Williams-Mystic, the Maritime Studies Program of Williams College and Mystic Seaport, is pleased to announce the following recipient and honorable mention of the 2012 Joseph Conrad Essay Contest:

Ema Williamson ’15 of Millersville University has won $500 for her short story “The Glass Trumpet,” a piece which features careful observations of how human beings relate to each other in the presence of the sea. Ms. Williamson is currently in her sophomore year of undergraduate study and is focusing on Anthropology, History, and English.

Belle Baxley ’13 of Williams College earned “Honorable Mention” for her creative essay “Blue Sister” and has been awarded free passes to the Mystic Seaport Museum in Mystic, CT.

Jaquelin Elliott ’13 of the University of Michigan earned Honorable Mention for her scholarly essay “The Leviathan and the Cyborg: The Influence of Moby-Dick on Sci-Fi Horror Film” and has also been awarded free passes to the Mystic Seaport Museum in Mystic, CT.

Williams-Mystic: The Maritime Studies Program of Williams College and Mystic Seaport is a study away semester for undergraduates. The curriculum is composed of four classes for Williams College credit: Literature of the Sea, Maritime History, Marine Policy, and Marine Sciences.  Students spend the semester living at Mystic Seaport, the Museum of America and the Sea.  As part of the semester, students attend three week-long field seminars. The first is offshore on a tall ship; the second is to the Pacific Coast; and the third is to coastal Louisiana.  Students of all colleges and majors are welcome.

Philosophy and History of the Prize:  Williams-Mystic and an anonymous donor wish to encourage writing about the world’s oceans or major water bodies. We wish to reward promising writers with the opportunity, as part of their college career, to study about and travel on the ocean and live at Mystic Seaport: The Museum of America and the Sea, the largest maritime museum in the world.  Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) was one of the greatest of our maritime authors.  He wrote both fiction (Typhoon) and nonfiction (The Mirror of the Sea).  Mystic Seaport owns and maintains the tall ship Joseph Conrad (1882), which is a historic ship that circumnavigated the world with young people.  The prize deadline is in October of each year.

This Fall, explore with us the fascinating and compelling maritime culture, history, science, policy, and literature of the Hawaiian Archipelago. Join us as we spend two weeks discovering the islands of Oahu and Hawaii (the Big Island) from an interdisciplinary perspective for our Fall 2013 Pacific Field Seminar. This experiential learning opportunity is open to sophomores, juniors, and seniors as part of the Williams-Mystic semester program.

The updated Fall 2013 Field Seminar schedule is as follows:

• Offshore Voyage: Sailing in the Gulf of Maine
• Pacific Field Seminar: Hawaii

Please check back soon for more detailed information and direct any questions to Katie Clark, Director of Admissions.

The 72^nd semester of the Williams-Mystic program began this week when students arrived (with snow flurries!) on January 21^st.  The diverse Spring 2013 class represents 10 states, 3 countries, 12 majors and 9 colleges; this group of talented and skilled students combined have run in three marathons, rung the Williams College bell, gone free diving and spearfishing, drawn cartoons for their college newspaper, and play guitar, piano, cello, violin, and sing.

During their semester, the Spring ’13 class will become shipmates and close friends as they live and study on their campus at the Mystic Seaport Museum in Mystic, CT. In approximately one week, they will fly to Key West, Florida, where they will board the SSV Corwith Cramer and begin the first of three extended field seminars.

To see what our students are up to this semester please follow our Blog (http://williamsmystic.wordpress.com/) and Facebook page (facebook.com/williamsmystic).

Following the recommendation of the Committee on Appointments and Promotions, the Williams College Board of Trustees Executive Committee has voted to promote nine faculty to the position of associate professor with tenure. The vote will be ratified by the full board in January, and the promotions will take effect July 1, 2013 for Jeannie Albrecht, computer science; Lisa Gilbert, geosciences at the Williams-Mystic program; Amy Holzapfel, theatre; Jason Josephson, religion; Sara LaLumia, economics; James Manigault-Bryant, Africana studies; Keith McPartland, philosophy; Ngonidzashe Munemo, political science; and Amanda Wilcox, classics.

Lisa Gilbert, geosciences at the Williams-Mystic Program
Gilbert’s research in marine geology and geophysics focuses on undersea volcanoes. Her work on mid-ocean ridges, seamounts, and other volcanoes has been published in Science, Geology, Geophysical Research Letters, and Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems (G3). She is involved with the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, an international effort to study the Earth’s structure and history, and several NSF-funded geoscience education initiatives.

She has been teaching marine science on the coast and at sea with Williams-Mystic since 2002. She received her A.B. from Dartmouth College and her Ph.D. from the University of Washington.

From Williams College Office of Communications

Dr. James Carlton, professor of marine sciences and director of Williams-Mystic, is a member of a group of researchers that has received a $200,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study the marine biology of Japanese tsunami debris in the U.S. The NSF has awarded $29,113 of this grant to Williams College for support of the project, titled “Collaborative Proposal: Testing the Invasion Process: Survival, Dispersal, Genetic Characterization, and Attenuation of Marine Biota on the 2011 Japanese Tsunami Marine Debris Field.”

The Japan earthquake and tsunami of March 2011 ejected into the North Pacific Ocean a vast amount of material that began landing in North America in the spring of 2012, and which continues to come ashore from Alaska to California and Hawaii.  Carlton and his colleagues on the Pacific coast are studying the diversity, condition, and biology of the marine life attached to this debris, particularly focusing on the potentially invasive species from Japanese harbors and ports.  Their work began with the arrival of a large (66 feet long x 7 feet tall x 17 feet wide, and weighing 188 tons) floating pier that originated from Misawa (northern Honshu) and landed in Oregon on June 5, and so far they have documented more than 100 species that were aboard the pier.  Carlton is now lead principal investigator on a National Science Foundation grant to continue to document the Japanese species arriving in North America and Hawaii with derelict boats, buoys, and other marine debris generated by the tsunami.

Since 1989, Carlton has served as director of the Williams-Mystic Program, where he teaches marine ecology. His research focuses on global marine bioinvasions—their ecosystem impacts, dispersal mechanisms, and management strategies—and on marine extinctions in modern times.

Carlton is the founding editor-in-chief of the international journal Biological Invasions. He is also a Pew Fellow in marine conservation and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Carlton was featured in the nationally broadcast PBS-National Geographic series “Strange Days on Planet Earth.” He is heard annually on NPR and was named an “Ocean Hero” by the Smithsonian Institution in 1995.

Carlton received his B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1971 and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis, in 1979.

From Williams College Office of Communications