Holly Given

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

The transcripts of the research project Oral Histories of Scientific Ocean Drilling are polished representations of oral conversations, and are intended solely for the purpose of preserving and documenting personal accounts and memories. They are not a literary product, and are not intended to exhibit literary qualities.

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Interview of Holly Given by Beatriz Martinez-Rius on 2025 October 30, online [link]

Beatriz Martinez-Rius (BMR): Today is October 30th of 2025. I am Beatriz Martinez-Rius, historian of science at JAMSTEC, and I am with Holly Eissler Given in a virtual interview. Thank you so much.

Holly Given (HG): You’re welcome.

BMR: First of all, also for the recording, can you please tell me your name and your latest affiliation and position?

HG: I’m Holly Given, and I retired from UC San Diego in 2020. The last project I worked on was the Science Support Office for IODP.

BMR: Just in one sentence, what has been your relationship to scientific ocean drilling?

HG: Oh, I would say that the second half of my career was spent working with scientific ocean drilling as, really, a program manager and administrator in various roles within the program.

BMR: Great. So, we will proceed chronologically. We will start from the beginning of your career and then move up until focusing on the second half of your career. So, where did you grow up and how was your childhood like?

HG: I grew up in the United States, in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. My childhood was average, I would say. I lived with my two parents and it was fine.

BMR: Were your parents related to science or engineering, in some way?

HG: My father was an electrical engineer, and he really spent most of his career with the company Motorola, helping plan their consumer electronics line, televisions, and so on. And my mother was a secretary, working in our schools and in various places. I was the middle child of three. I loved science, as a child. Mostly I got into it by watching the stars and learning about the constellations. I was kind of an introverted child. I didn’t have a lot of friends so, really, I turned inward and spent a lot of time reading about the world and science.

BMR: What led you to physics?

HG: It really started from this love of astronomy, but I wanted to understand how things worked. I liked this world of… I liked the feeling of wisdom, of knowing about the world, of how the Earth worked. And, at the time and place that I grew up, girls weren’t really encouraged to go into science, but I could tell that there was more to the world than I saw around me in the suburbs, and I wanted to be part of that. I wanted to be part of that larger world.

My father’s undergraduate degree was in Physics, and I thought that if I’d majored in Physics, I could really go anywhere from there, and I could get a job, and I could go on to graduate school in different fields, and so on. But I knew I would be able to engage with the wider world, which at that time was really a man’s world, if I had this basic degree in Physics.

BMR: But then, as I read in your CV, you turned into Earth sciences, right? What moved you there?

HG: Yeah. When I finished the requirements for my bachelor’s degree early, so I took some geology electives, and I really, really liked it. I liked the idea of being out in the field and – I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Illinois – but it’s very… nondescript. There really isn’t apparent geology because it was part of the glacial outwash. It’s very flat. There are no mountains. We went on a fieldtrip to northern Michigan where there were some mines, and I just liked the idea of being in the field. So, I took a lot of geology courses in my last year. I actually had a job offer from Shell Oil to go work in New Orleans as a geophysicist, but I decided to go to graduate school, instead.

The short answer for “why geophysics” is that I wanted to get out of Illinois (laughs). That’s the short answer. Every place I applied to graduate school was on the West Coast in California, and I got in everywhere, and I kind of went from there.

BMR: How is the environment like, in your graduate school?

HG: I finished my degree in 1986. How was the environment…? That’s a whole other conversation. I mean, it was great to be at Caltech. I had been accepted there as an undergraduate, and my parents said, “No, it’s too far away, it’s too expensive”. So, I went to University of Illinois but finally, when I got accepted there as a graduate student, there was no question that that’s where I would go, because that’s where, you know, the “Gods of Physics” were, and I wanted to be a part of all that. I loved Southern California. It was such a wonderful relief from the Midwest where I had grown up. I loved everything about California.

The social environment was actually kind of tough because the ratio of men to women on campus at that time, and in the student body, was 7 to 1, so there weren’t a lot of women around. And that was kind of tough on me, because I felt very challenged in a way that I hadn’t felt as an undergraduate at University of Illinois, where there were a lot of women around – not in physics, but they were around. So, yeah, I mean, I’m really glad I went there for graduate school, I made lifelong friends, but at times it was a little tough.

BMR: Was there any mentor, anyone particularly influential during those years that kind of drove your research path?

