 Science to support ecosystem based management Background

There are uniform, broad calls for a new era of ecosystem-based management for the stewardship of fisheries, forests, endangered species, biodiversity, essential habitats, and water quality to help ensure the long-term viability and productivity of our nation’s natural resources. These calls stem from the realization that many current environmental and resource management approaches focusing on a single species or a single contaminant do not adequately account for the interdependencies of species and their habitats or the linkages across environments, e.g. between an estuary and its watershed. This drumbeat recently culminated in the identification of ecosystem-based management as the central principle for U.S. environmental policy. In particular, the two recent high-level commissions focusing on ocean policy recommended that ecosystem-based approaches form the core of future policy.

Closer to home, the Chesapeake 2000 Agreement (C2K) makes over 100 commitments for protecting and restoring living resources and vital habitats, improving water quality, managing lands soundly, and engaging individuals and local communities. One of the commitments, for example is to revise and implement fishery management plans to incorporate multi-species fisheries management and ecosystem approaches. Moreover, the breadth and specificity of C2K represents an ambitious attempt at ecosystem-based management of the Bay and its watershed based on at least the notion of the interdependencies of living resources, habitats, water quality, land use and human activities.

We adopt the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy’s definition of ecosystem-based

management in that:

“ecosystem-based management looks at all the links among living and non-living resources, rather than considering single issues in isolation. This system of management considers human activities, their benefits, and potential impacts within the context of the broader biological and physical environment”


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This clear statement defines what ecosystem-based management is, but speaks neither to the benefits nor roadblocks to its adoption. A successful ecosystem-based management policy will ensure the sustainable productivity of our nation’s natural resources, and the resilience of these same resources to perturbation. The incorporation of “the precautionary approach” whereby only actions that can be demonstrated not to have a deleterious impact are adopted has been widely recommended. Furthermore, the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy and many other bodies endorsing ecosystem-based management note that, to be effective, it must be based on the best available science and information.

Of course, UMCES is not itself responsible for management of the ecosystem. However, the central directive of the Center’s enabling legislation, written 30 years ago, is to “develop a predictive ecology for Maryland for the improvement and preservation of the physical environment.” The responsibility of the Center is to develop, integrate and facilitate the application of the best science and to train the new practitioners of these endeavors.

What are the principal scientific challenges to the adoption of ecosystem-based resource management? Successful ecosystem-based management will demand integration of knowledge and information from a broad range of disciplines—from geochemistry to ecological theory—to yield a mechanistic and predictive understanding of how ecosystems change in response to anthropogenic forcing. We will need to understand how not only lethal concentrations, but also sublethal concentrations of contaminants impact ecosystem dynamics. We must understand how nutrients and other chemicals are delivered and transformed as they move from a watershed, through an estuary and into the ocean, for example. We must understand interactions among species to be able to forecast how removal of one species, say by a fishery, cascades through the ecosystem; such perspectives are essential for multi-species management of fisheries.

Another important challenge is the development of performance indicators of ecosystem health and resilience that serve as effective management targets. From an economics or policy science perspective, the scientific challenge involves examining trade-offs and efficiencies to support rational decisions among management alternatives. In that regard, more effective appraisal of the value of ecosystem services is required. Actually, science to support effective ecosystem-based management must incorporate all of these perspectives, requiring integration not just among disciplines and trophic levels and across environmental media, but also among these schools of thought.

Center’s Advantages The Center has the competencies and experience to become a nationally and internationally

prominent institution for science to support ecosystem-based management. It has broad disciplinary expertise that spans terrestrial, freshwater and marine environments and strong programs related to: stresses created by contaminants and nutrients; the atmospheric, terrestrial and aquatic processes that affect them; and the landscape dynamics that influence these processes. It is the most broadly effectively scientific institution serving the Chesapeake Bay Program, one of the world’s most ambitious coastal and watershed restoration endeavors, widely cited as a model for ecosystem-based management. This capability can be extended to other regional ecosystem management challenges. The Center includes innovative observationalists and experimentalists who test hypotheses and biophysical modelers and landscape ecologists who develop quantitative constructs for integration. Our chemists, toxicologists and microbiologists are able to scale up from levels of organization from molecule, through cell, to population and beyond. The research of our fishery scientists on multi-species—and now ecosystem-based—


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fisheries management models is at the forefront of the field. And, we can bring these approaches together to support adaptive management—a subject on which the UMCES President recently led a National Research Council assessment.

Most previous UMCES research has focused either in watersheds or in coastal waters. The integration of watershed and estuarine processes (e.g., as in total maximum daily load, or TMDL, assessments) has been less frequently accomplished, but is an area in which UMCES can make significant future contributions. The External Reviewers noted that the Center’s articulated geographic vision of covering the entire watershed to the sea with ecosystems-level studies is still “a work in progress” and that, in order to realize the vision, UMCES must take advantage of the maturation of the Appalachian Laboratory, continually focus on collective vision, and build on areas of existing strength.

Implementation Successful implementation of this research theme in the next five years will require both

the maintenance and expansion of existing capabilities. The single-most important resource at UMCES disposal is its scientists. UMCES must maintain its tradition of excellence in its research groups that dates to the Center’s founding: a tradition that combines strengths in fundamental and applied research questions. Accordingly, the Center must work to maintain, replace and where necessary expand the number of researchers working at the interface of fundamental and applied research. Moreover, UMCES must reflect the emphasis placed on research at the interface of fundamental and applied issues by rewarding those faculty members who contribute to these endeavors. Success will also require expansion of truly interdisciplinary research collaboration that spans across the Center’s laboratories. This to must also be supported and rewarded.

Implementation will also require continued investment in the research infrastructure. Considerable advances in sampling and analytical methods are underway that affect the Center’s research capabilities. Examples of such technologies include new instruments for the detection of chemicals at low concentrations, molecular methods that detect exposure to contaminants and remote sensing systems that provide near-real time data on the distribution and intensity of important biological components of the ecosystem. We believe that application of these technologies to emerging research and assessment questions will shed important insights into patterns and functions of ecosystems and, therefore the effectiveness of management strategies.

Finally, a core element of UMCES commitment to the application of science to natural resource management issues is its commitment to training the next generation of scientists working in management agencies. UMCES must commit to developing curricula that provide opportunities for breadth and depth of training across the spectrum of environmental science.

Requirements 1. Faculty capabilities:

a. The scientific diversity of UMCES expertise is a prerequisite for success of this research theme. Thus, key faculty strengths must be maintained or built.

b. Research links to other institutions within USM and beyond must be encouraged, strengthened and valued to ensure that appropriate expertise can be tapped.


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c. Statistical analysis is a vital element of the UMCES research activities. Maintenance and expansion of current collaborative links with biometricians within USM institutions is required. Similarly, opportunities for training in statistics must be provided for UMCES students who will be the next generation of technical experts in resource agencies.

d. Facilitation and support for development and submission of large interdisciplinary proposals is required.

2. Research infrastructure:

a. The ability to sample the environment is critical to understanding patterns and trends. UMCES must maintain and where necessary replace sampling capabilities, including the research fleet, to ensure flexible and modern sampling platforms are available for research use.

b. Characterizing the environment requires a diversity of analytical approaches. UMCES must maintain its analytical capabilities at contemporary standards.

c. Increased investment in new molecular and chemical approaches to developing indicators of ecosystem health would be beneficial.

d. Understanding and forecasting environmental change requires long time series of physical, chemical and biological data. UMCES must improve its capabilities for maintaining, accessing, integrating and analyzing time-series data.

e. UMCES must promote and market its strengths and achievements in science supporting ecosystem-based management.

f. UMCES must expand and support the involvement of its faculty in advisory bodies within the region, nationally and internationally.

Measurable Outcomes Within eighteen months, we will develop public information materials highlighting

achievements in the area of science to support ecosystem-based management and showcasing the role of the Center in fostering ecosystem-based approaches to natural resource management. We will also promote the development and submission of multi-disciplinary proposals by: (a) assigning interactive video network (IVN) priority to proposal planning meetings, (b) streamlining submission of inter-laboratory proposals, and (c) identifying administrative support personnel at each laboratory who will be responsible for handling inter-laboratory proposals.

Within three years, we will double the number of submitted proposals with investigators from more than one laboratory as well as develop a seminar course based around case studies of ecosystem-based management that involves UMCES faculty, students and regional managers.

Within five years, we will: (a) develop externally-funded, interdisciplinary research programs focusing on solving scientific issues surrounding ecosystem-based management; (b) implement a sequence of courses that provide the quantitative background required to make forecasts; and (c) develop a secure funding base for environmental sampling platforms.

4.1.2 Multi-scale ecosystem restoration Background

In response to the degradation of ecosystem goods and services and the loss of biodiversity, many efforts are in progress


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throughout the world to restore ecosystems to an improved level of functionality. The Chesapeake Bay Program, although notably ambitious, is just one of many such efforts. In some cases, improvements require the attenuation of some human activity that has caused the degradation, for example reducing nutrient or toxicant loadings or over-harvesting of resources. In other cases, biophysical features need to be recreated or populations rebuilt proactively. Most often, ecosystem restoration will require both approaches: the attenuation of the impacts of human activities and the proactive rebuilding of populations, communities, ecosystems, or landscapes. For example, Chesapeake 2000 commitments include both efforts to reduce sources of nutrients and toxicants and to reforest riparian zones, build wetlands, and re-establish oyster reefs and submersed aquatic vegetation (SAV) beds. In fact, both approaches must be integrated to be effective.

Although restoration of ecosystem structure and function is typically a goal, achieving a pristine or pre-existing condition is often unrealistic. Therefore, ecosystem restoration focuses on the rehabilitation of an area to achieve a desired status or performance. Goals for rehabilitation may be based on environmental quality measures (e.g. dissolved oxygen levels), biological characteristics (e.g. population size, community composition or biodiversity), or economic or ecological performance (e.g. provision of certain ecological services, resilience or sustainability). Therefore, a key challenge to the science of ecosystem restoration involves determining effective and achievable goals and developing well-integrated approaches and measures that employ sound principles of conservation science.

