Carl Brenner

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This transcript is based on a video-recorded interview deposited at MarE3, JAMSTEC (Yokosuka, Japan).

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Interview of Carl Brenner by Beatriz Martinez-Rius on 2023 Decembrer 15, Moscone Center, San Francisco, USA. [link]

Beatriz Martinez-Rius (BMR): Today is December 15 of 2023. We are in San Francisco, at the Moscone Center. I am Beatriz Martinez-Rius, postdoctoral Researcher at JAMSTEC, and I am with Carl Brenner. Thank you very much.

Carl Brenner (CB): Sure.

BMR: Can you please tell your name, affiliation and current role?

CB: I’m Carl Brenner. I am currently the director of the US Science Support Program, or USSSP, which is the Program Member Office for the United States in IODP. I’ve held that position since 2015, which is when we assumed the management of USSSP. We are advised by USAC (US Advisory Committee for Scientific Ocean Drilling), which is the acronym. And I’m at Columbia University.

BMR: I would like, first of all, to ask you about where did you grew up? How was your childhood?

CB: I actually grew up quite close to Lamont [Doherty Earth Observatory] and worked there in high school for a couple of summers, first on a volunteer basis and later for pay. I did not have an intent to be a scientist as a high school student. It was just an interesting job, I was interested in science, but I didn’t think I was going to make it my career. And what happened was, I went to college and I actually majored in music composition. And when I graduated, I had been nominated for a [music] composition grant from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. While I was waiting to hear on that, I needed a job, and I actually went back to someone who I had met when I was working at Lamont over past summers. And he hired me on a temporary basis. That office was at the time managing the Site Survey Databank for what was then DSDP [Deep Sea Drilling Project]. So we’re talking about the fall of 1978. And his boss, who later became the first director of ODP, was at sea at the time, and I was hired by this fellow who was working for him. Then, when his boss came back from sea, he assumed that I was a geologist when in fact I was not. And I was kind of afraid to tell him that I wasn’t. So I had to learn things really quickly. My first jobs actually involved making hand-drawn bathymetric maps, which I enjoyed a lot because it was kind of artistic. Nobody does that by hand anymore. Now it’s all done by computer, pretty much. And then the guy who hired me left, and Phil, his boss, basically picked me to replace him. So I became the manager of the Databank, and that was my entry point into the scientific ocean drilling.

BMR: Was your first part-time job in Columbia drawing maps?

CB: Yes.

BMR: Did it have any connection with Marie Tharp, who started seafloor mapping?

CB: I was aware of Marie’s work. She was there at the same time, but her maps were a little different. Those were more painterly. The stuff that I was doing was contouring maps. Basically what you have is a map of ship tracks, and the depths would be plotted along the navigation of the ship tracks, and we would color-code them by depth and then just sort of play connect the dots. She and Bruce Heezen were looking for a more global picture of the ocean floor, while the stuff that I was doing was a little bit more specific. Different spots around the world.

BMR: Did you enjoy this introduction to science, although you were not [trained as] a scientist?

CB: Well, I was a good student in high school, and if you were a good student in high school they steered you towards science, at that time. Because the United States was still traumatized by Sputnik and competing with the Russians. So they wanted to take smart kids and push them into science. I liked science, but I was pretty sure I was going to major in music. I thought that would probably be my career, but I got interested in geophysics and decided that was fun. The other thing about ocean drilling is, the community is incredibly welcoming. So again, I didn’t intend to be a career, but the people were so nice and the work was so interesting that it was kind of easy to just say, “Well, maybe I’m going to go in this direction.”

BMR: What kind of instruments did you play?

CB: I played keyboards. I started playing piano when I was five, but I mostly was a composer in college. I mean, I still am. I just don’t have the time to do it to the degree that I would like. But I think when I retire, in a couple of years, I’ll probably return to that.

BMR: Did you meet anyone who was influential in the career that came afterwords?

CB: Yes. I feel I was mentored by Phil (Philip) Rabinowitz. I don’t know if that name is familiar to you. Phil was my boss at Lamont, who was at sea when I was hired by his assistant. And Phil is an interesting guy, and I learned a lot from him. He moved from Columbia [University] to Texas A&M when Texas was thinking about competing for the Ocean Drilling Program management, and they subsequently got it. So he became the first director of ODP. In all honesty, our relationship frayed a little bit after that for some rather silly reasons, but he definitely taught me how to navigate within the ocean drilling world. So, big props to Phil for that.