HG: Yeah, I think a lot of people. First of all, my thesis advisor, Hiroo Kanamori – he is perhaps the most famous seismologist alive. He’s still with us, in his 90s; and he was just the kindest, most wonderful man. I was drawn to working with him because he was doing very interesting projects about earthquake source mechanisms, but he was just also a wonderful person. So, I would say Hiroo was very important to me. He was my advisor, but he was also a wonderful person.

And a lot of the other students… In fact, I met my first husband there, and he was also a wonderful man and, I think, helped giving me confidence that I could do this and succeed.

BMR: What kind of things did you learn from Hiroo Kanamori?

HG: He was always a little bit enigmatic because he just loves science, and he really didn’t care about anything else. I mean, he was a kind person, but really, he didn’t engage in drama, or talk about people, or anything like that. He was very fair to people. He really just cared about the science. But he was also very, very human person. He respected people no matter what their abilities. And was… Just a great person. Is a great person.

BMR: I hope I can have the chance to meet him at some point. What were your research interests once you finished your PhD?

HG: I was interested in seismic hazards and earthquake source mechanisms. I didn’t really like coding, and I didn’t like working alone in the office. I liked situations where I could work closely with other people, and talk, and interact, and throw ideas around. So, I thought I would have a career in studying earthquakes, or seismicity, or seismic hazard… That type of thing. It’s really kind of almost an accident that I ended up having the career I did.

BMR: Actually, that was the next thing I wanted to ask you. How did it happen that you move from scientific research to more administrative roles?

HG: It really was because of my postdoc project that I got at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, which is within UC San Diego. I wanted to stay in southern California and there was an opportunity to have a postdoc with this man called Jon [Jonathan] Berger, a geophysicist at the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics here at Scripps, who was working on this really neat, unusual project that was privately funded to work with the Soviet Academy of Sciences – I’m showing my age here – to build seismic stations around the Soviet test site in Kazakhstan. This was during Gorbachev and Reagan. We could diverge and talk about that for a while, but it was really a fun, neat project. Jon just needed somebody to help him organize the thing, and I just showed up at the right time, and he hired me. It was really wonderful.

So, that’s the first time I really worked with seismic instrumentation. I worked on a project with a big team, an international team, and I realized I had skills that were useful to organize these types of complex international science and technology projects. And I just loved the aspect of teamwork.

BMR: It must have been a really big impact, to go to the Soviet Union at those times, like a young woman, probably the only around… How was it, how was experience like?

HG: Oh, it was fabulous. But, I mean, you were right about all those things. I was 29, I think, when we first went there, and I really had never been out of the country – except one time I went to a meeting in Mexico. I grew up in Illinois, I went to California and then, I’m on a plane to Moscow which, you know, as an American, we always heard scary things about Moscow. It was just a very foreign place and a big adventure. It really was a wonderful project. I learned a lot. And it had a lot of camaraderie. We did important things, because it turns out that this project was sort of a proof of concept for the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and it’s often talked about as one of the pieces that laid the groundwork for that Treaty.

BMR: How did that experience shape your career?

HG: Oh, that was huge because, basically, I said that the second half of my career was ocean drilling, but the first half was building seismic stations and networks. So, I learned an incredible amount about seismic instrumentation that I really hadn’t ever learned in graduate school, because data, seismic data, was something that somebody else provided and we worked with. So, I learned a lot about instrumentation, and what are the conditions you need for a good seismic station, and how to operate networks and data transmission, and things like that.

It turns out that my department at Scripps was one of the providers for the IRIS Global Seismographic Network, the GSN. This is the network that all seismologists in the world still today use as their primary data source. If you ever see anybody on TV talking about, you know, the earthquake in Kamchatka, they were using data from that network. So, when the Soviet project ended, I stayed at Scripps as a principal person in the Scripps component of the IRIS GNS. I had that job till 1997, when I left to go to my next position in Vienna, which was also building seismic stations and seismic networks.

BMR: Maybe this is a bit of a divergence but, as you were talking about this, I was thinking that it looks like there was big government support and funding to this seismic network during the time you were there. How does it compare to the support or the attention that the US government has given to other international projects or initiatives later on?

HG: I’m not sure if you’re talking about the project with the Soviet Union or the project with the Global Seismograph Network.

BMR: Well, I understood that they were kind of related, even if they were different projects. I understood that both were pursuing the installation of seismological stations and data sharing.