Significant restoration programs are underway in large ecosystems throughout the United States and elsewhere. In addition to the Chesapeake Bay, these efforts include the Everglades, Upper Mississippi River, Mississippi Delta, San Francisco Bay-Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, Puget Sound, Baltic Sea, Rhine River and Delta, and Seto Inland Sea, to name just a few of the more prominent examples. Within these regions, many earnest efforts of proactive restoration are undertaken that attract supporters and engage citizens by providing opportunities to get involved in the physical and biological rebuilding of a once degraded system. But, do these efforts on the scale of local citizens and communities really make a difference on the scale of the large ecosystem? Is it more effective to restore riparian zones or tidal wetlands? Can restoring oyster reefs help facilitate SAV recovery? Answering such questions requires the ability to translate across scales and habitats. Just building structures or planting or releasing organisms and calling this effective ecosystem restoration may not be adequate anymore in a time where more drastic intervention may be needed to effectively restore ecosystems, watersheds and landscapes.

The scientific challenge of the strategic direction in Multi-scale Ecosystem Restoration is to develop successful approaches and measures for proactive restoration that are well-integrated with preventative measures (e.g. source control, harvest management). Such integrated measures and approaches will effectively contribute to achieving scientifically and socially supportable goals for the realistic restoration of large ecosystems. We call this “smart restoration” to distinguish it from publicly popular but often ineffective planting and stocking approaches. A close relationship obviously exists between this strategic direction and Science to Support Ecosystem-Based Management; in fact, ecosystem restoration may be seen as a special area of focus within ecosystem-based management.

UMCES Advantages Restoration science was one of the

strategic thrusts included in Crossing Boundaries. Faculty expertise in this area has grown and a major new facility, the Aquaculture and Restoration Ecology


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Laboratory, has been constructed at the Horn Point Laboratory. This facility provides unparalleled capabilities for shellfish and finfish culture and associated laboratories for wetland, SAV and water quality studies. Excellent facilities, including greenhouses and mesocosms, exist among all three UMCES labs.

UMCES is actively involved in the science to support proactive restoration of oysters, SAV, wetlands, streams, and riparian habitats. Restoration ecology is considered as an important direction by all three laboratories. However, many other scientists and institutions are also working in these areas. UMCES scientists are not presently perceived as national leaders in the field of “restoration ecology” and are not known for their contributions to the theoretical basis of the field. However, the strategic advantage of UMCES is to integrate existing environmental engineering approaches with information on ecosystem dynamics, pollution abatement and sustainable resource management. UMCES also has the expertise and potential to be the leader in scaling integrative restoration approach up to the restoration of large ecosystems.

Requirements 1. Develop through various media and fora a more prominent identity in restoration

science.

2. Develop scholarship in multi-scale restoration including scaling and complexity issues, modeling, and externalities (climate, ecosystem trajectories, socio-political constraints).

3. Provide leadership in developing innovative methods that: (a) assess the functionality of restored habitats, (b) provide effective methods of propagating individuals; (c) manage diseases and stressors; and (d) are tested in the field.

4. Initiate restoration experiments that are mitigation-independent, long-term, and experimental, including adequate replication and suitable monitoring.

5. Integrate oyster and SAV science in support of restoration that provides environmental and socioeconomic solutions.

6. Add a restoration ecology component to the MEES curriculum, including seminars and courses.

7. Encourage and support social and economic research that links healthy and degraded ecological systems to societal factors.

8. Integrate and communicate knowledge and principles of multi-scale restoration to the public, natural resource managers and policy decision makers. Towards this goal, UMCES should support: (a) environmental education efforts that engage the public, (b) development of an outreach and education theme focusing on “smart restoration,” and (c) IAN report cards which grade restoration successes.

9. Expand collaborations with industry.

Implementation 1. Develop a website to formalize and advertise our identity in restoration science and to

provide a venue for offering outreach and educational materials focused on multiscale ecosystem restoration.

2. Develop teams of faculty focused on place-based or approach-based restoration.

3. Support UMCES-wide forums that enhance the exchange of scientific and technical knowledge, tools, approaches, discoveries and innovations in restoration science.


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4. Exploit small- (e.g., experimental) and large-scale (e.g., remote sensing) approaches to aid in measuring the functionality of a restored ecosystem.

5. Strengthen partnerships with federal, state, and industrial stakeholders engaged in ecosystem restoration.

6. Explore and deliver new graduate courses in restoration ecology.

Measurable Outcomes Within eighteen months, we will: (a) develop a website and informational brochures to

increase visibility; (b) take concrete steps to advance interaction with federal, state and industrial stakeholders; and (c) submit the first multi-disciplinary, multi-investigator, and multi-laboratory proposals.

Within three years, we will: increase the number of projects that focus on integrated approaches, address scaling issues, and integrate social and economic factors; and deliver one or more graduate courses in multi-scale ecosystem restoration.

Within five years, we will double extramural research support for restoration science and be recognized as a nationally significant program in this field.

4.1.3 Linking observing systems and forecasts from mountain to sea Background

As reviewed under 3.1.2, technological advances are merging with scientific and societal demands to drive an unprecedented wave of environmental observing systems—atmospheric, terrestrial, oceanic and coastal. Both scientists and decision makers are interested in these observations not just for what they tell about present and past conditions, but also what they portend for the future. To accomplish this, observations must be coupled with ongoing analysis and modeling. Ideally, this coupling is mutualistic, with observations serving as a basis for building models and models used to help interpret the observations and to refine the observing system, ultimately leading to data-assimilating models that produce scientifically and socially useful forecasts. We believe that UMCES is uniquely qualified to perform these tasks for all components of the Chesapeake Bay and its watershed—from mountain to sea!

Although the observing systems envisioned all rely on new technologies that allow automated, nearly continuous, in situ measurements, they also involve various remote sensing elements (satellite, aircraft, shore-based, towed, and autonomous). The multiple scales of remote sensing facilitate local-to-regional-scale analyses and allow linkage of watershed processes to aquatic, estuarine and coastal zone responses. Data and information management, visualization and interpretation are also essential to observing systems. However, the systems will be only as good as our ability to use and interpret data to advance scientific understanding and practical use. For that reason, linking observing systems with model-based forecasts must be an essential ingredient for this strategic direction. In a larger sense, UMCES observing system efforts must also contribute to its mission of education


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and service. Therefore, these efforts should be closely integrated with our problem solving applications, including those advanced through the IAN.

We recognize that UMCES is a major user of data from current observing systems and potential future observing systems, but to be a player in guiding the direction of future observing systems, the Center needs to play a key role in the design, implementation and operation of those systems. In particular, UMCES has the opportunity to play an important role in integrating terrestrial, hydrological and ocean observations in powerful new ways.

UMCES Advantages UMCES has been a pioneer in coastal observing systems since the initiation of the

Chesapeake Bay Observing System (CBOS) and is the lead institution in a NOAA-supported consortium to advance sensor technology in coastal waters (the Alliance for Coastal Technologies, headquartered at CBL). HPL professor Tom Malone has been a key architect of the coastal component of GOOS and is currently on leave serving as Director of Ocean.US. AL professor Lou Pitelka served on the AIBS steering committee for the design of NEON. UMCES faculty members are intimately involved in the development of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Association under Ocean.US and in the planning activities for the NEON Mid-Atlantic Regional Observatory (MAREO) and ORION. On a more local level, UMCES is working with NOAA and the Maryland Department of Natural Resources to integrate DNR’s Eyes on the Bay shallow water observations and NOAA’s PORTS navigation-oriented system with CBOS to achieve a more integrated observing system for the Chesapeake Bay. UMCES scientists have also played a role in developing autonomous telemetering nutrient monitors within the context of harmful algal bloom studies conducted in the Bay and in the context of intensive monitoring of sites of special interest in the watershed.

In addition to in situ sensing, the Center has significant capabilities for collection and interpretation of remote sensing of terrestrial, estuarine and ocean environments. It also has substantial physical and ecological modeling capabilities and is able to work across all components from mountain to sea.

Requirements 1. Although extensive and successful in many respects, it is fair to say that UMCES'

observing system efforts have not had the desired level of impact. To maintain our comparative advantages, the UMCES community needs to implement a high impact pilot project as soon as possible. This project should contain all elements of a successful observing system from observations to the production of forecasts and the widespread distribution of results to scientists and to society at large.

2. UMCES should identify the key questions that should inform the design of our observing and forecast system. Specifically, we must also identify constituent user groups with compatible interests and better employ our expertise in question-driven science to foster partnerships with state and federal agencies, NGOs, etc., who are also keenly aware of the need for improved observing and forecast systems.


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3. UMCES needs to maintain and to continue to build capacity in the development of observation technologies.

4. A unique strength at UMCES is its potential to link the watershed to the Bay (e.g., linkage between the terrestrial AL and more Bay/ocean-oriented HPL and CBL). We must deliver on our full potential for this type of science. Observing systems offer the opportunity to improve these linkages and develop more explicit synthesis and collaboration among all UMCES components.

5. UMCES has unique data handling and analysis capabilities that should be exploited in ways that increase the power of our science and make us an attractive institution for collaborations with other scientists and management agencies.

6. UMCES has a distinct strength in modeling (again, across boundaries and scales), and we need to become leaders in the assimilation of observation system data into predictive models.

7. A realistic financial plan is required for developing a high impact pilot observing system activity that is integrative and comprehensive (i.e., that does the job from a to z), producing potentially useful forecasts and that serves as a beacon for attracting funding and collaborators.

Implementation 1. Identify a core group of investigators representing all UMCES components and

committed to developing an implementation plan that will get an “a to z” pilot project off the ground as quickly as possible. Designate and support an institutional “champion” to guide our efforts.

2. Explicitly link the work at our three labs (especially AL with the others) so that we truly do link the watershed to the Bay.