BMR: What was your role at the Databank?

CB: Prior to drilling it’s important to collect site survey data, and you do that for two main reasons. One is to provide geological context for the drilling results. I mean, you can’t just go poking holes randomly in the ocean floor. You need to understand what’s actually going on. You need to anticipate the formations that you’re going to drill into. And the other main reason, of course, is pollution prevention and safety. So the data that are collected prior to drilling are reviewed by what is now called the Environmental Protection and Safety Panel. But at the time it had a different acronym, the PPSP [Pollution Prevention and Safety Panel]. This is a very important task, and obviously ODP and IODP have had very good safety records. You know, we’ve never had a serious environmental disaster at sea. But you can imagine how serious that could be. From a public relations and environmental standpoint, you don’t want to drill into oil with a riserless drilling vessel and not be able to control the hole and pollute the ocean floor. But there’s also a safety hazard because if you drill into gas and the gas comes up in the water column, the ship can lose its buoyancy. Down it goes. You don’t want that to happen, either.

BMR: What was exactly about, this gathering information?

CB: Different institutions and scientists would collect these data and we were basically a repository for the data. This was back before digital data was really that common. So we worked with paper copies of seismic reflection records (laughs). I know you’re laughing at me because of my age now, but that’s the way it was. And it was my job to gather that data for the safety panel, for the site survey panels. So these things could be properly contextualized.

BMR: What kind of things did you learn during those years at the Databank?

CB: I learned a lot because I had only taken one Earth science course in high school, and I didn’t really like it very much. I took one Earth science course in college, and I didn’t like it very much. I think of all the sciences, Earth science was my least favorite; but once I was immersed in it, ocean science definitely interested me. And  when I think about it, I think working with bathymetry lent a sort of artistic approach to it, and I think maybe that appealed to me a little bit. So yeah, I think that was part of the appeal, as far as what I learned. I mean, obviously I learned about plate tectonics because when you’re mapping the ocean floor, you’re seeing all these tectonically created features. So that was interesting. I also learned about the sub-seafloor because of the seismic reflection data we were imaging, the various seismic horizons. It was it was a brand new world to me.

BMR: What happened afterwards? You experienced the transition DSDP to ODP being involved in the program.

CB: Yes. It was interesting, because when Texas [A&M] got the ODP program, Phil and I were still tight, at that point. We had collaborated very closely on within the Databank and at Lamont and he trusted me. So I actually went down to College Station several times to help them set up ODP. I actually remember helping on the proposal that they submitted to NSF after they were selected … If I remember correctly, I think they were voted by what was then the JOI Board of Governors to be the operator for ODP, but they still had to write a proposal to NSF to get the funding. They were building a brand new building to house all the ODP offices. Everybody was working out of trailers. It was very primitive at the time, but it was kind of cool to get in on the ground floor. So, yeah, that was the transition to ODP. I stayed at Lamont and managed the Databank. ODP began – I guess the first expedition was in 1985, although I think TAMU (Texas A&M) was working on it since 83 or 84. I stayed at the Databank until around 1993, left Lamont for a few years and then came back in the late 1990s to work in the Borehole Research Group. At the time, Lamont was responsible for collecting all the logging data during ODP, and they collaborated with Texas A&M on the ship to collect the data. Then the data were processed at Lamont. So I got involved in that aspect.

BMR: You were more than ten years involved in the Databank.

CB: Yes, more than ten years.

BMR: What changes did you see? Not only in the data you gathered, but also in the community, in the program, in the science being done…

