Ocean Connect | Noa Gottlieb
Ocean Connect’s mission is to inspire students from underrepresented backgrounds to find their unique way to connect with the ocean and provide them with the resources they need to turn those connections into reality.
Inspiration
Ocean Connect grew out of an independent research project our founder started during her first year in high school and continued as part of her internship at the Girguis Laboratory for Ecophysiology, Biogeochemistry, and Engineering at Harvard University.
At the time, it was clear that more needed to be done to foster diversity and inclusiveness in marine science. So, she proposed studying the different ways to increase the participation of underrepresented students in marine science programs.
Given her love of the ocean and interest in ensuring its long-term health, focusing her research on marine science seemed the logical choice. However, she also saw the need to create something broader in scope to highlight the different ways underrepresented students could engage with the ocean. And that meant expanding the discussion beyond science to bring other areas of human interaction – like art, commerce, and advocacy – into the conversation.
After all, just because you don’t want to be a marine scientist doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have the opportunity to engage with the ocean in a meaningful and impactful way. And neither should be coming from a particular race, ethnicity, gender, nationality, or socioeconomic background. And it was that belief that led to Ocean Connect.
But for Ocean Connect to be truly useful, it had to do more than just set forth all the different opportunities students may have to connect to the ocean. It also needed to provide them with the means to turn those opportunities into reality.
So, the goal of Ocean Connect is to serve as both a source of information about the different pathways to connect to the ocean and as a resource to help make those connections. Its ultimate purpose, however, is to widen those pathways so students who have historically been underrepresented in the ocean-related sciences, arts, commerce, and advocacy can have those same opportunities.
Ocean Connect has created a website that has the following three goals:
To serve as both a source of information about the different pathways to connect to the ocean and as a resource to help make those connections.
To level the playing field between students who come from communities and schools that have a lot of resources and those that do not.
To build the biggest centralised database of ocean-related internships, scholarships, research fellowships, academic programs, training programs, grants, and awards.
In the future, Ocean Connect will offer scholarships to enable students to take advantage of the opportunities listed in the Ocean Connect database.
What would you change in the world?
The degradation of the health and well-being of the ocean.
What legacy do you hope to leave?
To help all people understand their connection to the ocean.
WEBSITE: https://www.ocean-connect.org