3. Remain deeply involved with programs (particularly the Chesapeake Bay Program) and agencies involved in the implementation of regional, national and international observing systems.

4. Continue our leadership in advancing observing system technologies and applications.

5. Take advantage and build upon our expertise in modeling to advance watershed-estuary forecasting and, in partnership with atmospheric scientists, truly coupled, regional ocean-atmosphere models.

6. Fully exploit our capacity for dissemination of data and results from observing and forecasting systems (e.g., through IAN).

Measurable Outcomes Within eighteen months, an inter-laboratory team will design a pilot program that integrates

observations and forecasts from mountain to the sea, addresses scientific and socially relevant issues, and builds on existing strengths and programs.

Within three years, we will obtain significant support to implement the pilot program and secure leadership position for UMCES in regional marine and upland observation networks (MARA and MAREO).

Within five years, we will: (a) effect a demonstrable transformation in how the Chesapeake Bay Program integrates observations and forecasts across environmental media: (b) transfer


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aspects of the observing systems to appropriate operational agencies, and (c) establish UMCES as a world leader in integrated observation-forecast systems across watersheds and coastal waters.

4.1.4 Regional consequences of climate change and variability Background

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), National Academy of Science, and other scientific bodies have presented the strong scientific consensus that Earth’s average surface temperature has warmed to levels not seen in the instrumental record and, by using proxies, during past millennia. Furthermore, scientific experts agree that the rates of temperature and sea-level rise will increase during the 21st century as a result of human influences, although the actual rates remain uncertain. The U.S. Government under the Bush Administration recently developed a Climate Change Science Program that largely focuses on understanding the causes of present and past climate change and variability and on reducing uncertainties in models of future climate. The plan includes, as a strategic priority, the need to understand the sensitivity and adaptability of different natural and managed ecosystems and human systems to climate and related global changes, as well as variability in climatic factors.

Knowledge of the consequences of climate change (e.g., as it affects temperature, rainfall, sea level rise, etc.), climate variability (e.g., importance of wet years and dry years on Chesapeake Bay restoration), and climatic cycles (e.g. El Niño Southern Oscillation, North Atlantic Oscillation) on coastal ecosystems and watersheds is growing. Public awareness of changes occurring as a result of global warming is also increasing. Consequently, policy makers, managers, and the public will be paying greater attention in the future to climate issues that affect coastal ecosystems and their associated watersheds. UMCES scientists will be increasingly asked to provide advice about the consequences of regional climate change and variability. Our institutional efforts to develop ecosystem-based management protocols and to enhance ecosystem restoration programs will have to take climatic factors into account. Thus, many if not most UMCES scientists will be focusing at least part of their attention on climatic factors in years to come.

It is in the understanding of the effects of climate change and variability on ecosystems and their sensitivity and adaptability to climate change where UMCES can make significant contributions, rather than in advancing knowledge of the global climate system or refinements of climate models. This strategic direction seeks to develop collaborations and to provide institutional support to nurture a cohesive response from interested UMCES scientists and graduate students to the challenge of understanding the regional effects of climate change and climate variability.


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UMCES Advantages While UMCES has not been engaged in extensive research on climate change per se,

UMCES scientists have increasingly addressed the consequences of climate variability, including the effects on estuarine, shelf, and open-ocean circulation, hypoxia, zooplankton variability, fish recruitment, and stream health. In addition, the Center’s scientists have investigated the effects of sea-level rise on wetlands and the consequences of climate change on forest migration. Some use multi-disciplinary methods to understand how substances or tracers in the ocean are transported, and how changes in this transport are driven by climate variability. Others have led the preparation of syntheses of the literature on the effects of climate change on marine and terrestrial ecosystems.

These experiences, together with the Center’s strong capabilities for interdisciplinary and multi-medium science, could allow the Center to become an international leader in understanding the consequences of climate variability and change on ecosystems at regional scales. The Chesapeake Bay watershed and the Mid-Atlantic region would logically be a focal point for these investigations. Such studies would complement other studies on climate variability by UMCES scientists that are underway elsewhere (e.g., Gulf of Mexico, central Pacific Ocean, Arctic Ocean).

As this strategic direction matures, UMCES faculty will determine the particular issues that they are interested in developing, with the focus on processes as well as on particular species within the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Given the work that is already underway within UMCES, we foresee the addition of a climate-related dimension to research into hydrological and biogeochemical patterns and processes in terrestrial and aquatic systems. Research into carbon storage patterns and food webs will factor in climate-related changes in species distributions. The ability to predict such changes will require an understanding of how climate change and variability will affect keystone species in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems.

Although the Center has strengths in ocean and estuarine hydrodynamics and coupled biogeochemical modeling, it lacks scientists with expertise in coupled ocean-atmosphere modeling of climate on global or regional scales. Thus, it will be important to develop partnerships in pursuit of this strategic direction. In particular, collaboration with the NASA-supported Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center (ESSIC) and the Meteorology Department at the University of Maryland College Park could offer such opportunities. These units have strengths in the study of climate variability and change, atmospheric composition and processes, and the global carbon cycle. The Goddard Earth Sciences and Technology Center at the University of Maryland Baltimore County is also actively engaged in physical climate modeling. In addition, Penn State’s Earth System Science Center has strong capabilities related to physical processes involved in past and future global change and is largely responsible for the Mid-Atlantic Regional Assessment (MARA) of climate variability and change.

Finally, one emerging area of concern in the study of regional effects of climate change is the linkage between environmental response to climate change and human health. Changes to wetland distribution, wintertime low temperatures, and aquatic species distribution may lead to human health hazards associated with water- and air-borne toxins and viruses, insect-borne disease, atmospheric particulate distributions affecting the respiratory systems, and more. Closer linkages with the Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine would bring expertise in human health issues to UMCES.

Requirements The Center has the individual strengths to become a leader in the study of regional response

to climate variability and change. Achieving that objective will require the kind of


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interdisciplinary focus that has characterized the Center’s past research efforts, and a collective willingness to take the risks associated with prediction. The following actions will boost this initiative:

1. Enhanced interactions among current faculty: Such interactions should be specifically directed towards considering current and potential research projects in the context of climate change and variability. A monthly or bi-monthly climate-related seminar series and discussion over IVN among UMCES institutions is proposed as a starting point for discussions (see General Implementation section below).

2. Financial resources: Focusing the attention of a diverse group of investigators on the response to climatic variability will require financial support through long term multi-investigator grants and perhaps the hiring of new faculty members. Institutional resources should be used to facilitate the bottom-up planning process that can lead to improved investigator interactions, development of multi-investigator proposals, and determination of needs for new faculty. Such “seed” money should enable researchers to take the initial consultation steps that will enable them to be successful in developing proposals and finding funding for long-term research projects.

3. Improvements to computing or modeling facilities: Currently, UMCES computing facilities are limited to network infrastructure. Although individual investigators periodically acquire new computing systems, it is expensive to upgrade these systems at the individual level so as to remain on the cutting edge of research. Such investments should be made at the institutional level. Further, predictive models that incorporate large data streams through data assimilation techniques and that run over the long time periods to evaluate climate change scenarios will require an institutional investment in high performance computing and maintenance.

4. New faculty as the research program expands: Ultimately, success of this initiative may require investment in a dynamic leader in the field of environmental response to climate change to lead this effort. Additional faculty members may have to be hired later, depending on the direction and success of this initiative.

Implementation An initial step in facilitating greater faculty and student interaction among laboratories, as

well as beginning discussion about this strategic direction, would be to develop an inter-laboratory seminar on the consequences of climate variability and change, especially in the Chesapeake watershed. Held on a regular basis (monthly or bi-monthly), the seminar would encourage discussion across disciplines, highlight overlapping interests, and explore the potential for developing one or more multi-disciplinary research proposals on climate variability and change. Later, there might be a workshop to involve external partners to further develop the research initiative.

An important step would be to specifically seek graduate students (and funding to support them) who can begin research projects on regional climate variability and change. Further, UMCES should consider developing a graduate program focus in regional or global change in collaboration with the MEES Program. Such a program could strengthen the social and policy science aspects of the MEES Program.

Eventually, this research initiative may benefit from having additional faculty within UMCES, perhaps one new position per laboratory. The particular research interests to be addressed as the initiative matures will identify the expertise needed to move the research forward.


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Measurable Outcomes Within eighteen months, we will establish a inter-institutional seminar program on the

consequences of climate variability and change and develop a multi-disciplinary proposal to an appropriate agency on the sensitivity and adaptability of Chesapeake Bay watershed components to climate change.

Within three years, improve the links between UMCES researchers and external social scientists to add a human dimension to our work and improve interaction with policy makers and managers.

Within five years, develop an emphasis within the MEES graduate program on regional consequences of climate change in a multi-disciplinary milieu that includes the social sciences.

4.2 Evolution of the Integration and Application Network Background

A major feature of UMCES is the focus on science integration and application, in addition to the more traditional discovery and education. Science integration is an effort that goes beyond the generation and reporting of data—it is the attempt to synthesize and interpret the world in light of new scientific findings. Developing an integrated picture using disparate findings is often the most difficult challenge for scientists. Science integration typically requires input from a variety of disciplines, and a large part of the science conducted at UMCES is multi-disciplinary, often combining physics, chemistry, geology and biology. Science application is an effort that goes beyond the scientific peer group—it is the attempt to conduct and interpret research that will have direct applications, particularly in environmental protection and resource management. Scientific results are typically published in journals and books that are targeted for other like-minded scientists. The efforts to communicate findings to a broader audience and to develop ways to implement various policies that stem from research findings are included in science application. The combination of science integration with science application is a powerful approach in dealing with environmental problems—it allows scientists to go beyond just identifying and documenting problems and provides opportunities to actually solve important problems. The Integration and Application Network (IAN) was created as a focused undertaking under the last strategic plan specifically to enhance these activities.