CB: In terms of the data itself, I was towards the end of my tenure when everyone was making the transition to digital seismic data. So instead of housing paper records, we started to collect them digitally. That was the main change that I noticed, in terms of data collection. In terms of the community… I would say that what I thought I was noticing might not have been… real. I think what I noticed was a function of my maturity. As I got more involved in things, I’m not sure whether things actually changed so much, but ODP, to me, seemed much more organized. DSDP at the time felt a little more improvisational, but it was already an international program because the so-called International Phase of Ocean Drilling began in 1975 and it was called IPOD. So I was used to working with Europeans and Japanese… Canada was also a member during IPOD. But for me, personally, with Phil now in Texas, I was on my own and my role grew, so I just started going to a lot more meetings, and meeting many more people, and getting more immersed in the science. So, again, it’s possible there wasn’t really a change in the program; it was just a change that I perceived because my career was advancing. But what I noticed back then, and I think is true to this day, is how welcoming the community is, because I remember going to my very first meeting as the Databank representative and it was a Safety Panel Meeting. I didn’t know anything about anything, really, at the time. The chairman of the Safety Panel was Lou Garrison, who later was hired by Phil to work at the Ocean Drilling Program at TAMU. Lou was a wonderful guy, but he just treated me like I was one of the scientists. And, you know, that means a lot to a young person coming into a community. I think that has always been the way scientific ocean drilling works. Now that I’m a senior person, I try to do that for the grad[uate] students. Just continue to pay it forward.

BMR: That’s very true. Going back to something that you said, what was your first experience with non-U.S. researchers?

CB: I’m not sure I can think of a specific first experience. I can definitely tell you some of my early experience with non-U.S. scientists. At the time, Phil was collaborating with a number of French scientists. I remember going to France and working with them. I remember them visiting the office at Lamont and meeting them that way. I remember very distinctly picking up a Soviet scientist who was visiting the Databank back when – this was during the time of the Soviet Union, and they were members of, I guess, IPOD or early ODP, I can’t quite remember. But that was kind of a big deal for me, to go get him. I remember I picked him up at JFK Airport or something, and we were driving back and he begged me to take him to Times Square. We had to stop in Times Square before we got back to Lamont. And so I remember doing that. But again, it was it was very… I mean, it was like a new world opening up to collaborate with overseas scientists, and to meet people, and make friends. Again, to this day, some of my closest friends in ocean drilling are not based in the United States. That’s a pretty wonderful opportunity.

BMR: During ODP you were representative of the Databank in all these Advisory Panels. What was the most challenging or difficult and the most valuable or rewarding of those meetings?

CB: I will say, personally, in terms of the challenge, knowing that I came from a non-science background. I was self-conscious about that. I had a small case of imposter syndrome where I would be at a meeting, and people would react to me because of the title I have, and they would assume that I knew more than I really knew. And that was something that was a bit of a struggle for me for a couple of years, until I just got more comfortable with my knowledge. So for me, the first challenge was just feeling like I belonged. And, you know, it’s one thing that people were very kind to you. It’s another thing to feel like you really belong and to make a contribution. I think, in a way, when I got to that point, that was kind of the reward for me to start to feel really comfortable in the community. But I also remember working with high upper management in ODP and even NSF, in terms of starting to plan for the program. And that’s a part of my job now that I really, really enjoy. The planning for the future, managing, making sure that things work right. I don’t know, it just makes you feel like you’re really making a contribution. So, again, when I got to that level, it made the job much more rewarding.

BMR: Please, tell me about your position after the Databank. Why did you shift?

CB: I actually had a pretty serious health problem. I came down with a case of Lyme disease. I was unable to work, I was really unable to manage the Databank at that point because I was so compromised. That was why I left Lamont for a little while. Then, as my health slowly returned and I came back, I went to the Borehole Group because that was where the opening was to get my foot back in the door. It was a totally different experience, where I was once again kind of coming in on the ground floor, learning a whole new type of dataset. With borehole data what you’re doing is, after the core is removed from the ocean floor, you’re inserting geophysical tools down, measuring characteristics of the borehole wall. It’s a completely different dataset and it’s a very useful complementary dataset, because you don’t always recover all of the core that you drill. So if you pull up a core that’s supposed to have fifteen feet of depth or something, but there’s only six feet of core in there and it’s all at the bottom, you can use logging data to figure out where the core belongs in the drilled hole. I learned a lot there. (I learned among other things that there are probably more acronyms in borehole research than in any other part of IODP.) I actually was doing outreach work for a little while, as well, which is another thing I was not trained for. But I enjoyed that. I think that at the time our outreach in ocean drilling was still fairly primitive. There wasn’t a lot of money for it. There still, in my opinion, is not enough money for outreach. But… yeah, that was kind of interesting. I did that up until 2013 or 14. That was a time of change in the Borehole Group, because there were some changes in management structure and Lamont lost the contract to operate the logging operations. So many of us were going to lose our jobs. At the same time, the National Science Foundation announced that they were putting out a request for proposals to manage the US Science Support Program, which had been managed for decades by a group in Washington, D.C., and now NSF was opening it up for competition. I was kind of interested in doing this, anyway. So I submitted a proposal for that, and that was how the USSSP program came to me. So I hopped from Databank to Borehole, and then to US Science Support Program. I’ve worn a lot of different hats through the years, which is probably true for a lot of scientists in the ocean drilling community.

