Integrated Coastal Programs Awards Three Scholarships for Coastal and Marine Sciences

ECU’s Integrated Coastal Programs (ICP) wishes to congratulate the 2022 recipients of the Mary Ferebee Howard Scholarship in Marine Studies. Each year the scholarship is awarded to at least one full-time graduate student focused on coastal and marine sciences who not only shows potential in their field but also participates regularly in extracurricular activities and is actively involved in the community.

This year’s applicants were no exception when it came to the outstanding citizenship and work required by the scholarship review committee, and Lindsay Wentzel, Daniel Schaefer, and Maddie Johnson were chosen to receive $1000 each.

“Integrated Coastal Programs strives to lead important contributions to coastal sustainability and improve our relationship with the environment. We are thrilled to be able to provide this scholarship to these worthy graduate students and help them meet their academic goals,” shares ICP Dean Reide Corbett.

Scholarship Awardees

LINDSAY WENTZEL

Program: Maritime Studies

Thesis Focus: 19^th-century Provincetown, Massachusetts- based fishing schooners used and converted across the whale, mackerel, cod, and swordfish fisheries

Scholarship Use: A training opportunity in Antalya, Turkey, where she will spend 2 weeks in August living and working aboard a research vessel off the coast of Antayla, diving on, surveying, and monitoring Bronze Age shipwrecks.

Wentzel is a second-year recipient of the scholarship. Last year, she used the scholarship to fund her participation in ECU’s Program in Maritime Studies 2021 Summer Field School in Cape Lookout, NC, where she surveyed the suspected site of Seychelle, a fishing and whaling schooner from Provincetown, MA that wrecked in 1879 during a large hurricane.

DANIEL SCHAEFER

Program: Maritime Studies

Thesis Focus: The archaeology and historical effectiveness of Japanese radar technology during the Battle of Saipan in 1944

Scholarship Use: Assist in funding for graduate work and thesis analysis.

Thanks in part to the funding from the Mary Ferebee Howard Scholarship, Schaefer’s thesis will provide the first narrative of the U.S. underestimation of the extent of Japanese radar capabilities.

MADDIE JOHNSON

Program: Biology

Thesis Focus: Hatch dates, habitat preferences, and recruitment of juvenile Sheepshead in Pamlico Sound, NC.

Scholarship Use: Funding for increased trips into the field, collection of data, and preparation for a future laboratory experiment at the Coastal Studies Institute on the ECU Outer Banks Campus.

Sheepshead are a popular sport fish yet are understudied in the region, thus Johnson’s research will contribute to novel information about the species that will guide future management and conservation decisions.

“Lindsay, Daniel, and Maddie’s individual research interests underscore the breadth of research conducted across coastal systems and ECU’s coastal enterprise. We are lucky to have the Mary Ferebee Howard Scholarship to support talented students like them, and we look forward to all they will accomplish in the years ahead,” says Corbett.

Learn more about Integrated Coastal Programs, Biology Graduate Studies, and Maritime Studies.