The transition from focusing primarily on discovery and education to an expanded role in integration and application is a major shift for most scientists, however UMCES scientists have already begun the transition. Our scientists have been learning to communicate to a wide audience of stakeholders, apply their expertise within multi-disciplinary problem solving teams, and provide leadership in developing scientific consensus on contentious issues. In addition to the myriad, concerted efforts at science integration and application focusing on Chesapeake Bay and its watershed, UMCES scientists are also asked to contribute to scientific leadership in integration and application elsewhere. Each year, UMCES scientists travel throughout the U.S. and to literally every continent on earth to advise, consult and contribute to efforts to synthesize and interpret complex environmental problems. UMCES scientists are helping with some of the most pressing environmental problems on earth such as the Hudson River toxicant clean-up,

IAN will inspire, manage and produce timely syntheses and assessments on key environmental issues, with a special emphasis on Chesapeake Bay and its watershed. IAN will then take these syntheses and assessments into the policy arena to develop solutions to environmental problems.


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Baltic Sea eutrophication, the Census of Marine Life, effects of global warming on polar oceans, assessing estuarine health on continental scales, invasive species effects, Florida Bay and Everglades restoration, and the disappearing Mississippi delta. In this way, the tools and approaches that are being developed in Chesapeake Bay can be tested and refined, as well as providing opportunities to broaden the scope of influence that UMCES scientists can have in the world.

Crossing Boundaries developed a vision that IAN would: (a) use UMCES expertise to identify emerging ecological and environmental issues; (b) synthesize knowledge across disciplines; (c) assist in the practical application of knowledge in addressing the challenges facing society; and (d) seek funding for new, cross-laboratory research initiatives. Turning this vision into reality is the initial challenge for this phase of the Integration and Application Network. Several strategic initiatives have been developed, summarized in the following table:

Crossing Boundaries (2000) IAN initiatives (2004)

Enhance data integration MEERC book Workshop series

Forecast policy options Report Card Prediction tools

Training ground for problem-solving IAN web resources IAN courses and intern program

Facilitate stakeholder-faculty interactions

Annapolis seminar series Newsletter series

Implementation

The principles that underlay IAN’s next goals are to:

1. Strategically build capabilities by further developing a series of newsletters (recent examples: nutrient management of Delmarva soils and waters; Crassostrea ariakensis: panacea or Pandora?); seminars (continuing monthly); workshops and conferences (submersed aquatic vegetation, Hurricane Isabel, Department of Defense facilities), and synthesis papers and books (Chesapeake Bay-Moreton Bay comparison, environmental problem solving, experimental ecosystems as tools for understanding and managing coastal ecosystems, and communicating science effectively).

2. Establish and sustain core projects that grow and evolve, including: (1) environmental assessment and prediction (Chesapeake Bay, Maryland Coastal Bays, NOAA Cooperative Oxford Laboratory), (2) data exchange network (spatial data web site, community group data network, fileshare area and image library on web), and (3) science communication (e.g. courses and diagrams and data analyses for State of Maryland Coastal Bays report).

IAN assisted the Department of Natural Resources prepare a striking report on Maryland’s coastal bays


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3. Obtain external funding to underwrite these activities and reduce reliance on UMCES, including private funding and contracts from Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR), Department of Defense (DOD), NOAA and EPA for technical support and collaborative staffing.

Staffing: The goal of IAN staffing is to increase the network of associated researchers and stakeholders, but to maintain a small, dynamic and productive full-time staff, led by the Vice President for Science Applications and including a Science Integrator and Science Communicator.

Education: The goals are to teach experiential courses, develop a student intern program and provide graduate student supervision for synthesis activities. A science communication


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course has been developed; in addition, IAN staff members contribute to the Research Experiences for Undergraduates summer program, docents program, graduate student lecture series and serve on various graduate student committees. A key objective is to foster highly developed science integration and application skills.

IAN Stakeholders and Partners

The most critical stakeholder for IAN is the UMCES faculty. UMCES faculty members are the founding members of IAN and, fundamentally, IAN seeks to make their work more comprehensive and effective. Faculty involvement with IAN activities will be greatly expanded. Current initiatives include monthly faculty updates, IAN/faculty group meetings, an IAN Faculty Steering Committee, and one-on-one meetings with IAN staff and faculty members. Expanded involvement will be through collaborative projects and involvement in proposals, workshops and synthesis publications. In addition, the ten UMCES employees based at the Chesapeake Bay Program (Annapolis) and NOAA Chesapeake Bay Office (Oxford) will be integrated into IAN activities. Initiatives generated will be presented to the IAN Faculty Steering Committee for further development and prioritization. Other critical stakeholders are the researchers at other academic and research institutions who will be collaboratively engaged in IAN synthesis activities. Key clients include state and federal agencies that deal with Chesapeake issues, such as the Chesapeake Bay Program, NOAA Chesapeake Bay Office, Chesapeake Bay Commission, Maryland DNR, and Maryland Department of Environment. Some non-government organizations are also important stakeholders, particularly the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and Alliance for Chesapeake Bay. Strategic partnerships with Maryland Sea Grant and the Chesapeake Research Consortium will be further developed. Additional stakeholders and partners will undoubtedly result from IAN activities.

Measurable Outcomes Within six months, working with the IAN Faculty Steering Committee, we will develop a

strategic plan for faculty involvement in IAN activities.

Within eighteen months, working with regional organizations and in consort with the Linking Observing Systems and Forecasts strategy, we will establish a program to produce robust environmental prediction and assessment.

Within three years, we will establish sufficient external funding for IAN activities to catalyze extensive faculty and staff involvement.

Within five years, we will develop science integration and applications in the Chesapeake region such that measurable environmental improvements can be demonstrated and communicated to other regions.

4.3 Education 4.3.1 Graduate education Background

UMCES is mandated to “develop a predictive ecology for Maryland for the improvement and preservation of the physical environment.” Because this commitment is multi-generational, we believe that producing highly trained, critically-thinking new professionals is a vital element in fulfilling the Center’s mandate. Thus, UMCES is committed to graduate education. Graduate students are essential to the Center’s vibrancy and success.


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Decades ago, the involvement of UMCES in graduate education was ad hoc. Over time, the UMCES faculty has come to play an important and increasing role in graduate education. One faculty member directs the Systemwide Marine, Estuarine and Environmental Science (MEES) Program and UMCES faculty members chair or co-chair all but one of the seven areas of specialization within the MEES program. This increase in involvement in graduate education is reflected in both mentoring and teaching. Nearly three-quarters of our faculty members advise graduate students, with the average faculty member hosting 2.1 students. Our faculty bears an increasing proportion of the teaching responsibilities within the graduate programs in which they serve, as shown by the fact that the UMCES faculty offers approximately 16 courses per semester.

Despite this commitment, and the noted successes of our students, several challenges must be met to increase the strength and rigor of graduate education within UMCES, including:

1. Maintaining critical numbers of students within UMCES has become increasingly difficult. The distribution of students among the laboratories is uneven with students enrolled in a diversity of courses. Moreover, the demands of the individual programs in which students are enrolled differ substantially. These differences create a tendency for within-discipline and within-lab interactions rather than the interdisciplinary and inter-laboratory interactions that we desire.

2. The growth and success in graduate education is all the more remarkable because education is not supported by specially budgeted funds within UMCES. The major fiscal burden for student support falls on the resources provided by faculty research projects, although the laboratories do provide some funds to attract highly capable incoming students. This situation creates unique challenges. There is an implicit tension between the need to complete funded research projects and the training of individual students. When a student joins a research team, there is often a lag before he or she contributes significantly to the project goals. However, once trained, these students typically deliver, bringing intellectual and practical enthusiasm to their work.

3. Fiscal uncertainties mean that faculty members are reluctant to take risks, but wait until funding is available to recruit new students. Often this results in a mismatch between the student applications and review and the identification of support for a student by faculty members. This has also increased the challenge that UMCES faces in recruiting high quality applicants.

4. Faculty and students in the Self Study and the External Review Committee all identified structural and administrative improvements in graduate education. Although UMCES is justifiably proud of the cutting-edge, multidisciplinary research programs, the UMCES “brand” on graduate education is missing. Our current strategic plan, Crossing Boundaries, recognizes that a core strength of the Center is its ability to conduct inter-disciplinary environmental research. To date, we have been less successful in bringing the same interdisciplinary, cross-system approach to our educational programs. We must ensure that our students are broadly trained, while still ensuring they possess the depth of knowledge

The notion that UMCES is not the degree-granting body should not prevent the Center from recognizing and realizing its ownership of the graduate programs and “branding” of its students. UMCES External Review Committee.


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and expertise in their chosen field.

5. UMCES lacks a coordinated administrative program to support and develop its graduate programs.

UMCES Advantages: A Vision for Graduate Education We believe the following six attributes of all graduate degree recipients trained within

UMCES, irrespective of their graduate program or career goals, are desirable:

1. detailed knowledge of their chosen field, including (a) foundation concepts, (b) current research themes and directions and how they build on foundation concepts, and (c) a clear understanding of how their research contributes to these concepts and directions;

2. broad perspective in the environmental sciences, including (a) the interrelationships among disciplines, (b) the contributions of ones chosen field to broader understanding of the environment; and (c) effective means by which environmental science serves society;

3. ability to reason and infer processes and patterns, including an understanding of (a) the philosophy of science (observation, deduction, induction, hypothesis, and inference), (b) quantitative approaches to data analysis, and (c) methods to synthesize multiple lines of evidence to address hypotheses;

4. ability to plan, conduct and interpret research and, for Ph.D. recipients, to identify research questions independently;

5. ability to critically examine a scientific argument to identify its key assumptions, the appropriateness of the methodology and soundness of its conclusions; and

6. appropriate written and oral skills sufficient to permit them to propose and present scientific ideas to a target audience.

Each attribute results from different components of graduate education in UMCES. Ensuring sufficiency in the first three and the last attributes result from the course offerings. The graduate thesis or dissertation addresses the fourth and fifth attributes. However, we recognize that achieving the academic rigor demanded by the stated attributes requires involved mentorship by faculty members, and hands-on oversight by advisory and examining committees to ensure the consistent and equitable application of the goals across the three UMCES laboratories and graduate programs.