BMR: When you talk about the Borehole Group, are you talking about the international Advisory Group?

CB: No, it was actually the group that collected the data on the ship. They would lease tools from Schlumberger, which is still the case now – it’s just that TAMU does that, rather than Lamont doing it. There were advisory groups for it, and the Borehole Group was ultimately internationalized because there were groups in Europe and Japan, in particular, who were doing borehole research and we were collaborating with them.

BMR: Were you the one who mediated between the companies providing the instruments and the scientists making the scientific proposals, if I understood it correctly?

CB: What had happened during DSDP was that it was recognized that logging was a useful tool, but there was no imperative to log every hole. At the beginning of ODP, it was felt that it might be a good idea to separate logging from drilling because there was historically a bias toward drilling. Scientists at sea, if time was limited at a drill site and they were ever given a choice between drilling or logging, for the most part would always choose drilling. So when you had limited time, it was felt that it might be good to have an advocate for logging and to make sure that the log data were collected and processed, [that it] became part of the overall dataset for an expedition. So when Lamont took that over they had a subcontractor, Schlumberger, from whom they leased the tools. The tools were on the ship all the time, and they were used by a logging scientist who was sent out on every expedition by the Lamont group. That was the way the data were collected and processed by Lamont and folded into the expedition dataset.

BMR: Thank you. I was trying to understand really what was the Borehole Group because I haven’t heard about them before. I heard about the Advisory Group on logging operations at ODP and IODP structure, but not about that one.

CB: Yeah. So that started at the beginning of ODP. So mid-1980s.

BMR: You were there in the period of transition from ODP to IODP.

CB: Yes, but I was not actively involved in that. It wasn’t my job role at the time. I was not so involved in that transition. I could try to talk to you about it, but I think you have better sources for information about that transition.

BMR: Do you recall the environment among scientists when looking towards the future of scientific ocean drilling? How it changed, from the perspective of the ambitions that emerged then with respect to the previous transition?

CB: Obviously the big change with IODP was the introduction of additional platforms besides the JR (JOIDES Resolution). I think people were pretty excited about that because the JOIDES Resolution is a fantastic tool, but it cannot drill in all environments. And with Chikyu, you had the ability suddenly to drill in areas that the JR couldn’t touch or couldn’t safely touch because it didn’t have a riser. And with the Mission Specific Platforms you could go and drill in very, very shallow water, for example, which the JR was not able to do. So IODP definitely represented an increase in the number and types of environments that we could drill in. And so that was pretty exciting. I, again, was not so much involved in management decisions, but it was a very different management model that was explored with the beginning of IODP. There was a centralized IODP management office, and I think the consensus was in retrospect that that didn’t work so well. So with the second iteration of IODP – the first one was the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, obviously – with the International Ocean Discovery Program, the three platform operators each did their own thing under a unified advisory structure but not centrally managed. I think the consensus was that [that] worked a little better. But again, I was not involved in IODP-MI (IODP Management International). I’m just repeating scuttlebutt.

BMR: When IODP began you moved to a new US Science Support office, if I understood correctly.

CB: The US Science Support Office had always been managed in Washington. I think the names of the group changed over time, but it was functionally pretty similar thing. I don’t actually know what happened with USSSP at the beginning of IODP. I don’t know whether there was a change in management structure of USSSP. I just don’t know. There was a group called JOI, Joint Oceanographic Institutions, that were then folded into Ocean Leadership. You might have heard of it. Ocean Leadership managed USSSP until the time we took it over. I didn’t pay that much attention to USSSP, honestly, before 2014. So, I had to learn pretty quickly what was involved about.

