Resources

Tools for Research

Oceanographic data, analysis and presentation: I have collected a range of tools for accessing oceanographic data, analysing it, and presenting the results. These now live at ObservationalOceanography.com. I often refer students to this website when they are interested in accessing one of the many publicly available datasets online, whether satellite or hydrography.

For women in oceanography

Women are under-represented in oceanography, particularly at the more advanced career stages. There are a few mentoring-type resources available, both of which I’ve benefited from extensively in different ways.

MPOWIR

Mentoring Physical Oceanography Women to Increase Retention (MPOWIR) – This is a US-based organisation with conferences for women in oceanography, townhall meetings at the AGU Ocean Sciences, and other resources on their website

ESWN

Earth Science Women’s Network – this is an online network open to women around the world in earth science-related disciplines. There are online forums to participate in, a Facebook page, casual dinners at various conferences, etc. It’s a great online community of women, which can be particularly helpful if you’re one of few women in your department or organisation.

Resources for Teaching

Flipped learning - making videos

I have been experimenting with ‘flipped learning’ ideas in my classes, particularly to teach Matlab to students without any prior programming experience. For this class, I developed a series of podcast-style micro lectures. Since I am a Mac user, I found some tools to create these podcasts using Keynote and Garageband. - The process is outlined here: Creating a Podcast using Keynote. - If you would additionally like to ‘watermark’ your videos, see a method to do that here: Watermarking in Quicktime.

Rotating table practicals

Both for public outreach and teaching in physical oceanography classes, I use the Weather in a Tank rotating table system. I outline the method we use to record and archive videos of experiments, using a Mac. See here: Rotating table recordings.

Opportunities

for undergraduates

• Careers in oceanography – Job and career sites, and information about the annual Ocean careers fair at the NOC
• Summer placement opportunities for undergraduates at the University of Southampton, within the UK and abroad.
• Awards for undergrads – different places you can apply for awards for work you’ve done, or travel awards to go to meetings, etc.

for graduates

• PhD projects at the Graduate school of the National Oceanography Centre. The application is typically due in January.

Postdoctoral opportunities

• Academic Jobs in the UK: See the website jobs.ac.uk – This is a useful collection of academic jobs in the UK and you can set up e-mail alerts to find jobs of interest to you.
• Postdoctoral fellowships. See the page Join the Group to find out more about postdoc fellowships for the UK

Outreach

I am a STEM Ambassador, registered with the Hampshire-area ambassadors through the Winchester Science Centre. I am interested in volunteering in science clubs in the Southampton city area. Please contact me if you are interested in outreach possibilities.

I also lecture for the Discover Oceanography programme at Southampton. You can find out more about these opportunities at http://www.discoveroceanography.co.uk.