Requirements There are three essential requirements for UMCES to meet its vision for graduate

education. We must attract the best students to the Center’s graduate programs. Once at UMCES, students must be challenged with a rigorous and comprehensive program of training. Finally, we must continually evaluate our progress toward these goals to ensure we are on the right track and make appropriate changes when needed.

Recruitment

We face three challenges in recruiting students: attracting high quality applicants to UMCES when they apply to the institution hosting the graduate program in which they will enroll, recruiting (matriculating) students to UMCES laboratories, and financially supporting those students who do enroll.


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UMCES has not made a sufficient investment in recruiting new students. Most students come to UMCES because of the reputation of individual faculty members with whom they want to work, and less because of the reputation of the Center as a whole or the graduate program. We need to work to raise the profile of the Center as an institution for graduate education. We already have many of the tools we need: a faculty with an international reputation for excellence in research, current students who attend national meetings at which they present highly professional and exciting talks, and a diversity of graduate programs that provide ample opportunity to structure a program to the individual needs of a student. However, many potential students are unaware of the important distinctions among UMCES, the laboratories at which they work, and the graduate programs in which the student enrolls. We must promote UMCES so that its graduate programs well support the mission of UMCES, rather than the other way around, which could be argued, is currently the case.

Data suggest that we are losing highly qualified applicants. In part, this is inevitable as there are limits to the number of students that UMCES can host and the best applicants generally have excellent options. However, there is also a concern that UMCES lacks critical mass in the number of students in several areas and indeed at the Appalachian Laboratory generally. In some cases this reflects an active choice by individual faculty members not to recruit students. However, it is of particular concern that some faculty report that they cannot recruit highly qualified graduate students despite a wish to do so. The profiles of all research areas need to be raised so that students recognize UMCES as a center of excellence for graduate education. The distributed nature of graduate education within UMCES is also in part to blame for recruiting difficulties. This feature of the UMCES graduate program cannot be changed, despite efforts to overcome them such as interactive video, however, it does mean that the Center has to develop a coordinated program to encourage the best and brightest applicants to attend. There is evidence that such an investment has benefits. Since 1997 the CBL graduate education committee has aggressively and successfully assisted faculty in recruiting students nominated for CBL fellowships. Each year the committee requests nominations from faculty of excellent students to compete for graduate fellowships supported by the lab.

Insufficient funding for graduate stipends is another principal challenge to student recruitment. Owing to the lack of an undergraduate teaching program that provides teaching assistantships used by on-campus programs to support graduate students, all UMCES students have to be supported from available research funds. Although many universities absorb tuition charges, Maryland does not and thus research funds must provide tuition support for the students as well. The recent declines in state funding have substantially increased the tuition costs associated with graduate education. This produces practical limits to the number of students that can be supported. On the other hand, this constraint also means that, to a greater extent than at many institutions, all students are supported throughout their graduate programs.

Training

Graduate students receive both formal training through coursework and informal training through mentoring. When questioned, the majority of UMCES students and faculty are happy with the mentoring received. Indeed the success of our student-based research is evidenced by the productivity of our students and faculty. This is not the case when faculty and students are questioned about the formal graduate curriculum. In part this results from the fact that UMCES students are enrolled in up to five different graduate programs, but there are also curriculum deficiencies that must be addressed.

Over the past five years, UMCES faculty and students have discussed graduate education at length. From the student perspective, students felt that the graduate program was rigorous, but that the expectations of the program were not clear and that there were substantial inequalities


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among the programs. Students expressed concern that courses were distributed unevenly over semesters and years, course material was covered at markedly different levels, and material was poorly integrated between courses. One impact of the structure of the curriculum noted by students was that it prevents development of advanced level courses in many areas.

UMCES faculty members are aware of these criticisms and have committed to overhauling the graduate curricula to develop sequences of introductory and advanced courses, review and realign ecosystem-level courses offered by the UMCES faculty and assess the needs and utility of each graduate program. But progress toward this goal has been ponderously slow. Almost half of the UMCES-delivered courses are taught as “special topics” course and therefore are not listed in any graduate catalogue. Yet, some of these courses are in fact core courses required by one or more of the graduate programs. Moreover, almost all of the courses taught are offered at the 600 level, considered introductory at the graduate level.

Evaluation The challenges of graduate education require that we continuously and thoroughly review

and revise our methods of student recruitment, the experiences and curriculum we offer these students, and the methods employed to ensure their professional success. The Center will take a three-tiered approach to evaluate and improve the UMCES graduate program:

1. Simple statistical summaries of recruitment success (i.e., number of students who apply, are accepted and enroll) should be augmented with targeted interviews of high-quality students that both accept or decline enrollment. These interviews or questionnaires should attempt to identify areas in which UMCES has been successful as well as areas we the recruitment process could be improved.

2. Protocols for internal and external curriculum review need to be established and methods that ensure that critical courses are identified and offered in a timely fashion need to be specified. Systematic, yearly review and comparison with other graduate programs should be developed. In addition, external reviews of graduate education at UMCES (~4 yr) should be performed.

3. Systematic interviews of UMCES graduates should be performed to track the Center’s contribution to professional success and areas were improvements in graduate education are warranted.

Implementation The Center must clearly express and support the roles and responsibilities of the different

organizational levels within the Center (e.g., Center, laboratory, program, faculty). The Center will also revitalize and empower the UMCES Graduate Faculty Council to coordinate and oversee development of graduate education within the Center. The Council’s composition and functions will be appropriately amended in the Policies and Procedures to ensure that the Council takes on a more proactive approach to recruitment, training and evaluation, as well as reviewing appointments to the Graduate Faculty.

The administrative leadership and the Graduate Faculty Council will:

1. Improve the Center’s identity as a center of excellence in graduate education and develop recruiting tools that highlight the strengths and advantages of an UMCES graduate education. Toward these ends, steps will be taken to

a. showcase our students’ successes at meetings and in press,

b. celebrate graduations by announcing them,


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c. document career paths of our students as examples of what an UMCES education leads to, and

d. highlight the strengths of our programs in all areas, so that prospective students know about UMCES first, and think about graduate program enrollment subsequently.

2. Continue to direct Tuition Return Enhancement Funds enhancement of the rigor of graduate education within the Center, while helping to meet the challenges of the dispersed nature of graduate education within UMCES.

3. Recognize the challenges that particular disciplines and laboratories face in achieving critical mass in their graduate student programs and where possible act to overcome these challenges.

4. Develop support for graduate stipends other than through research awards. Examples of sources of support might include philanthropically supported fellowships, competitive training awards, such as NSF’s Integrated Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) program, and foundation grants.

5. Undertake a critical review of curricula in partnership with the graduate education programs in which it participates to ensure that:

a. both introductory and advanced courses are offered,

b. curricula provide a coherent sequence of courses that are regularly taught and provide an adequate foundation,

c. inter-disciplinary courses that reflect the strengths and strategic directions of the Center are offered, and

d. institutions on which we rely for foundation courses not offered by UMCES faculty (e.g., the biometry sequence) maintain their critical contributions.

6. Require that advisory committees for graduate students comprise members from more than one laboratory.

7. Establish procedures for regular evaluation of the Center’s graduate program and students.

8. Collect, maintain and analyze data on its current and former students as well as comparative data from peer institutions.

Measurable Outcomes Within eighteen months, we will reconstruct and reactivate the Graduate Faculty Council

and revise the graduate education pages of the UMCES website to reflect more fully the opportunities and benefits of an UMCES graduate education.

Within three years, the Graduate Faculty Council will complete a thorough review of graduate education within UMCES to identify strengths and weaknesses in curricula and an inter-laboratory seminar series involving students and faculty will be routine and well attended.

Within five years, we will (a) demonstrate a significant improvement in the national and international reputation for excellence in graduate education; (b) establish externally-funded graduate student fellowships through private and foundation outreach; and (c) implement a sequence of interdisciplinary courses associated with the Center’s four strategic directions.


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4.3.2 Environmental science education Background

UMCES and its partner, the Maryland Sea Grant College Program, are committed to providing high-quality education and information for public and K-12 audiences. UMCES and MDSG science education specialists work closely with the research faculty to develop and offer scientifically sound educational opportunities and products that build on the Center’s environmental research. In 2001, the UMCES-MDSG Environment Science Education Partnership (ESEP) was formed to coordinate individual laboratory efforts, develop joint ventures, and provide a comprehensive education and outreach program that improves teacher, student and public understanding of science research and environmental resources of Maryland and the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Over the last four years, the Center’s education specialists have interacted with approximately 60,000 teachers, students and citizens and secured more than a million dollars in external funds for education and outreach projects.

Implementation 1. Maintain high-quality teacher, student and public education programs with special

emphasis on multi-laboratory projects.

Teacher professional development forms the core of the ESEP with 40 teacher programs offered since 2000, including a successful center-wide teacher research fellowship program. Teacher professional development will remain a key focus in response to state and regional education needs. ESEP professional development programs help retain experienced teachers in education by expanding their content knowledge and scientific inquiry skills, rejuvenating veteran teachers, and enhancing confidence of novice teachers. ESEP programs give teachers tools to engage and excite students with locally relevant investigations linked to authentic research—a connection typically absent in K-12 curriculum. ESEP programs also satisfy requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act with teacher courses, workshops and research fellowships that award Maryland State Department of Education and University of Maryland graduate credits. ESEP education specialists will work to seek ways to provide university credit at competitive rates.

ESEP education specialists will explore other opportunities to meet the needs of teachers in Maryland and throughout the Chesapeake Bay watershed such as providing training for advanced placement environmental science courses and preparation for the praxis exam (required by the NCLB Act). They will also work closely with the research faculty to maintain and expand the Center’s high-quality student and public programs. These include the CBL docent program and newly renovated visitor center and the HPL environmental education student program.