HG: Those two projects actually weren’t related. The work in the Soviet Union was not government-funded – but that was very unusual, and it’s just because of the time. At that time, the US did not support a comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty – that changed later on. But the other one, the IRIS GSN, that was a well-funded project. We didn’t worry about funding because it was part of the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP). So, it was understood in Washington, at least at that time, that this was a baseline national priority and something that had fairly stable funding. I can’t speak – I don’t think anybody can – to what’s happening with U.S. science funding today.

BMR: I see. How did you learn about scientific ocean drilling for the first time?

HG: This is really an interesting question. I really didn’t know much about scientific ocean drilling. I guess I knew in the background that the project existed, because I peripherally knew people when I worked at Scripps who were involved in it. But I was looking for a job and the president of the Joint Oceanographic Institutions (JOI), which was the predecessor to Consortium for Ocean Leadership, was looking for a program director for the US Science Support Program. He had heard about me from one of my old colleagues at Scripps who was on the advisory board to this program, and so I got this phone call out of the blue from this man, Steve Bohlen, asking me if I would be interested in talking to him about a management position. At the time, I had left my job in Vienna to take a position in Florida which, in retrospect, was a mistake. It was not a job I liked; my family wasn’t happy in Florida; and so, I was actively trying to find another job and, I think, people knew. That’s when I seriously started learning about scientific ocean drilling, when Steve Bohlen approached me to ask me if I’d work for him.

BMR: What was JOI, and what was your role there?

HG: Joint Oceanographic Institutions (JOI) was a nonprofit consortium of oceanographic institutions that were members of it. They had the contract from National Science Foundation to run the drillship [note: the JOIDES Resolution] and manage participation of US scientists in the program [note: ODP]. So, before IODP, as you know, there was ODP, which was an American-led program. JOI was basically the implementer for National Science Foundation of ODP.

BMR: I have two related questions. One is, what had you learned, during the first half of your career, that was useful in that new position? And what kind of things you needed to learn about?

HG: The first thing I had to learn – I had to learn what the program was, and I didn’t really know much geology, right? I came from a physics background, so I knew about physics and I knew about earthquakes, but I didn’t really know basic things like the geologic time scale. I mean, I didn’t know it by heart; I would have to go look it up in a book. So, if people were talking about this era or this epoch, I would have to go look in a book to see what came before what. So, I had to learn basic things like that. I knew that the ocean sediments were basically a timeline for the ocean. I knew that the chemistry of ocean sediments was a proxy for what the chemistry of the ocean had been at that time, but I had no idea that the Ocean Drilling Program was studying where currents used to be, and how currents change with time, and how the monsoons were affected by the position of the tectonic plates… I had no idea about things like that. It was fascinating for me to learn about all the scientific hypotheses that could be addressed with this tool of ocean drilling.

I had to learn the community, which was a big challenge, because you probably know that the ocean drilling community is a very tight community. They are a little skeptical about outsiders coming in, especially in a management role. So, I had to bridge that challenge. But fortunately, because I had worked for four years in Vienna in an international organization, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, I probably – I would say more than most Americans, and even Americans who have worked internationally – I understood what it meant to work on an international program; to really work on a program that’s internationally-led as opposed to American-led. Because I had lived that in Vienna.

I do think those two things are very different because, before I had my job in Vienna, I had worked internationally. When I was at Scripps, I worked on seismic stations, building them in Fiji and Uganda and assorted other countries. I had been to a lot of places and worked with a lot of scientists in other countries, but always from this American perspective. But in my job in Vienna, the workforce there came from the countries who were members of the Treaty Organization. It was an international workforce. It was enlightening for me to realize that people in other countries might have a completely different orientation, goal, or perspective than the American one. I think most people in the US are not used to thinking about that.

So, I was able to incorporate this nationality-neutral perspective into my professional life. I think that helped me when I came to the drilling program, especially when I was first there at the beginning of the change from ODP to IODP when all the advisory boards became international. Previously they were – I think they probably were international, they were already, but the meetings had been very, it seemed to me, in the style of American culture. And there were a number of people who were trying to get this drilling community to be more aware of just what is normal in other cultures. We’re going to talk a lot about working in Japan, but that cultural difference is a big one, as you know. Just in terms of the way you speak and show respect, for example not interrupting… These are all things that I learned in Vienna that were very important to set the stage for success. These are things that many Americans don’t know innately, because the American way of exchange is very fast, and kind of interrupting, and – it’s like tennis. It’s like throwing the ball back and forth. And that doesn’t work in a lot of other cultures.