BMR: You entered there directly as a director.

CB: Yeah.

BMR: What was your new job? What things you had to learn?

CB: It was another case of coming in and feeling a little bit unsteady, because I was in a new environment, with new responsibilities. I remember again, however, this welcoming environment of the other program member officers whom I was working with. It certainly has been the most responsibility that I’ve ever had in ocean drilling. And it’s a demanding job. I feel very much like the US science community is my flock, and I have to make sure… (noise interrupts) I feel very responsible for the US science community and I want to make sure that as many scientists as possible are given an opportunity to participate in ocean drilling. That at times feels like… a heavy load. Because you are helping people’s careers. You’re putting them in a position to succeed and that’s, I think, a very important part of the job. You are looking to see that the best science gets done. You’re looking to create opportunities for young scientists, and you’re looking to leverage the wisdom of the senior scientists in the community. We have an advisory committee, called the US Advisory Committee for Scientific Ocean Drilling. The people who we inherited when we took over management of USSSP (US Science Support Program) on the USAC committee were all also very helpful in communicating to how to handle this. I would also say that some of the people who were in the former USSSP at Ocean Leadership were also helpful. Particularly Charna Meth, because in that situation – it was very awkward, because Charna had lost her job when we won the competition for USSSP, and yet she still went out of her way to help us set up the office and give us some insights as to how to manage things. And I will always be grateful to her for that.

BMR: How does this competition work? What do you need to win the…?

CB: Well, I’m not sure how it used to work. Currently, our award from the National Science Foundation is in the form of cooperative agreement. It’s not like a pure grant, where you just get the money and you get to do whatever you want. You are in a relationship with the National Science Foundation, and we do things and consult with them frequently. It’s understood that we’re going do the typical support for U.S. scientists on drillships. What’s unusual about USSSP, compared to the other program member offices, is that we pay salaries of US scientists who sail at sea. Most people from Europe, or Japan, or India collect their university salary when they’re at sea. But in the United States, we set up sub-awards to the people’s universities, and then they invoice us for their salaries. So it makes our budget quite large, compared to the other program member offices. And there’s a lot of administration involved in that, as well. But in terms of the competition, what happened was – Ocean Leadership had been managing USSSP for quite some time. And it is sort of understood in the United States that it isn’t desirable to let a single institution manage something ad infinitum. It’s important to give other groups the opportunity. So in 2013 or so, NSF decided that they needed to open it up, create a competition for USSSP. They put out a request for proposals in 2014, and several groups in the United States responded to that request for proposals and competed for that cooperative agreement. NSF assembled a panel of reviewers to look at the various proposals and we were selected for funding

BMR: How has been the response of NSF? How has been this relationship [of USSSP] with the government?

CB: I think it’s actually been quite good. I’ve had a string of excellent program managers, which is nice. The first one I had was Tom Janecek. Tom had worn several hats within NSF and had, in fact, been involved in IODP-MI as well, so he knew the program inside out. I had actually met Tom years earlier at Lamont, when he was doing a post-doc there. Tom was also a staff scientist for TAMU during the ODP time. So I had intersected with him in a couple of different ways throughout history, but not for quite a while in the period prior to the USSSP competition. Tom was working at the time with Jamie Allen at the NSF, and I had also worked with Jamie when he was a staff scientist at Texas A&M. When I put in the proposal for USSSP, my role in the logging group at the time was not a very high level role. But because Tom and Jamie knew me from the Databank days – I think that was helpful, just because I had an existing relationship and a track record with them. I’m sure they knew everybody else who responded with proposals, as well. But I felt very comfortable with both of them because I had a history with them. Tom was really my program manager. Jamie was looking after TAMU and the International Science Support Office, which is now managed by Charna. So I spent a lot of time working with Tom. Tom retired in 2018 or so, and Jamie inherited me. And so he was my program manager and still is, although he’s getting ready to retire and Kevin Johnson is just taking over. I mean, Kevin is nominally my program manager now, but with Jamie there, it’s not an exclusive Carl-Kevin relationship. We’re getting there, but it’s not quite that yet.

BMR: How, how does it work? How do you relate with the NSF, with your Project Manager?