ESEP programs will continue to support C2K Stewardship and Community Engagement goals (i.e., all students will participate in “meaningful outdoor Bay or stream experiences”) and will be aligned with the Maryland State Department of Education Voluntary Curriculum and National Science Education Standards.

2. Expand library of education and outreach products that build on UMCES/MDSG education and science research activities.


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To reach a larger audience and expand their service-based programs, the Center’s ESEP education specialists will develop additional scientifically robust education and outreach products. They will produce print and digital materials that build on existing programs, similar to the MDSG Oysters in the Classroom lesson. They will also seek funds to create new environmental science education products including video productions, interactive CD/DVDs, and web-based resources. They will also oversee and advise on development K-12 and public education and outreach materials for the multi-scale ecosystem restoration and other initiatives.

3. Collaborate with UMCES faculty on education and outreach elements of competitive research proposals.

The ESEP education specialists will collaborate with the research faculty to develop education, outreach and extension elements for competitive research proposals. These elements may link to existing ESEP programs (e.g., ESEP teacher research fellowship) or lead to development of new projects.

4. Expand promotion of the ESEP.

With support from UMCES and MDSG, ESEP education specialists will expand advertisement of their programs and products. Each laboratory will maintain an education and outreach website. A joint ESEP website and promotional brochure will be developed and distributed with links to other regional education resources (i.e., Sea Grant Educators Network and The Bridge websites). ESEP education specialists will share opportunities and strategies from the Center’s education and outreach endeavors at science and education conferences and will keep the Center’s research staff abreast of education and outreach activities through occasional seminar presentations.

5. Expand evaluation efforts to assess the impact of ESEP programs and products.

The ESEP education specialists will expand efforts to assess the effectiveness of their programs and products on education and public audiences through surveys and follow-up communications. They will also invite potential collaborators within UMCES and at other regional education organizations to regular ESEP meetings to discuss joint projects and regional and national education issues and needs.

Measurable Outcomes Within eighteen months, we will increase promotion of UMCES public and K-12 education

programs with an updated center-wide ESEP website, coherent laboratory websites and related brochures.

Within three years, we will: (a) hold faculty workshops at each laboratory to foster participation in the ESEP programs and products and (b) expand the network of high-quality educators through our on-going teacher profession development efforts by 40 new teachers per year.

Within five years, we will develop new products (print, video, on-line web lessons, CD/DVD) that link to UMCES/MDSG education and research activities.

4.3.3 New educational enterprises Background

Although the Center is typically seen as primarily a research institution with allied graduate education and training, its statutory mandate is broader, obviously covering environmental


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science education as described under the previous section, but also potentially encompassing undergraduate education and professional development. The Center’s main contribution to undergraduate education presently is through research internships, mainly during the summer. These have been very effective and have helped many young people make important decisions about their careers and lives. Many former interns are pursuing graduate education or careers in environmental science and one is now even a member of the UMCES faculty.

Toward the objectives of increasing the Center’s contributions to the instructional programs of the University System of Maryland (USM) and increasing and diversifying revenue sources to support the Center’s programs we will actively explore and develop new, revenue-generating educational enterprises. These could range from undergraduate instruction to new modalities for graduate education to non-degree professional training. Because most of the faculty is based some distance away from teaching campuses undergraduate instruction may be more feasible as delivered online via the Internet or during short courses. Use of the Internet also opens up opportunities for delivering graduate courses and professional training to working environmental science professionals, both regionally and around the world. Amended with face-to-face short courses and seminars, this different instructional mode could tap the substantial market of environmental professionals employed or residing in the national capital region.

Implementation The pursuit of such educational enterprises will break new ground for the Center and we

will have to pick initiatives carefully and learn by doing. Nonetheless, the following paths will be pursued over the next five years:

1. Participate in the USM online instruction initiative by delivering a select number of web-based courses in fields in which the primarily undergraduate teaching campuses lack their own faculty expertise, e.g. oceanography.

2. In partnership with USM and other institutions, develop and deliver a select array of short courses for undergraduate credit that take advantage of the unique capabilities of UMCES facilities and faculty members.

3. Develop, market and execute non-degree, professional development programs. Particularly appropriate subjects for these professional development programs are the four strategic directions selected in this strategic plan, e.g. ecosystem-based management, restoration science, observing systems, etc.

4. Design and initiate a program aimed to working professionals that awards masters degree or certificates in applied environmental science delivered primarily over the Internet. This would be done in partnership with a degree-granting institution that has the expertise and infrastructure needed to operate such programs, for example the University of Maryland University College.

Measurable Outcomes Within eighteen months, we will develop a plan specifying the ways and means of offering

undergraduate courses and professional development and training programs.

Within three years, we will offer the first online undergraduate course, the first undergraduate short course and the first fee-generating professional development program.

Within five years, we will begin a masters degree or certificate program for working environmental professionals that is based largely on Internet delivery.


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5. Institutional and Resource Requirements 5.1 Faculty Productivity Background

The UMCES faculty and its productivity were a major focus of the Self Study and External Review for the simple reason that as goes the faculty, so goes the Center. Capable and inspired faculty members develop the research support, publish the outstanding science, attract and train graduate students, and provide the credibility for advice—all of which determine the Center’s success in its mission. USM Strategic Plan recognizes faculty recruitment, retention and development as key to achieving and sustaining national eminence. Furthermore, the External Review Committee noted that increased faculty productivity is essential for the Center’s future and that the Center should consider flexible approaches to maximizing its productivity based on available state resources, for example through greater use of research faculty appointments.

The UMCES faculty has been successful in attracting substantial funding for research, producing significant publications, training graduate students, and serving the scientific community. As in any organization, there are those faculty members who are achieving at the highest level in all categories, and those who perform below the average in one on more. Some of these patterns reflect different stages in the careers of the faculty members or concentration in a particular dimension of productivity by virtue of demand, interests or abilities. Increasingly limited core funding and the associated requirements for greater financial self-reliance by the Center necessitate more concerted efforts to optimize faculty productivity than ever before. Effective direction of the key intellectual resources of the faculty must involve means to: meaningfully measure productivity on both collective and individual levels; collaboratively develop reasonable expectations of productivity within the mix of multiple responsibilities for research, teaching and service; assist faculty members to reach their full potential during different stages of their career; and reward excellence and exceptional performance.

Implementation 1. Maintain and expand the Self Study database to track faculty productivity as a tool for

self-assessment and management of collective faculty contributions.

2. Implement “professional portfolios” for each faculty member that represent expectations for effort and outcomes in discovery (research, primary publications, etc.), application (advisory activities), integration (e.g. synthesis papers) and education (teaching and mentoring students). These professional portfolios would be periodically reassessed and agreed to by the Laboratory Director and faculty member.

3. Develop and employ effective mechanisms to mentor junior faculty and motivate senior faculty members with the objective of optimizing collective productivity and ensuring individual success.

4. Where appropriate, expand the use of research faculty appointments to fill important needs and enhance external research support.

Measurable Outcomes Within eighteen months, we will complete an interactive faculty productivity database and

establish professional portfolios for each faculty member.


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Within three years, we will complete an in-depth reanalysis of the changes in faculty productivity from the 2002 benchmark used in the Self Study.

Within five years, we will achieve at least 20 percent mean increase in such faculty productivity indicators as publications, publication impact, and external research support.

5.2 Effectiveness and Efficiency of Administration and Support Background

Both because of its independent institutional status and geographic dispersion, UMCES may have a higher administrative burden than other USM institutions or peer graduate-research programs. Unlike a department, school or college on a university campus, it has to operate physical plants and fill administrative functions typically based and budgeted elsewhere on a campus. At the same time, the Center operates under the policies and procedures of the University System of Maryland and, to a certain extent, depends on administrative services provided by the University of Maryland College Park. Periodic budget cuts or shortfalls over the past 15 years have, however, resulted in an overall loss of administrative and support personnel as decisions were made to protect the Center’s science enterprise. As a result, operational support of the core mission has been stretched thin. Faculty members are concerned about the administrative burden at the same time that the increased volume of grant and contract activity and greater accountability requirements stress the administrative infrastructure. Meanwhile, the USM Board of Regents is demanding greater efficiency, particularly in administration and support services. All of these forces require diligent and continuous search for ways to improve efficiency while not sacrificing effectiveness.

Implementation 1. Implement the pertinent administrative recommendations of the USM Board of Regents

Effectiveness and Efficiency Work Group.

2. The officers within Center Administration, the laboratories and the Sea Grant Program responsible for business processes and facilities operations will continue their efforts toward streamlining and improved efficiency of administrative and support services.

3. In consideration of the dispersed nature of the Center, every effort will be made to take advantage of modern information and communications technology to shrink the distances and avoid inefficient duplication.

4. A process will be established for periodic faculty review of Center-wide administrative and support services.

5. In light of the Center’s increased dependence on external funding, Center Administration, through reallocation of existing resources, will enhance its capacity for increasing and managing sponsored research support.

Measurable Outcomes Within six months, enhance the capacity for expanding and efficiently managing sponsored

research support.

Within eighteen months, we will put in place a process for faculty review of administrative services that gauges satisfaction and effectiveness and constructively leads to improvements. Implement the pertinent requirements of the USM Effectiveness and Efficiency plan.


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Within three years, we will complete a plan for streamlining administrative and operational functions that will yield at least a 10 percent increase in efficiency as measured by a decrease in costs.

5.3 Coherence and Identity Background

Since his arrival in 1990, President Boesch has worked to build coherence in the Center across its laboratories. This was based on beliefs that modern environmental science must increasingly work across the boundaries of disciplines and environmental media and that the Center’s reputation and success within the University System, the state, and beyond would grow only if it was perceived as a significant, well-integrated and powerful institution rather than just a loose federation of laboratories. During the 1990s the Appalachian Laboratory was saved from the brink of closure and its programs redesigned around the landscape ecology of the Chesapeake watershed theme. The name of the Center and its laboratories were adjusted to more clearly associate the Center with the greater University of Maryland and to convey the scope and unity of its environmental science. From signage to stationery to publications we have worked to convey this programmatic coherence and raise the Center’s identity, but with mixed success.

