Jeff Schuffert

Disclaimer

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.

The primary goal of this transcript is to capture the spoken words and memories of the interviewee as accurately as possible. Minor editing and polishing works have been performed to enhance clarity and readability while maintaining the authenticity of spoken discourse, including non-standard grammar, inconsistencies, repetitions, and pauses.

The reader must be aware that memories of an event can vary between individuals and may evolve over time due to various factors, such as subsequent experiences, interactions with others, and personal emotions.

Use and citation

This transcript is the property of JAMSTEC and is subject to its regulations. Quoting, reproducing, or distributing this transcript for non-commercial purposes is allowed with due attribution.

Please cite the interview as: Interview of Jeff Schuffert by Beatriz Martinez-Rius on December 9, 2024. Washington, D.C. (USA), [link]

Beatriz Martinez-Rius: Today is December 13 of 2024. I’m Beatriz Martinez-Rius, historian of science at JAMSTEC, and I’m in Washington DC with Jeff Schuffert. Thank you.

Jeff Schuffert (JS): Thank you.

BMR: First of all, can you please tell me your name, and your relation to scientific ocean drilling?

JS: My name is Jeff Schuffert, and I was involved in the management of scientific ocean drilling for 17 years. I held various positions in several different countries. Before that, I had participated on one drilling expedition, ODP Leg 178 to the Antarctic Peninsula, which was part of the ODP program, back then.

BMR: Have you been doing science after you retired from management position?

JS: No, I have not been doing anything really, except housework (laughs).

BMR: But you started doing science, right?

JS: I started doing science, but once I moved into the management of the drilling program, then science was – that was it. It was not to be done again.

BMR: Why you didn’t go back to science, after management positions?

JS: Well, I left management because we lost the contract for the program, with the National Science Foundation. And my organization didn’t have anywhere else to put me. So, that was it for me. And at that point, I was just too old to get a job anywhere (laughs). I applied for many jobs and interviewed for quite a few, but it all came up to zero. At one point, I just gave up. But now I’m officially in retirement age, so I can say I’m retired now.

BMR: We can go back to this later on. Let’s start from the beginning – where are you from?

JS: I was born and raised in Euclid, Ohio, which is a suburb on the east side of Cleveland, and it was named after the famous Greek mathematician. That’s where I spent all of the early years of my life and school years, until I went off to college.

BMR: Did your parents have some relation to science, technology, engineering…?

JS: Not really. My father was an electrical draftsman. He was essentially, I think, an electrical engineer. But this was before people actually went to school and got degrees that said that. So, he didn’t have such a degree. He never went to college. So, yeah, he was technically an electrical draftsman.

BMR: Is this the person that works on electrical setups?

JS: Yes, and the controls for instruments and machines. They did a lot of the work for machines that were in steel mills. I know he had to travel a couple of times to the steel mills in the Pittsburgh area and in the Chicago area. He used to go there and they would install, I guess, the equipment that they had been designing.

BMR: So, how did you get interested in Earth sciences?

JS: That’s very interesting because initially, I was not. When I went to college, I went as a computer science major. And after about, just a little over a year – there were probably around 50 students in my course year. And I looked around, and I didn’t know any of them after a full year. And I didn’t want to know any of them (laughs). So, I thought to myself, “well, this is an interesting subject and I’m good at it, but if I have to work with these people for the rest of my life, maybe this is not the right thing to do.” So, in my second year of college I switched majors and went to geology.

BMR: And why geology?

JS: That’s a funny story, too (laughs). I happened to be sitting in a friend’s dorm room, in the dorm that I was living in at the time, and he had been taking a class in Earth sciences – geology, I guess. He had a lab book or some kind of book sitting there, on his desk or a shelf. And I saw it, it was filled with maps and geological maps. I had always been very much a map person, since a very young age, that I can remember. Maps always interested me. So, I just took one look at this and said, “Maybe this is what I should do”. And so, I switched and I’ve never regretted it.

BMR: Did you like to be outdoors, hiking, doing this sort of activities?

JS: I suppose; I mean, my parents never did that, but I would do it if they would have given me the chance.