BMR: I understand; the Spanish way it’s also interrupting and jumping on the other, and you have to learn that that’s not common in other parts of the world.

HG: In fact, that’s an interesting point because when I went to Vienna, I expected to feel more akin with the Europeans – you know, the Germans and the French. But I actually felt much more comfortable with the Mexicans and the South Americans. We were more culturally aligned than… European culture can be more hierarchical and rather formal, and I wasn’t used to that.

BMR: Another thing you mentioned is the community, that it’s a sort of a tight community and you had to get in. Was there anyone who helped or guided you within the community? Someone who you can say mentored you, in some sort of way?

HG: I mean, many, many people really helped me. I think at the beginning my boss, Steve Bohlen, who was president of JOI, was the most important person. Because he himself was kind of an outsider. He was a petrologist; he had been leading the USGS, and he didn’t grow up in the drilling program, either. He was also a very perceptive person about people, and their goals, and so forth. So, I would probably call out Steve more than anyone.

But when I was in my first job with the drilling program, I worked with wonderful man from the academic side, Gabriel (Gabe) Filippelli from a university in Indiana. He was incoming chair of the US Science Advisory Committee for Ocean Drilling. We both kind of came in at the same time, and he was wonderful to work with.

BMR: I understand that you encountered an interesting situation of transition from US-led program to a co-lead program, with partners that didn’t have the experience of leading a program, running a facility, running a platform… What were the main challenges that you remember during the transition period?

HG: I think we had to do some education for the community, in some cases, especially in the US, to understand that this was a different type of program now; and it wasn’t just going to be the same. That the other platforms were different than the JR – they were different, but yet they were the same. This was the challenge, that when we were at JOI, we wanted to impose kind of a regularity across the program. So, if you’re a scientist going on an expedition, you would encounter the same sort of protocols and preparation whether you were going on the JR, the Chikyu, or a Mission Specific Platform. We wanted to have that regularity, but we also realized that it wouldn’t be the same. So, I think that duality, if you will, of on one hand the program’s the same, but it’s not going to be just like the JR – that was challenging.

BMR: What happened after that, did you continue in JOI?

HG: I was in that position for about 2 to 3 years. What happened was that my boss at JOI asked me to take over a different program that JOI had a contract from the National Science Foundation to lead called the Ocean Observatories Initiative. Steve asked me to move into the role as the Program Director for that. That’s a whole other interview, but that’s what happened. I was still working at JOI, but now I was in a different role there that wasn’t involved with the drilling program.

BMR: It actually must have been difficult to be for two, three years learning and really getting immersed into the ocean drilling community, making the new shape of the program, and all the sudden, changing to a completely different thing.

HG: The other program was interesting. I was excited to do it because I had a very good relationship with the program directors at National Science Foundation, and they were the sponsors of both programs. At that time the Ocean Observatories Initiative was still very new, it was only going through a conceptual design review. It really wasn’t accepted yet by a large part of the ocean community; there were struggles going on, and it wasn’t clear yet what was going to happen with the program. So, it was a challenge. It was more of a challenge than my job at USSP (US Science Support Program for IODP) because we were able to make a smooth transition from ODP to IODP, and that was running really well. So, when Steve asked me to take on this other challenge, I was excited to do it. And he hired a wonderful woman to replace me, Cathy O’Riordan. She was very successful as USSP Director, too. In fact, years later, when she had moved to another organization, we were having drinks at the AGU and she said, “You know, being USSP Director, that really was the best job”. And I said, “Yeah, I think that really was the best job” (laughs).

BMR: And then you went back to the ocean drilling, right?

HG: Well, so then I went to NSF, actually. The Ocean Observatories initiative was difficult. So, yeah, I did go back to ocean drilling, but not for some years. I was away for like six years, because I went to work at NSF for a couple of years on something totally different. Then, my then-husband got the opportunity to go back to Vienna, which my family had always missed. So we moved back to Vienna, and I was there for several years until we separated and I came back to the US. That’s when, again, ocean drilling kind of appeared on my horizon.