The External Review Committee expressed some concern about the lack of identity or “brand” for UMCES as a whole, but noted that this seems to be emerging. As reflected in the title of this strategic plan, the committee noted that “UMCES as a whole is a vision that is in the process of becoming a reality.” The reviewers concluded that while the role of graduate education at UMCES needs to be articulated more clearly, each of the individual pieces in the research mosaic is strong. They wrote that the Center’s articulated geographic vision of covering the entire watershed to the sea with ecosystems level studies is a work in progress and that in order to realize the vision, UMCES must take advantage of the maturation of AL and continually focus on collective vision while building on areas of existing strength.

From the internal perspective of the faculty the Center’s name recognition problem arises as a result of several, largely unrelated, factors, including dilution of UMCES name recognition because of the strong identity of its subsidiary laboratories, the broad diversity of UMCES research, insufficient emphasis on “high profile” science, and a lengthy and non-distinctive name and an awkward acronym. Nonetheless, efforts to mitigate this problem through public relations, communications and development efforts should continue, particularly within the state of Maryland where it is most likely to have a significant impact. Improving the Center’s identity will take time and will require concerted effort by the faculty and administration alike.

Implementation Improving the Center’s coherence and identity are interdependent and will require

coordinated efforts to:

1. Achieve and promote successes in working across laboratory boundaries to realize the vision of holistic environmental science, particularly though IAN and the new strategic directions.

2. Continue focus on primary recognition of institutional affiliation at the Center level in scientific publications and the news media, including concerted effort to get the identity right in the regional press.

3. Increase emphasis on high-quality, high-profile scientific publications.

4. Instill a greater sense of UMCES identity in the Center’s graduate education programs.


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5. Revise and maintain UMCES websites so that the laboratory webpages reinforce the UMCES brand rather than compete with it.

6. Conceive and distribute a newsletter, either printed or electronic, highlighting timely and important UMCES contributions aimed at key opinion setters, potential donors, and the media.

7. Develop a “theme” phrase that plays up such assets as disciplinary breadth, history and Chesapeake Bay focus that could be incorporated into our UMCES logo.

Measurable Outcomes Within eighteen months, we will distribute a newsletter or e-newsletter in close

coordination with development efforts, revise UMCES and laboratory webpages, and craft a “theme” phrase to strengthen coherence and identity.

Within five years, we will conduct a critical reassessment of UMCES coherence and identity.

5.4 Development Background

The reconstitution of the Center’s development efforts has begun to yield tangible results. An effective Board of Visitors, including many prestigious individuals, has been recruited and engaged in providing advice and raising resources. Most of the fund-raising success to date has been related to the restoration science programs associated with the Aquaculture and Restoration Ecology Laboratory at the Horn Point Laboratory, for which over $300,000 has been raised. The Self Study and External Review both identified the need to significantly increase private fund raising in order to meet key needs. Furthermore, UMCES is expected to participate successfully in a new Capital Campaign for the University System of Maryland. For all these reasons, the Center’s development efforts must evolve past its formative stages to a point where it is able to generate significant revenues to help support the Center’s programs.

Implementation 1. Communications among the Vice President for Development, laboratory directors and

faculty regarding fund-raising needs and opportunities will be enhanced. The Vice President will attend selected laboratory faculty meetings to discuss these objectives and engage the faculty and graduate students in interactions with prospective donors.

2. More attention will be directed to the development needs and opportunities associated with the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, Appalachian Laboratory and Maryland Sea Grant. Constituency relations will be improved in southern and western Maryland.

3. Priorities for fund raising will be a new coastal research vessel, graduate fellowships, and support for innovative programs associated with IAN and the four new strategic directions.

4. More concerted efforts will be directed to securing funding from both regional and national foundations. Success will depend on the nurturing of personal contacts with foundation representatives.

5. Selected individuals in affluent regions of the Eastern Shore, western shore and southern Maryland will be targeted in a campaign to build a pool of prospective donors.


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6. Development efforts will be closely coordinated with public relations efforts aimed at raising the identity of the Center, including a newsletter aimed at friends and donors, promotional materials, and events for cultivating constituents.

7. The Board of Visitors will be maintained, engaged and expanded as an essential component of the Center’s development efforts.

8. UMCES will participate appropriately in the new University System Capital Campaign.

Measurable Goals Within eighteen months, we will build the UMCES-wide prospect pool to 1,000 donor

prospects, produce an average of 12 foundation and corporate proposals per year, and establish an Annual Fund with the solicitation of 500 identified prospects.

Within three years, we will expand the Board of Visitors to 25 members, including new members who have proven philanthropic interests and the means to make gifts of $50-100,000.

Within five years, we will establish as a base, $2 million per year in private sources support.

5.5 . Collaboration and Leadership Background

An important determinant of the Center’s future is the development, strengthening, or refinement of collaborations and partnerships with other institutions, particularly with the institutions of the University System of Maryland. Why? Our clients desire it and the External Review Committee recommended it as a way to address important issues, such as the natural-social science interface. Some of our strategic directions, e.g. regional consequences of climate change, require it. Furthermore, collaboration can make the University System of Maryland, over all, more eminent, effective and efficient. At the same time, the Center cannot just assume that it is a role player, but must take a leadership position, within the System, regionally and nationally, and function as a catalyst for change toward a more knowledgeable, better educated, and enlightened society living in a healthy environment.

UMCES has a number of long-standing and successful partnerships with other institutions within the USM and the region. These include collaboration with other University of Maryland institutions in the graduate programs in Marine-Estuarine-Environmental Sciences and Toxicology, between Frostburg State and the Appalachian Laboratory, through the Sea Grant Program, and with regional institutions engaged in the Chesapeake Research Consortium. These need to be examined, revitalized or expanded as needed.

Implementation The following is a listing of targets the Center will assess as it seeks to strengthen its nexus

of relationships within the USM:

§ University of Maryland College Park: evolution and restructuring of the MEES Program, development of a joint Ocean Science Institute, expanded collaboration with the Maryland Institute of Agro-Ecology and others concerning the interactions of agriculture and the environment, and new collaborations in environmental engineering and policy.

§ University of Maryland, Baltimore: active participation in the revitalized UM Toxicology Program and collaborative research related to human health and the environment.


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§ University of Maryland Baltimore County: development of a MEES area of specialization in urban environmental studies and collaboration with the Center for Urban Environmental Research and Education.

§ University of Maryland, Eastern Shore: effective use of the new Coastal Ecology Research Laboratory and assistance to the NOAA-funded Living Marine Resources Center.

§ University of Maryland University College: partnerships in online delivery of courses and degree programs and delivery of educational services to eastern Europe.

§ University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute: collaboration in areas of mission interface, particularly aquaculture, and expanding existing collaboration in applications of molecular biology to environmental issues.

§ Frostburg State University: implement new track in landscape ecology within FSU MS program, increase student enrollments, providing undergraduate internships and short courses, and sharing field sites and facilities.

§ Salisbury University: teaching opportunities for graduate students based at the HPL and internships and short courses for SU undergraduates.

§ Towson University: interaction with TU’s Environmental Science and Studies Program and Center for Geographic Information Sciences.

Building on these collaborations, UMCES will assume leadership in achieving greater coherence and effectiveness of environmental research, education and advisory service programs within the University System and across the region. In particular, UMCES will assemble and maintain a database of USM expertise and capabilities and serve as a clearinghouse within the System and for outside users of these services.

Measurable Goals Within eighteen months, we will achieve the functional operation of the UMCES-UMCP

Ocean Science Institute and complete the planning for a MEES area of specialization in urban environmental science.

Within three years, we will enter a partnership to deliver a masters degree or certificate program for working environmental professionals that is based largely on Internet delivery.

Within five years, we will graduate the first Frostburg State M.S. recipients in the landscape ecology track.

5.6 Funding Background

The Self Study made it clear that the new fiscal reality of declining state support for the USM and increased reliance on tuition revenues must be factored into the strategic plan. While every effort will be made to reestablish appropriate state investments in the operating budget, the Center must continue to look for alternative revenue sources to fund the priorities critical to our mission. In addition to the explicit goals of the strategic plan, priorities include competitive salaries for the recruitment and retention of highly talented faculty and staff, including providing compensation for performance-based merit adjustments and promotions, and meeting the employer share of rapidly rising health care benefits. In addition to private fund raising (see Development), the Center must continue to increase contract and grant activity and more fully


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recover associated indirect costs to help fund these priorities. We must also seek ways to be more fully reimbursed for graduate instruction provided to our “partner” degree granting institutions and to increase revenues from analytical, equipment calibration, and other services. With regard to State General Fund support, the Center must also (a) continue to seek ways to fund the shortfall in State operating funds appropriation for the Aquaculture Restoration and Ecology Laboratory; (b) ensure that it is an appropriate participant in the USM Nano-biotechonology Initiative; and (c) work to achieve its USM funding guideline targets.

Implementation 1. Achieve more appropriate, realized indirect cost recoveries by negotiating rates that

more fully cover actual indirect costs and by minimizing the exceptions and waivers to approved rates.

2. Invest any savings from improved efficiencies from administration and support in ways that increase productivity and other income, such as equipment replacement and upgrade.

3. Increase revenue associated with analytical, sampling and specialized scientific services.

4. Increase research awards by 10 percent per year, particularly large competitive extramural research awards (>$300,000/year).

5. Increase reimbursements for instructional services.

Measurable Outcomes Within eighteen months, we will negotiate a new indirect cost rate with the U.S.

Department of Health and Human Services and increase service-related revenues by $40,000.

Within three years, we will reallocate savings from administrative and support streamlining to productivity investments, including critical equipment upgrades. Additionally, we will increase realized indirect cost recoveries by 10 percent when normalized to direct expenditures.