BMR: Once you got into college, was there someone who was kind of influential for your later career?

JS: Yes, the lead professor. The department I ended up in at the university was a very small one. There were only maybe ten students in each grade level, and only three professors who taught all of the classes. The lead professor was a man named George Springer, who passed away some years ago. He literally expected all of his students at the undergraduate level to go on to graduate school. He expected it. So, then I did. This was at the University of Dayton, where I started. The geology department was very small, there was no graduate level geology program there, only undergraduate.

After that, I went to the University of New Orleans, because I had visited New Orleans once with my parents and really liked it there. So, I went there. I was working on a master’s degree and I spent one summer as an intern with an oil company, Unocal. I eventually decided to go on and get my PhD. Then, I went to Scripps Institution of Oceanography. That took a while, but I finally got my Ph.D. there.

BMR: About which year, was this, more or less?

JS: I graduated high school in 1977, so I graduated from my undergraduate in 1981. I think I started at Scripps in 1984, and ended up graduating in 1992. But I wasn’t there the whole time. I had gone away to do a post-doc before I got my graduate degree (laughs).

BMR: How come, that you go into the sea, into marine geology? As far I understood, you were doing your undergraduate and internship in mainland geology.

JS: While I was doing that internship, I got to go out to a drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico. They took all of the interns out there. We flew out in a helicopter and flew back; and it was quite exciting. We spent the night on an oil rig out in the Gulf of Mexico.

But that wasn’t what I was working on. My thesis was on water chemistry, geochemistry in the mixing zone between freshwater and seawater along the coast in the Yucatan Peninsula. I did some scuba diving for that. That turned me on to being involved in the ocean.

BMR: Sorry, I think there’s something I’ve missed – did you say you were studying seawater circulation? Wasn’t your PhD on geology?

JS: Well, that’s all geology, geochemistry. It’s the chemistry of the water.

BMR: I see, I understand.

JS: It’s interesting because in that area, the rocks around are all limestone, on the Yucatan Peninsula. So, there are many caves. It’s interesting because where the seawater and the fresh water mix together, it creates a thin layer called the mixing layer. Even though the freshwater layer on top can be saturated with respect to calcium carbonate, the mineral in limestone, and the underlying seawater is saturated, in the mixed layer where the two waters mix together, it becomes undersaturated. So, it starts to dissolve out the limestone and it creates these tunnels and caves. That’s what I went there to study, the chemistry of that mixing layer.

BMR: It sounds kind of fun years.

JS: Well, it was. I went down there twice. It was a good time.

BMR: So then, what kind of materials were you studying, at Scripps?

JS: That was mostly marine sediment, that I was looking at. The geochemistry of marine sediments in sediment cores, but not deep drilling cores; just box cores that you can take from a ship. So, short cores.  You can only study the more recent events.

BMR: Was there someone mentoring you?

JS: My advisor there was a woman named Miriam Kastner. The reason I went there was because I wanted to work with her. I did the research of places where I wanted to go and apply to, and she was one of the ones that I wanted to go to. When I got accepted there, I was very excited about it. She was essentially my mentor. There was another fellow there that I worked with, a younger guy named Rick Jahnke. I started off working in his lab, doing some experiments on growing some minerals. They were my advisors.

BMR: If I recall correctly, Miriam Kastner had some experience in scientific ocean drilling.

JS: Oh, yes. She’s been on a number of expeditions herself. I can say that, every time when I was at a meeting somewhere, talking to people or meeting somebody new, and they would ask me who I was, what am I doing… Every time that I would say that she was my advisor, people would immediately have a different impression of me (laughs). A good impression. But I could just see, like a switch got flipped and all of a sudden, they would think, “Oh, wow, you worked for her. Oh my gosh, you must be all right, then.”

BMR: How was she like? Was kind of strict?

JS: Well, apparently everybody else thought so. I didn’t think so. I mean, not to me. She wasn’t a nightmare. I don’t know, I just did what I was supposed to do.

BMR: Did she introduce you to scientific ocean drilling?