It wasn’t the Discovery Program yet. When I came back, Kiyoshi Suyehiro hired me as his deputy at IODP-MI (IODP Management International). Even though I was living in La Jolla and the office was in Tokyo, he first hired me as a consultant on a small project they had, but then he asked me to be his deputy. At that point, he knew, and we knew, that the program would be changing. And it was very clear that NSF wanted a lighter management structure, and that it would have to be in the US. It was an interesting time, for me, and I loved working with Kiyoshi; but it was also somewhat a sad time because the office in Japan knew that their contract was ending.

BMR: Let’s talk more about that position in Japan but, before talking about that I want to ask you, what previous experience did you have on working with Japanese?

HG: I had experience in Vienna working with Japanese colleagues, and also working with the Japanese delegation to the Test Ban Treaty. So, I had learned some basic cultural things in both those roles. And, of course, seismology, which was my field, is very strong in Japan, so I read papers by Japanese seismologists, and knew where the major research institutions were, and so on. So, I had knowledge from seismology; I had knowledge from individuals like my thesis advisor and my colleagues in Vienna. And then, what I learned in the drilling program, in IODP, and what I observed from going to IODP meetings. I was eagerly learning all along.

BMR: And how did you know Kiyoshi Suyehiro, in the first place? And why do you think he called you?

HG: Well, I should tell you that I knew his father in Vienna. His father [Shigeji Suehiro] was the highest-level Japanese scientific delegate to the Test Ban Treaty talks. He was basically the face of Japan to the scientists involved in developing the Test Ban Treaty, and he was still coming to the meetings when I started there. So, felt I had this kind of connection with Kiyoshi from working with his father. And then, we interacted a few times when I was at JOI, and when I was in Vienna the second time with my husband, I asked Kiyoshi to be on an advisory board to put together this large international meeting that CTBTO (Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization) wanted to have, with a focus on how CTBTO technology could be used in outside science, and he agreed. So, I knew him that way.

I think, through Steve Bohlen, who had left Consortium for Ocean Leadership by now, and also my contacts at NSF, the program managers I had worked with, I had a pretty good reputation with NSF, and I think that was important to Kiyoshi. I would talk every now and then with Steve Bohlen because I had moved back to the US and I didn’t have a job yet. He told me one day, “I think Kiyoshi Suyehiro is considering hiring you”.

And I think, at that point, because he knew the contract was ending, it would have been difficult to find somebody to move to Japan and take a job with a company that was probably not going to be there in 24 months. Still,  he needed someone to help him kind of wind up the project, to do the final program plan, the final reports for NSF. He knew I knew NSF and thought I was a competent person, so I could see why he would think this was a strategic thing to do.

BMR: May I ask you a bit more in-depth about what was your role in there? How did you contribute to the program transition – from a program with an integrated management structure, to dismantle that structure?

HG: My primary role was writing the annual program plan and then doing the reporting to NSF. I did go over to Japan several times, and worked there for like a 2 to 3 week period – which I enjoyed. So, yeah, helping just kind of do the final things, I was able to contribute.

At about the same time, NSF made the announcement that there was not going to be an integrated international management structure. I think it’s largely because they had problems explaining this within the wider government. , Government budget planners who fund NSF didn’t really understand the cost-to-benefit ratio of this large internationally managed program, particularly when it came to scientist berths on the drilling platforms. When the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program started, the vision was that there would be three platforms out there operating all the time. And what really happened is that the JR that was the workhorse, and there weren’t an equivalent number of Chikyu expeditions or Mission Specific Platforms. So, from one point of view, the US was paying the bulk of operating the platform, but they only had a third of the berths, right? This was hard to defend, really, to somebody who’s from the Office of Management and Budget about why this is a good investment. Just from a purely national point of view.

So, about the transition. Then, NSF announced that they were going to this lighter management structure, and they said there wasn’t going to be a centralized international management entity, but they would fund a small office at a US institution that would have a limited role. I remember clearly the meeting at AGU when the NSF person announced this, and I remember thinking, “Wow, this could be my next job!”. I was a visiting scientist at Scripps while I was working for Kiyoshi – because I lived here in La Jolla – I had an office at Scripps, and I had a desk and a telephone, could use their internet, and so on. So, I talked with Kiyoshi about it and he knew I was going to write a proposal – a Scripps proposal. I found collaborators at Scripps who said, “If you can write this and be the principal person, we think this is a good idea”. That’s what happened. With the small group of people at Scripps, we wrote the winning proposal to become the Science Support Office in the new International Ocean Discovery Program.

BMR: How has the support of NSF to ocean drilling programs changed, during the time you’ve been involved?