CB: Every year we write an annual program plan and we tell NSF what we plan to do. Many of these tasks have been done for years, and it’s understood that USSSP will look after the staffing of US scientists on its ship. We don’t get the final decision, but U.S. scientists apply to our office. Their applications are reviewed by our advisory committee and then by USSSP itself. And then we submit our nominations and ratings to the operators of the vessels. So, to MarE3 (note: Chikyu’s operator at JAMSTEC), or to JRSO (JOIDES Resolution Science Operator), or ESO (note: ECORD Science Operator, of the European consortium), and then the co-chiefs work with the operators to do the final staffing. But they always check back with the Program Member Offices and say, “This is what we’re planning to do. Is this okay with you?.” It’s an iterative process and a very cooperative one. That is an important task that we do. We then have to take care of the logistics for the scientists to get them to sea. We do their travel and we pay them while they are at sea, and we also fund them to do post-cruise research. That’s all of the expedition-related tasks; that’s gone on for years and years. We also help with program planning in the US by funding workshops and pre-drilling activities. We have a new set of programs called Novel Projects, which we started in the last few years with NSF’s blessing. These are funded with dollars that were saved up during the COVID era (note: Covid-19 pandemic) when we were not implementing expeditions andsailing scientists. We didn’t have to pay people to go to sea. So we had extra funds and every year, and now announce a call for projects for U.S. scientists to do innovative research that helps look at drilling data or helps with outreach or career development. I think that’s been very successful. We also have to pay the salaries of the US panel chairs. For example, the chair of the JOIDES Resolution Facility Board gets a salary because that’s a very demanding job, as well. And they’re paid through the [U.S. Science Support] Office. We have a very large, compared to the past, very large outreach effort, and that’s becoming an increasingly important part of our portfolio as well. So NSF, initially in the program announcement, when they were requesting proposals to be submitted, set out this array of tasks that they expected from the USSSP office. So you write the proposal toward those tasks, but you’re always adding your own seasoning and innovations when you have the opportunity to do that. But again, that’s done pretty collaboratively with NSF. We don’t just wander off the reservation, we don’t do our own thing without letting them know.

BMR: Maybe another set of skills you had to learn, just to interact with other hierarchies.

CB: Yes. I mean, I had some of that from managing the Databank, but certainly collaborating on management issues is something that actually I enjoy a lot. I always like working with the operators. That’s just – you’re building an expedition together, you’re moving the chess pieces, getting the right people in place for it. I find that really rewarding. With IODP, with an international program, there’s a lot of politics in terms of dealing with – you know, with the other Program Member Offices, the non-US leaders in the community. I enjoy that a lot, I mean, that can be trying at times. Not everybody sees eye to eye all the time, but everybody’s generally pulling in the same direction. And I get a kick out of working with managers and scientists in Europe and Japan, and Australia, and India, Brazil in the past, Korea, China…

BMR: Have you found any difficulty or in a process of learning to communicate when relating to experts from other countries or other backgrounds?

CB: I’m not quite sure I understand the question.

BMR: Were there any cultural differences in communicating science or other things, that you have found?

CB: Yes, they’ve not been huge, but there are cultural differences and you learn to adapt to those on the fly. I think it’s always easiest for Americans, to be honest, because obviously English is the international language of science. I think of the US as a sort of historical leader of scientific ocean drilling. You know, it’s sort of like the United States globally… You’re in a position where people tend to be forced to adapt to you. I don’t think that’s necessarily a wonderful thing, but I think it may be easiest probably to be a program manager on the US side within IODP. I think. I might be wrong. I mean, we have our challenges to, for sure. But I do like the negotiations and the collaborations that go on with people in my role in other program managers.

BMR: Cultural doesn’t necessary mean different countries, but cultural is also the field of expertise, operators, scientists…

CB: Yes, but I’m dealing mostly with scientists and managers. I don’t deal… My job just doesn’t put me in touch with technicians, for the most part. It’s different to deal with, say, NSF than it is to deal with a European scientist or a Japanese scientist. That takes a different skill set. But, you know, after a while, you just move comfortably there. I think it takes a degree of emotional intelligence to manage a Program Member Office, because… I mean, it sounds very self-important, and I don’t want to… But, again, you’re responsible for the careers of – in the United States – literally hundreds of people. I mean, you’re not solely responsible, but you have an impact on that. And you want to do right, for these people who want to advance and make their contribution and their mark. So you really try to be sensitive to their aspirations.

