March 2024 | Oceanography
IN PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE ABOUT
CAREERS OUTSIDE
OF ACADEMIA
By all accounts, ocean sciences graduate students are very interested in learning about
jobs options outside of academia—jobs that are frequently but unfortunately called
“alternate careers.” Students often lack access to information about such jobs in their
current academic surroundings, but their curiosity about them was evident in the
standing-room-only crowds at the 2024 Ocean Sciences Meeting career panels and CV
writing workshops. It is also notable in the popularity of Oceanography’s career profiles
column (https://tos.org/career-profiles), now in its fifteenth year. These profiles display
the breadth of job opportunities for ocean scientists in government, industry, and the
nonprofit sector. The number of career profiles published online and in hard copies of
Oceanography quietly passed the 100 mark in late 2023. Recognizing students’ need for
career information, professional societies—and many university departments—have
been organizing activities to help fill this knowledge gap and enable students to make
connections with scientists who have pursued careers outside of academia.
For those who are interested in learning about how to use an ocean science degree
to make a difference, I recommend the articles in this special issue of Oceanography on
“Sea Grant: Science Serving America’s Coastlines and People.” They demonstrate the
many ways in which people with ocean science degrees can use their skills to enhance
the well-being of coastal communities and their local environments. Among their
many roles, Sea Grant staff act as facilitators and communicators to increase environ-
mental literacy and make science more accessible. They work with students, commu-
nity leaders, local businesses, and others to devise ways to help coastal communities
mitigate the adverse effects of problems ranging from plastic pollution, sea level rise,
and harmful algal blooms to groundwater pumping and invasive species. Establishing
trust with stakeholders is a large part of the mission as Sea Grant staff institute commu-
nity science projects on topics such as green infrastructure and coastal conservation,
aquaculture practices, and ocean acidification. They develop and publish important
and widely used and adapted handbooks on important topics such as natural hazard
preparedness. And they work to grow the ocean workforce through a variety of train-
ing programs. It’s uplifting reading.
The Oceanography career profiles column and articles in this special issue highlight
the many valuable and satisfying jobs that require the skills trained ocean scientists
possess. As younger scientists migrate to those jobs, perhaps we can finally bury the
term “alternate career.”
QUARTERDECK
Ellen S. Kappel, Editor
DOI. https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2024.239