Welcome!
I am tremendously excited and honored to be serving as the inaugural director of our newly established Robert K. Johnson Center for Marine Conservation. I joined the University Miami in 2023 as the endowed Robert K. Johnson Professor of Marine Conservation after a wonderful 10 years at Colorado State University.
The honor is not only mine of course. The endowed chair and our new Center are shared honors that celebrates a long history of excellence in marine science and conservation within the Rosenstiel School. It also recognizes our potential to do even more to address the crisis facing our oceans and inspire hope and optimism among our students and ocean-dependent communities.
I am a social scientist with expertise in ocean governance, which I like to think of as a problem-solving discipline focused on some of the biggest levers of social change: policy, rules, and collective social action. My work and vision for the Center is grounded in an understanding that marine conservation is fundamentally a social and political process that requires good governance and meaningful engagement with communities and decision-makers. It also requires interdisciplinary knowledge about the complex relationships among ocean health and human well-being. That’s why our goal for the Center is to foster innovative connections between science and society through socially engaged research, research-based education, and public outreach. Through these efforts we will develop actionable knowledge that can inform decision-making, engage communities, inspire students, and advance transformative solutions for marine conservation in Florida and around the world.
We will realize our vision by supporting the growth of the Rosenstiel School’s long-standing initiatives that sit at the intersection of research, citizen science, education, and public engagement. We will also invest in new programs and research that will expand the School’s work in new directions, including my own research on large-scale marine protected areas and ocean philanthropy. We are also collaborating with faculty across our School and University to build new initiatives that catalyze non-traditional partnerships across disciplines and sectors that can inspire new ways of thinking and communicating about marine conservation. A good example are our emerging marine science and art initiatives, which are inspired by the evidence that the arts and humanities can help people learn about and connect to the oceans in ways that science alone cannot.
Throughout our initiatives we will center a commitment to broadening participation in marine conservation. I am the first woman and mother to hold an endowed chair at Rosenstiel. The women on our faculty are phenomenally accomplished scientists and educators and I hope I am the first of many endowed women faculty in our School. In the meantime, I will leverage this platform to help cultivate a more diverse and inclusive environment for our students, faculty, and staff – and I will ensure that the Center’s work prioritizes engaging groups in our region and around the world that have been historically under-represented in marine science and conservation.
Additionally, as the first social scientist to hold an endowed chair at the Rosenstiel School, I will further elevate the role of the social sciences and interdisciplinary research in marine conservation even when – and perhaps especially when – that entails challenging assumptions about what works and what doesn’t and speaking truth to power. The Center is perfectly positioned to make connections across the cutting-edge marine science happening across our school to further elevate the societal impact of our work through interdisciplinary collaborations.
I want to thank Dean Roni Avissar and the Robert K. Johnson Foundation for entrusting me and our School with this opportunity to provide leadership in marine conservation at such a critical time. And thank you, dear reader, for your interest in our Center. We welcome your ideas, friendship, and partnership as we rise to meet our shared challenges with resolve, creativity, and success!
Sincerely,
Rebecca Gruby
Robert K. Johnson Professor of Marine Conservation
Director, Robert K. Johnson Center for Marine Conservation