One of the hard parts of the job is when people are not successful. We have, for example, a graduate fellowship program that’s quite competitive, where graduate students apply to get funding from USSSP for a year-worth of support to pursue science projects. And the majority of them are not successful. Writing those notifcation letters is tough. Writing what we call the winner letters are a lot of fun. But, you know, writing the letters to the people who are not successful, it’s much harder to deal with it. That’s a painful part of the job. That’s the part I like the least, for sure. But when you’re in a position to help people and you get that email back from them, expressing the thrill that they’re feeling, to get invited to a sail, or to win a fellowship, or to get a proposal funded, that’s a great thing. That’s a really rewarding part of the job.

BMR: If we have time, I would like to talk about outreach activities. But before moving to that, is there something about program management that we have not touched and you would like to discuss?

CB: Can’t really think of right now. I’m sure I’ll think of it, you know, tonight, afterwards.

BMR: So let’s talk about outreach. How did you get interested in outreach, in the first place?

CB: Well, in all honesty, I would have to say that I didn’t bring a burning desire to do outreach to my job at the Borehole Group, but I had some skills, maybe, that were helpful in that. That was when I first came on board. That was where I got slotted in. I think within the National Science Foundation there’s a much greater appreciation now for outreach than there was twenty or thirty years ago. I think maybe twenty or thirty years ago, everyone was starting to catch on how important it was. And it really is, because NSF is funded with taxpayer dollars and it’s important for taxpayers to understand what they’re investing in. They’re entitled to know. And it’s important educationally and culturally to have a society where people are educated scientifically and they’re scientifically literate. So, I think, for a long time there was this feeling that a dollar spent on outreach was a dollar not spent on science, and that was perhaps shortsighted. I think now we’re past that, but it’s still in many ways – scientific ocean drilling it’s not a wealthy program and it’s hard to find resources for outreach, especially when there is still a need for science dollars. People talk about the fact that there are an awful lot of people in the United States that aren’t aware of IODP or the JR or scientific ocean drilling, despite its incredible impact. And I agree, that’s shame. It’s often compared to NASA—for example, people will say, “We should be as well-known as NASA. They just, they’re going up, we’re going down. But it’s still fantastic science.” The statistic that I keep coming back to is that the NASA’s outreach budget is greater than the entire IODP budget on an annual basis! So it’s a little hard to succeed without outreach. USSSP has a great outreach team now. I feel really fortunate. I think they’ve done some wonderful things. And I don’t feel like I personally should be the one to present about or talk about our group’s outreach. And if I do, it’s done humbly and with respect to my team. I think we’re doing a better job of leveraging social media. For quite a while now, there have been ship to shore video events from the JOIDES Resolution to schools. I think that’s great, because then you’re reaching the kids at a young, impressionable age, getting them interested in ocean science. So that’s something. But for many years it was very seat of the pants. It was like, “oh, here’s 7 dollars. Let’s do some outreach.” Now we have a budget that allows us to do more. Again, at the beginning of our management of USSP, there was a hard ceiling on the amount of spending we were allowed to do on average; that was written into the award. I don’t know, maybe I shouldn’t say this, but we are spending through that level now. I’m sure NSF is aware of that. We are showing them in our quarterly and annual reports. And I think they’re fine with that. But again, it’s easy now because we had the funds from the COVID period that gave us a little bit of extra ceiling to spend on outreach. And I think that’s money well invested. My team has been very innovative in thinking of new ways to do outreach. It’s a very creative field, right now. I can tell you about some of the programs that we do. For years now, there’s been a program called the School of Rock, which sails teachers during transits of the JR. So if the ship was transiting from a port to a different port over ten days, we might put twelve to fifteen to twenty teachers out there at different levels. They get a crash course in ocean drilling science and then they will write lesson plan, which we can put on our website. And then, of course, they bring their experiences back to their schools. So you get this kind of snowballing effect, and they act as evangelists for the program. We’ve also recently started something called the JR Academy over the last few years, where we sail undergraduates, again on transits. That’s a group that has kind of been historically neglected in the United States because we’ve done a lot of work for with graduate students, but less so with undergraduates. So now we give them the opportunity to go to sea, get that same kind of crash course. Each academy has a different emphasis scientifically. So that’s a new feather in our cap.

