NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. – Scott Glenn, who led a team of faculty, students and staff in a successful effort to send the first submersible robot glider across an ocean, has been named the 2010 New Jersey Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE).

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The award recognizes professors for their outstanding impact on and involvement with undergraduate students and for their scholarly approach to teaching and learning.

Glenn, who has been at Rutgers since 1990, is the co-director of the Coastal Ocean Observation Laboratory (RU-COOL) in the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences (IMCS). In spearheading Rutgers’ trans-Atlantic glider project, he made heavy use of undergraduate students, who helped transport, deploy and navigate the glider during its 221-day flight from New Jersey to Spain in 2009.

Glenn’s emphasis on student participation reaches beyond Rutgers – in fact, well beyond universities. He often tours elementary and middle schools in New Jersey to bring the excitement of ocean exploration and the power of observatory technologies to a wider, younger audience.

Robert M. Goodman, dean of the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, of which IMCS is a part, praised Glenn’s spirit of innovation, both in scholarship and teaching. “Scott Glenn has shown that a scholar need not be a recluse, and that science isn’t just for scientists,” Goodman said. “He is a living, thinking, learning example of the phrase, ‘Jersey roots, global reach.’”

Glenn’s commitment to students and scholarship has been recognized by Rutgers in the past. In 2000, he received the first Rutgers University Scholar-Teacher Award and the Outstanding Undergraduate Advisor Award from the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences in 2008. He was recently recognized by the National Science Foundation as one of 10 scientists making an impact on science education.

Glenn was brought to Rutgers’ then fledgling Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences by its original director, J. Fred Grassle, professor of marine science.

“Scott was a leader from the start – one of the Teaching Excellence Center’s Teaching Fellows in 2000, one of the President’s Scholar-Teacher Award recipients, and the first to develop an ocean observatory,” Grassle said. “He has carried the early vision of a continuous ocean presence much further than others have imagined.” 

“Through his dedication to teaching and passion for science, Scott Glenn has inspired countless students of all ages to care about the oceans, to inquire about the oceans' health, and to understand the connection between the oceans and all life on this planet,” said Francisco Werner, director of the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences. “He has influenced and helped shape future marine scientists at home and internationally. When we talk about Rutgers having "Jersey roots, global reach," it's people like Scott we're talking about.”

Under Glenn’s leadership, the Coastal Ocean Observation Laboratory has become a leader in the science of ocean-observing – that is, the use of various technologies to observe the ocean whole, as close as possible to real time. Glenn and his colleagues use information from satellite imagery, high-frequency radar, sea floor sensors and submersible robot gliders to give them a holistic picture of the ocean.

In particular, Glenn’s lab has worked with the manufacturer of the Slocum Electric glider to improve its performance and expand its use, from very short coastal trips a decade ago to the first trans-oceanic mission of a submersible robot glider last year. That glider, the Scarlet Knight, was deployed off New Jersey in April 2009 and was recovered in Spain in December.

“I'm very honored to receive this award and am confident it will help us continue to advance the innovative approaches to education my colleagues and I have developed at RU-COOL.,” Glenn said. His group, he said, strives to combine the excitement of ocean exploration with the power of observatory technologies to bring the ocean into the consciousness of students of all ages.

“By enabling students to participate in exploratory ocean science,” Glenn said, “we can inspire more of them, increase ocean literacy and broaden the definition of who can be an oceanographer.”

 

Media Contact: Ken Branson
732-932-7084, ext. 633
E-mail: kbranson@ur.rutgers.edu