HG: How has it changed? That’s a hard question to answer – I don’t know if I’m able to answer that. I think there has always been a core commitment from NSF to scientific ocean drilling. The problem was, and especially with the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, there just wasn’t enough money to run the program as conceived. I remember when Steve Bolhen hired me,he told me that at the beginning. He told me, “The problem is going to be that there’s not enough money”. I think the NSF was under tremendous pressure to explain to budget planners why the program was still needed after, all these years, and why the US was paying the bulk of operation costs for the JOIDES Resolution for an international user community. It was a difficult time and remains a difficult time, because money for NSF has been constant or shrinking. I don’t even know what the situation is now.

BMR: Yeah. It looks like for the ocean drilling program, generally speaking, budget has always been a problem – not only for the US.

HG: Yeah. I think it’s a hard program to explain to the public about why you’re doing this, because it assumes… You already have to know so much about our science, right? To understand why ocean drilling is important. And, at least in this country, Earth science still isn’t included in basic education curricula, so it’s hard for people to understand. It’s not like going to Mars or something like that. People understand that.

BMR: Do you think the other programs you have been involving are easier to explain?

HG: I think the Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty is easier to explain, right? (both laugh). It’s like, we don’t want new nuclear weapons, so let’s not test and build new weapons. That’s really easy. Why we need seismic stations is really easy: because earthquakes are devastating, and we need to know how big they are and where they occur. So, yeah, I do think the other things I worked on were easier to explain.

BMR: Do you think there’s also a difference in the community, in the way the community kind of sells itself?

HG: I do think so, yeah. I mean, I do think that there is an issue there. I think there’s an issue that scientists themselves aren’t in the business of selling their science. They just want to do their science, right? They just want to do their science and they know it’s important, but increasingly scientists have to be more like salespeople.

But even the way the names in the program: first of all, Ocean Drilling Program – if you’re an environmentalist living on the coast of California, the last thing you want to do is ocean drilling, because people think it’s about oil and they don’t want tars coming up on the sands, and it is polluting waters, and so on. So, that was problematic. Integrated Ocean Drilling Program was a really difficult name – I mean, it meant something to us, it was going to be integrated among these different platforms; but if you tried to talk to a science reporter about, “Well, Integrated Ocean Drilling Program it’s called that because, well, there used to be Ocean Drilling Program, but now it’s integrated…” People’s eyes glaze over. And then, when they changed to International Ocean Discovery Program, well, that could be about whales or dolphins or kelp, right? You don’t think that’s about drilling in the ocean floor, which isn’t even about the water column. And then, of course, the JOIDES Resolution – you explain what that name means or what it came from. So, I just don’t think people involved in the program were ever strategic about communication, because they didn’t need to be, right? When the program started in the 60s and 70s, there was plenty of money for science. It wasn’t like it is now.

Also, now it’s particularly difficult because there are misinformation and disinformation about climate change, and so much of the program is about climate change. There are people who still believe the world is 4,000 years old because of some reference in the Christian Bible. So, when you start talking about 20 million years old, you lose some people there. So, it’s an issue that I think scientists can no longer take for granted that everyone believes in science, and that scientists are respected the way we used to be able to.

BMR: Yeah, this has been a problem that kind of drags into the present, has repercussions in the present. You know, people involving the ocean drilling community, we know very well that the program works but when you try to go outside, it’s difficult to sell. How do you think this can be changed – if it can be changed?

HG: Well, I think one thing that’s important, and this was a problem that we recognized even when I first started working with ocean drilling in 2004, is that the community was kind of closed, right? There were people who made a whole career in ocean drilling in that they, as graduate students, worked on scientific problems with samples from ODP, their advisor was big in ODP, they kind of grew up in the program; they got their own expeditions, and then there they trained their graduate students in it. So, they were living inside of the framework of the ocean drilling program. And we, even then, were trying to get more lateral connections with other communities and even other oceanographic disciplines. When they looked at ODP, they didn’t know how to break in. It felt like a very monolithic structure that you couldn’t get into. And a lot of people thought ODP and IODP wasn’t even on ocean science – it was actually Earth science, right? There’s an argument to be made for that. So, I think there has always been this problem of not having cross-talk with other science subdisciplines.