BMR: In general, there’s lot of misunderstanding among people who doesn’t know scientific ocean drilling, misunderstanding scientific research as industrial or resource drilling. How have you deal with that? Have you seen any evolution in the time you’ve been in the program?

CB: I think we’ve always been able to articulate the difference pretty easily, when it comes up. I remember there once was an incident, I think it was probably during ODP, when there was an Antarctic expedition for scientific ocean drilling. One of the environmental groups was Greenpeace, actually. [They] reacted in a very panic stricken way, feeling that somehow we were some sort of exploration effort on behalf of the industry, and it was completely off the mark. That actually was uncomfortable for us. It was quite irritating to a lot of the scientists, who otherwise were very sympathetic, of course, to everything that Greenpeace was trying to do. But we felt pretty misunderstood and did not really appreciate that a great deal. When we have open house events or we go out and we talk to the public, we do sometimes get questions about that. But again, energy companies drill for oil. They are, for the most part, not interested in recovering cores. They’re not interested in coring, except to the extent that it gives them clues about the formations that they’re drilling into. We’re one of the only groups that is desperately trying not to hit oil when we drill. So again, that’s pretty easy to explain once you’re given the opportunity to do it.

BMR: Now that you have spent your career related to science, what are your thoughts on science and the scientific community? How this has shaped your worldview?

CB: I think everyone should be scientifically literate. I think the scientific method is one of the great wonders of human invention. I’ve always loved science, even if I didn’t necessarily want to be a scientist. I can honestly say that I have a great deal of pride and comfort from the way I have spent my career, because I think that ocean drilling is really a very, very important undertaking. And I don’t think everyone necessarily feels that way about their job. If I’m having a bad day and I’ve got to write some of those letters that I don’t really want to write, I can still contextualize the entire thing and say, “All right , this was a way to spend a life.” It wasn’t the way I was anticipating I was going to spend my life. But, you know, not everyone plans everything out from their childhood. I mean, I had friends, when I was a kid, they knew they were going to be a doctor. They knew they were going to be an artist. I was not one of those people. You know, to the extent I knew anything, I was I knew I was going to be a musician, but I never really knew it. And I think in retirement I might do that as well. Thinking about retirement, too, one of the things that I will truly miss is the community. I want to make sure that I stay in touch with my friends and with the achievements of ocean drilling, regardless of whether or not I’m still involved in a career fashion.

BMR: How do you see the future of scientific ocean drilling?

CB: This is a major transition. I was not so involved in the transition between ODP and IODP or between IODP-1 [Integrated Ocean Drilling Program] and IODP-2 [International Ocean Discovery Program]. This feels unsettling in a lot of ways because there seems to be a great deal of uncertainty about how we will collaborate, if we will collaborate internationally. I think all the scientists want to, I think the funding agencies want to, but there’s a difference between talk and investment. So I’m concerned, but still kind of confident in the ingenuity of the community to adapt to a different program model. Certainly in the United States, we’re unlikely to have the use of the JOIDES Resolution on a regular basis like we’ve been used to for the last few decades. And that is a loss. But again, I think we will adapt. I think there’s certainly a groundswell of effort to get a new drillship, and I think NSF is interested in pursuing that. But that does have a long timeline. That’s something that goes twelve years in the best case scenario, to build a new drillship. So we’ve got to figure out a way to do good science, either with existing cores, or acquiring cores through other means. It’s going to take a little bit of creativity and ingenuity, but I think we’ll figure it out.

BMR: My last question is, what is the thing you value the most that you have learned during your time in the community?

CB: There are different levels. There’s the science level, there’s what I’ve learned, what I’ve appreciated… Appreciating the brilliance of some of the scientists that I’ve worked with, and this is pretty awesome. But there’s also the relationships that you have; and I think, in many ways, that’s what I’m going to carry with me because I feel like I would have always been interested in the science. There are articles in newspapers about ocean drilling achievements, I know I would have been interested in those. I would have learned a lot of what I have learned anyway, but I would never have made these friends that I’ve made of over the years, if I wasn’t plopped into the middle of this program and in this environment. So that’s probably the most significant thing for me.