Within five years, we will increase extramural grant and contract awards to at least $30 million per year.

5.7 Facilities

Background The past ten years have seen unprecedented improvements in the Center’s facilities,

including completion of the Bernie Fowler Laboratory at CBL, the Appalachian Laboratory, and the Aquaculture and Restoration Ecology Laboratory at Horn Point. The External Review Committee observed that the UMCES facilities are excellent, contributing to “employment conditions that are equal to and mostly better than employment conditions at all of the Center’s peer institutions.” There are, however, still some critical needs as laid out in the UMCES Facilities Master Plan for 2002-2012. Based on the standards used by the Maryland Department of Budget and Management, UMCES still has a deficiency of laboratory space for the size of its faculty and research programs. The required facility improvements include construction of some smaller new buildings, overdue renovation of older facilities, and replacement of the Center’s aging Bay research vessel, the R/V Aquarius.

Replacement of Aquarius is seen as a particularly pressing need by both the faculty and administration. Although the Board of Regents has included funding for construction of a new,


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research vessel in the University System’s capital improvement program, this request has failed to advance because of objections to bond funding by the Department of Budget and Management. Alternate funding mechanisms and short-term solutions for providing reliable research vessel support are being explored.

The best use and value to the University System of the 840-acre Horn Point Laboratory property have recently come into question. Aggressive proposals by developers were considered inappropriate by the Center because of the environmental sensitivities of this historic estate and improbable under existing deed covenants and state and federal regulations. Consequently, the Board of Regents has decided not to entertain sale or development of the property in its efforts to explore the disposition of surplus or unused property. However, these considerations have raised the needs for more active conservation management, appropriate access and use by the local community, and long-term preservation.

Implementation To meet the remaining space shortfall and other critical needs the Center will pursue the

following facility improvements over the horizon of this strategic plan:

1. Construct of a 13,200-gsf extension of the Truitt Laboratory at CBL to provide additional wet and dry laboratories, a culture laboratory, a radioisotope laboratory, and controlled temperature rooms. Appropriations for FY 2006 are anticipated, with completion during FY 2007.

2. Design and construct of the Information and Communications Services Building at CBL. This 12,600-gsf facility will house the library and computer services and serve as a resource and database of environmental issues for UMCES, other local research institutions, museums, agencies, and the general community. Appropriations for design are scheduled in FY 2007, with completion in FY 2009.

3. Design and construct a new, highly capable vessel to support cutting-edge research in Chesapeake Bay. Secure funding through a combination of private and governmental support. Pursue the acquisition of another vessel to provide interim and back-up service.

4. Apply facilities renewal funding from the USM capital program to meet urgent needs and mission requirements.

5. Develop and begin implementation of a plan for a Horn Point Heritage Reserve that would improve resource management, community engagement, and preservation of the campus property.

6. Develop justification and concepts and determine funding sources for facility improvements to be pursued between 2011-2015, including renovation of the Morris Marine Laboratory (HPL), Mansueti and Nice Halls (CBL), an Environmental Information Center (HPL), and upland field facilities operated by the Appalachian Laboratory.

Measurable Outcomes Within three years, we will secure an alternative research vessel as well as funding for a

new Bay research vessel. Additionally we will complete the Horn Point Heritage Reserve plan and place the Truitt Laboratory extension into service.

Within five years, we will place the CBL Information and Communications Services Building into service and begin implementation of the Horn Point Heritage Reserve.


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6. Tracking Progress

To be successful, a strategic plan must be implemented. For each of the elements of this plan, specific implementation steps are listed and measurable outcomes described. These outcomes are summarized in the following tables covering Science and Education Strategy (Section 4) and Institutional and Resource Requirements (Section 5). Individuals or teams will be assigned to guide efforts for each outcome. The Center will track its progress in achieving these outcomes for four benchmark periods: six months, eighteen months, three years and five years. After each interval, we will determine the degree to which we have been able achieve the outcomes, what can be done to accomplish outcomes that are not met, and whether the objectives should be modified. During the fourth year of the plan, the Center will undertake a comprehensive review of progress and obstacles for all elements.

Measurable Outcomes: Science and Education Strategy

Strategic Element Six months Eighteen months Three years Five years

Science to support ecosystem based management

Informational materials Multi-disciplinary proposals

Double inter-laboratory research proposals Seminar course

Significant interdisciplinary research programs

Sequence of courses Secure funding for

sampling platforms

Multiscale ecosystem restoration

Website and brochures Interactions with

stakeholders First large proposal

Increase integrated projects

Graduate courses in ecosystem restoration

Double extramural support National recognition

Linking observing systems and forecasts from mountain to sea

Design mountain to sea pilot program

Implement pilot program

Leadership in MARA and MAREO

Transform Chesapeake Bay Program integration

Transfer systems to operational agencies

World leader in integrated systems

Regional consequences of climate change and variability

Inter-institutional seminar

Multi-disciplinary proposal

Links with social scientists

Graduate program emphasis

Evolution of Integration and Application Network

New IAN strategic plan

Program for robust prediction and assessment

External funding to catalyze faculty involvement

Demonstrate measurable environmental improvements

Graduate education Activate Graduate Faculty Council

Revise website

Review of graduate education

Inter-laboratory seminar series

Improve reputation Establish graduate

fellowships Courses associated with

strategic directions

Environmental science education

Promote public and K-12 program via website and brochures

Faculty workshops Expand network of

teachers

Develop new products linking environmental education and research programs

New educational enterprises

Plan for undergraduate courses and professional programs

Offer online courses, short course and professional programs

Begin masters/certificate program for working professionals


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Measurable Outcomes: Institutional and Resource Requirements Strategic Element Six months Eighteen months Three years Five years

Faculty productivity Complete productivity database

Establish faculty portfolios

Reanalysis of faculty productivity

Achieve 20% increase in faculty productivity

Effectiveness and efficiency of administration

Enhance capacity for managing sponsored research

Faculty review of administrative services

Implement USM Effectiveness and Efficiency plan

Complete streamlining to yield 10 % increase in efficiency

Coherence and identity

Distribute newsletter Revise webpages Craft identity “theme”

Conduct reassessment

Development Build donor pool Produce 12 corporate and foundation proposals Establish Annual Fund

Expand Board of Visitors

Establish base of $2 million per year in private support

Collaboration and leadership

Operation of UMCES-UMCP Ocean Science Institute

Complete planning of urban environmental science AOS

Partnership for working professionals program

First landscape ecology track MS recipients

Funding Negotiate new indirect cost rate

Increase service revenue

Reallocate savings to productivity investments

Increase realized indirect cost recoveries by 10 percent

Increase extramural grant and contract awards >$ 30 million

Facilities Secure alternate vessel and funding for new vessel Complete Horn Point

Heritage Reserve plan Place Truitt extension in

service

CBL Information and Communications Service Building in service

Begin implementation of Horn Point Heritage Reserve


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7. References Boesch, D.F., J. C. Field, and D. Scavia (eds.) 2000. The Potential Consequences of Climate

Variability and Change on Coastal Areas and Marine Resources. NOAA Coastal Ocean Program Decision Analysis Series #21, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Silver Spring, Maryland.

Boesch, D.F., R.H. Burroughs, J.E. Baker, R.P. Mason, C.L. Rowe, and R.L. Siefert. 2001. Marine Pollution in the United States. Pew Oceans Commission, Arlington, Virginia.

Boesch, D.F., and J. Greer. 2003. Chesapeake Futures: Choices for the 21st Century Chesapeake Bay Program Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee, Edgewater, MD.

Boyer, E.L. 1990. Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professorate. Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Princeton, NJ.

Carpenter, S.R., 2002. Ecological future: building an ecology of the long now. Ecology 83, 2069-2083.

Chesapeake Bay Program. 1999. Chesapeake 2000 Agreement. Environmental Protection Agency, Annapolis, MD.

Climate Change Science Program and the Subcommittee on Global Change Research. 2003. Strategic Plan for the U.S. Climate Change Science Program

Committee on Environment and Natural Resources. 2002. Ecological Forecasting: Agenda for the Future. National Council for Science and Technology, Washington, DC.

Ernst, H. 2003. Chesapeake Blues. Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, MD. Horton, T. 2003. Turning the Tide: Saving the Chesapeake Bay. Island Press, Washington, DC.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 2001. Third Assessment Report, Working Group 1, Summary for Policy Makers. IPCC, Geneva.

Kennedy, V.S. et al. 2002. Marine and Estuarine Ecosystems and Global Climate Change: Potential Effects on U.S. Resources. Pew Center for Global Climate Change, Arlington, VA.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 2003. New Priorities for the 21st Century: NOAA’s Strategic Plan for FY 2003 - FY 2008 and Beyond. NOAA, Washington, D.C.

National Research Council. 2003. NEON: Addressing the Nation’s Environmental Challenges. National Academy Press, Washington, DC

National Research Council. 2004. Adaptive Management for Water Resources Planning. National Academy Press, Washington, DC.

National Science Foundation. 2003. Complex Environmental Systems: Synthesis for Earth, Life, and Society in the 21st Century. National Science Foundation, Washington, DC.

Palmer, M.A. and 19 others. 2004. Ecological Science and Sustainability for a Crowded Planet: 21st Century Vision and Action Plan for the Ecological Society of America. Ecological Society of America, Washington, DC.

Pew Oceans Commission. 2003. America's Living Oceans: Charting a Course for Sea Change. Pew Ocean Commission, Arlington, VA.


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U.S. National Assessment. 2000. Climate Change Impacts on the United States: The Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, 2004. An Ocean Blueprint for the 21st Century. Final Report of the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, Washington, D.C.

University System of Maryland Board of Regents. 2004. The USM in 2010: An Update of the USM Strategic Plan. University System of Maryland, Adelphi, MD.

University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. 2000. Crossing Boundaries: A Strategy for the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science Beyond 2000. UMCES, Cambridge, MD.

University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. 2002. Facilities Master Plan. UMCES, Cambridge, MD.

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