BMR: Yeah, I understand. Actually, you can see that some communities like seismology and microbiology have been incorporating, but it’s not something that, you go out with Chikyu and you get Earth scientists, but it’s very difficult to attract people from other ocean disciplines because the expeditions are very focused on a certain scientific problem.

HG: And, you know, some of it is understandable because you need these specialties on the expedition party, right? You need somebody who really understands biostratigraphy, or magnetism of this certain kind, or whatever. So, it’s very, very specialized and it’s hard to break into, unless you became involved in that from the beginning of your science career.

BMR: But on the other hand, this has actually also been considered one of the strong points of the program, in the sense that it feeds itself to continue. So, if you have an early career who grows up as a senior scientist, and then is supervising some postdocs, then they can continue in these research lines, bringing in proposals and new expeditions. It kind of feeds the program to continue.

HG: Yeah, I think in a world with enough money you can continue like that.

BMR: But not in the current world.

HG: Not in the current, right.

[interruption]

BMR: The last thing you mentioned, before going into this tangent, was that you put up the proposal for the Science Support Office at Scripps, and you started as its director. What was your vision at that time, about the things you wanted to implement or the direction of the office?

HG: I wanted the office to be more of a player than I think NSF originally envisioned. I think they originally envisioned a very task-oriented office that would manage the proposal review process and run the website. And that was basically it. So, they didn’t want a big management function, because they had had that with IODP-MI, and they wanted something smaller.

I wanted to give them what they wanted, but I also wanted to… We were the only kind of organizational piece of the project that was shared by all the platform providers, and we were shared because we ran the proposal review process. So, for example, the Science Evaluation Panel (SEP) met all over the world, but we started holding the January meeting here at Scripps, rather than moving it around, and my rationale in proposing that to NSF is that it allowed the staff of the Science Support Office to observe the process. When we won the proposal, we integrated the Geological Data Center, which was a group of maybe four or five people at Scripps who had a subcontract from IODP Management International to collect and organize all the site survey data that was needed to evaluate the proposals. But these guys were largely data people and they didn’t have a complete understand about what a drilling expedition is. So, I wanted them, the staff here at Scripps, to understand how what they did tied into the eventual expeditions. That’s one reason we had the meeting here every year.

But also, that meeting was in January. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Southern California in January but, unless we’re having an atmospheric river rain event, it is beautiful here. So, if you’re coming from Germany or some place where it’s cold and it’s winter, to come here – we had a beautiful meeting facility where, during breaks, you just walked out of the auditorium and you could see dolphins. It was just a beautiful, beautiful venue. It built anticipation for people to come every year, and it built a lot of goodwill between our staff and the Science Evaluation Panel. And so, I wanted that; I wanted the community to feel that we were supporting them, and I wanted in turn their support.

I also started something called the “Small Group Meeting” before this annual SEP meeting at Scripps in January. I purposely gave it this very innocuous name, the Small Group Meeting, so people would know it was small, we couldn’t have everybody; and that it wasn’t a big, fancy thing. But I had the chairs of the facility boards come, the NSF came, and then the platform providers came. So, people from JAMSTEC who ran the Chikyu and the people from Texas who ran the JR, and someone the ECORD facility. So, we had the people running platforms, the people deciding which proposals would go, and the funders – they were all in the same room, so we could talk about common problems. I mean, esoteric technical problems, but like, “this field in the site survey data, this format in seg-y” or something. It was a place where we could talk through problems and make sure that everybody was kind of doing things the same way. Well, NSF loved this meeting, and they started referring to the Science Support Office as “the glue” in the new program, because there wasn’t really any organization that went across all the platforms except for our office. And so, we were able to do things, maybe to head off problems, because there weren’t all these coordinating structures anymore. I think that was valuable, and it helped a lot.

BMR: In hindsight, do you think there’s something that could have been done differently, in the organization or management of the program, or in the relationship to other member offices or NSF?

HG: I mean, I’m sure there’s always things that could have been done differently. I’m not exactly sure what. I don’t think anything could have been done differently that would have changed the outcome of what happened when NSF said, “We can’t run the platform anymore”. So, I don’t know. But, as I said, I retired five years ago, so I don’t really know what happened.

I retired sort of at the beginning of Covid and I don’t really know what happened after that because when I retired, I really retired. I gave the new person my phone number and said, “Call me if you need to”, but she never did. And that was OK.

BMR: What was the situation like, just before you retired? The situation of the program and the science office.

