November 19, 2003
Science wed with policy key to using, protecting ocean resources
Dealing with pressing issues of the nation’s 3.4 million square miles of ocean and the wise use of marine resources elsewhere around the world requires the integration of natural and social science with policy decisions, according to Professor Thomas Leschine, the new director of the University of Washington’s School of Marine Affairs.
Thus, the students and faculty of the school delve not only into marine sciences but into law, policy analysis, diplomacy, business — especially ports, shipping and tourism — coastal development and the inescapable economics of spending scarce dollars in the best way possible.
The school’s 400 master’s degree students are found in nearly any organization that deals with the oceans in Washington, D.C., the Puget Sound region and elsewhere across the nation and around the world, Leschine says. They work in agencies, non-profits and private firms. A growing number of foreign countries, including Korea, Japan and Thailand, send students and mid-career professionals to study marine affairs at the UW.
Leschine, an expert on environmental decision-making, focuses on managing the risks of such things as oil spills, marine pollution and, even, the legacy of wastes at the 113 Department of Energy sites that produced nuclear weapons materials.
“In recent years the approach to environmental management has become less about the ‘big hammer,’ of simply saying a certain activity must stop,” Leschine says. “Instead, we’re looking increasingly to intergovernmental and government-citizen partnerships and asking how voluntary, community-driven approaches can work.”
Leschine’s bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees are all in mathematics from the University of Pittsburgh. He was a research fellow and policy specialist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts and briefly at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado before coming to the UW in 1983.
Along with his appointment in marine affairs, Leschine is an adjunct faculty member in fisheries.
He has served on advisory committees for the Environmental Protection Agency, National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration and Washington Department of Ecology on such matters as assessing Puget Sound estuaries, oil spill prevention and response, and the social and economic aspects of global climate change.
He has served on five National Research Council committees, most recently as chair of the Committee on Remediation of Buried and Tank Wastes for the board on radioactive Waste Management.
The School of Marine Affairs has eight faculty, five staff members and 50 to 60 students. In addition to the traditional master’s degree, the school is interested in initiating steps to offer a new fifth-year, non-thesis option. Students in such a program could start work on their master’s while finishing their senior year and thus could complete the program with only a final, fifth year.
The new program would be ideal for undergraduates majoring in natural sciences who want to be ready for jobs where environmental science and policy must be integrated, Leschine says.
The school, a part of the UW’s College of Ocean and Fishery Sciences, has a Web site at http://www.sma.washington.edu/
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For more information, contact
Leschine, (206) 543-0117, tml@u.washington.edu
