January 18, 2006                                Contact: Monica Allard Cox
For immediate release                         (401) 874-6937 / allard@gso.uri.edu
 
Knauss Fellowships send URI students to work in Washington
 
NARRAGANSETT--Two University of Rhode Island (URI) graduate students are among 42 nationally who have been awarded one-year, $41,500, National Sea Grant College Program Dean John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellowships. Rebecca Asch and Michael Conathan will begin working in the federal government on climate and fisheries issues starting February 1, 2006.

"One of the great things about the Knauss Fellowship Program is that it gives recent graduates an opportunity to work in offices that are pretty high up in the NOAA hierarchy.  It also exposes young scientists to things that they wouldn't normally see so early in their careers," says Asch, of Warwick, RI, a URI master of science in biological oceanography candidate.

At URI, Asch has managed a laboratory, undertaken fisheries research, and taught science to junior high school students. Prior to attending URI, Asch worked for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), where she co-authored the first report to Congress on the state of U.S. coral reefs. Asch will be working for the NOAA Climate Program Office.

Conathan, a former children's book editor, television screenwriter, and English teacher, came to URI after some soul-searching and with an interest in the Cape Wind project proposed for Nantucket Sound, near Conathan's childhood home of Centerville, Mass. At URI, Conathan traveled to Denmark to study offshore wind farms and presented a paper on the topic at an international conference. Today, with a master's degree in marine affairs, Conathan hopes the fellowship will give him "an intricate knowledge of the policy process. I not only want to know how things are supposed to work, but how they actually get done." Conathan will be working in the Senate Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Fisheries and Coast Guard.

The Knauss Fellowship, established in 1979, matches highly qualified graduate students interested in ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes resources and in the national policy decisions affecting those resources with hosts in the federal legislative or executive branch.