HG: It was stable. I left it in good shape. I think we were starting to hear that the JR was going to get retired and there needed to be a new ship, but it wasn’t clear whether NSF was going to support one. That was starting. But, from my point of view, at least when I retired, it was healthy. The program did admirably well, I think, to adapt to Covid. Going to online evaluation meetings – which were not as much fun, because all of a sudden, you’re on a Zoom call at six in the morning, so for the people in Japan and China it wasn’t two in the morning for them – or maybe it was. It was difficult but, as far as I knew, the program continued. That aspect of the program continued to operate well during a challenging time with Covid.

BMR: So, all this situation of, the plan of going to have a replacement for the JR and then not having the replacement for it, all this happened after you retired.

HG: Pretty much, yeah. It was just starting when I retired, so I don’t really know what happened.

BMR: What has been the most valuable skill or learning you take from your time in scientific ocean drilling management?

HG: I really think it would be the dedication of the participants. I mean, there were just really, really good people who worked so hard and always rose to the call. I remember the JR Facility Board chairman, Anthony Koppers, when all of a sudden, it’s like, “Oh, we need a new science plan for the next ten years”. And he and the people at Lamont running the USSP rose to the occasion, and everybody did their part, and came up with this beautiful new science plan. There are just really wonderful, dedicated people in this field. I’ve always said scientific ocean drilling isn’t a field in science, it’s a toolkit to address other fields of science. But, yeah, it’s just a wonderful program, and I feel very privileged to have been part of it.

BMR: And more broadly, looking back on your career, what are you most satisfied with? What are you most proud about?

HG: I think this isn’t really quite the right answer for our interview here, but I would say the time I spent in Vienna, working at the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization. Because when I started, I was one of the very first technical people there, and we had to build this network of seismic stations to monitor the Treaty. I already knew how to build seismic stations because I had done it in my job at Scripps. And it was an exciting time, because everybody supported the Treaty, and there was enough money to work and build stations. So, we came in and really set up the infrastructure and decided how things would be done. I wrote many of the founding documents that became the framework for how things are still done today. So, as I said I think earlier in the interview, the mistake of my professional life was to leave that job when I did. But I am proud of the work I did there, even though it was a long time ago now, 25 years ago.

BMR: Well, it is the right answer, it doesn’t have to be everything about ocean drilling – I mean, it’s about you and your career, and your professional experience. And I also understood that that was really useful for your later positions in the Ocean Drilling Program.

HG: Extremely useful, yeah, it really was. And, you know, I am sorry that the program has ended, or seems to have ended, at least US participation. I’m glad to see that there is an IODP three. It’ll be interesting to see what happens, but it is nice to know that there’s still going on.

BMR: One last question. I know that you are not anymore involved in the program, but where would you like to see the ocean drilling program or community going in ten, twenty years from now?

HG: I hope they get the infrastructure that they need. It would be nice if there was more public awareness of what drilling in the seafloor and recovering ocean sediments can tell you about the planet, about climate change, about why it’s important. So, if there were more public awareness, I think that’s what I would like more than anything – that people understood that this is a fundamentally, an important tool to learn about the planet and the planet’s history.

BMR: Yeah, that would be a great direction to go because in order to do science, we need support – and especially government support.

HG: And especially in today’s climate, at least in this country where scientists are sort of viewed as these elitists who are off playing in their science sandbox and not really accountable to society. That’s becoming a subtheme of how scientists are seen, and I think it’s unfortunate.

BMR: I think, for my side, these are all the questions. Is it something you wanted to add or explain that I have not asked you, or that we didn’t have the opportunity to discuss?

HG: I do feel bad about one thing, when you asked me about people who were important to me early on learning about the program, I realized during our break that I omitted mentioning Rodey Batiza, who was the program officer I worked with closely when I first came into USSP and had to learn a lot about the program. He was just so helpful in giving me guidance about, “this is important or this isn’t that important” or, “That person, they have this view but that’s not what NSF thinks”. He was extremely skillful in communicating to me what NSF wanted without being dictatorial – He never said “We want this, we want that”. I would go to him often for feedback, or his perspective, or just say, “I’m thinking about this, how do you think it would be received?”. He was very, very good at giving me the context I needed, to learn about the program and do my job. It was my oversight not to mention him.

BMR: Yeah, he is great; I had the opportunity to meet him and interview him. Well, it was great and I really enjoyed it. Thank you so much for meeting me.

HG: Thank you so much.