JS: No, she did not. I did not get introduced to that until afterwards, when I was doing postdoctoral work. That was when I went on the first expedition. So, even though the Deep Sea Drilling Project started at Scripps, it ended right before I got there, unfortunately. But many of the professors there had been part of it, so it was part of the general day to day knowledge. I certainly learned about it, but no, I never got involved in it. That was when TAMU (Texas A&M) took over the program and the JR [JOIDES Resolution] came on board.

BMR: How come, that you applied for an ODP expedition?

JS: I don’t really know. That’s a good question (laughs). I was working as a postdoc in a laboratory at Brown University in Rhode Island, and I was managing a laboratory, to set up the facility. Of course, I wanted to do something more than what I had been doing. I mean, I was applying for lots of jobs and, again, not getting them for one reason or another. So, yeah, the opportunity to go on this expedition came up. At the same time, or shortly before that, I was on another expedition with a woman who worked at Scripps, and she needed somebody to come and do some sediment geochemistry work. This was off the coast of South America, Chile and Peru. I went down there, and spent a month doing that. Then, spent a month traveling from that part of Chile down to the south, where we got on the JR. And then, spent two months going to the Antarctic Peninsula. I was away from home for four months, mostly at sea. But yeah, it was a good experience.

Jeff during ODP Leg 178, aboard the JOIDES Resolution. Left, arriving to Cape Town. Right up, photographed in the Antarctic Peninsula. Photos courtesy of Jeff Shuffert. Right bottom, Jeff (right) during the sampling party with Yuhan Guyodo (left) and Stefanie Brachfeld (center). Courtesy of IODP/JRSO

BMR: What was your first impression of being onboard?

JS: It’s a lot of work, because you work in 12 hour shifts, seven days a week, and there’s no downtime. As long as you’re collecting cores, that gets busy. You have a job to do and you have to do it. So, there’s not really a lot of time, when you’re on board, to reflect about other things because you have to get the work done.

BMR: What expedition was that one?

JS: ODP Leg 178. We went from Punta Arenas, Chile, down to the coast of the Antarctic Peninsula, and we drilled along the peninsula. From there, we went to Cape Town, South Africa, where the cruise ended.

BMR: How that experience influenced on your later career?

JS: Well, I can’t really remember now, but it probably influenced my decision to apply for the JOIDES Office job that I went to, shortly after that. I actually didn’t finish doing some of the research that I had started on that expedition, because I moved into management. There just wasn’t the opportunity or the time to do any research then.

BMR: So why did you decide to shift from scientific research to science management in Germany, if I recall correctly?

JS: Well, the position was in Germany, but I was still employed by a US organization, the Joint Oceanographic Institutions, which used to be headquartered right here in Washington, DC. They were technically my employer, and I was the US liaison in the JOIDES Office.

Every two years, the JOIDES Office would be somewhere in the US, and every two years, it would be somewhere outside the US. That was the deal, back then. When it was outside of the US, there would be a US liaison. And when it was inside the US, there would be an international liaison working in the office.

BMR: So, your position involved being two years in Germany?

JS: Yes.

BMR: How was your experience over there? I mean, what kind of office did you find, what kind of people did you work with, how did you communicate with the U.S.?

JS: It was very interesting. Of course, I should say that the best thing about it was that’s where I met my wife (laughs). I would be remiss if I didn’t say that. It was an interesting office. It was located at GEOMAR, which is the Marine Geoscience Center, part of the University of Kiel in Kiel, Germany. And, of course, I had never been there before this. It’s way up north, almost in Denmark, on the Baltic Sea. It was run by an American named Bill [William] Hay. He was the leader of the office, and he was somebody who had originally gotten the Joint Oceanographic Institutions started, I think, back in the early days of ODP or DSDP. There was him and the two other gentlemen that worked there, Warner Brückmann and Manu [Emanuel] Söding. They were both German, and my eventual wife, Bettina, was also German. So, there were three Germans and two Americans working there.

BMR: Oh, your wife was also involved in scientific ocean drilling.

JS: She was the office assistant, administrative assistant.

BMR: What was the role of that office?

JS: The role of that office was to – again, it was called the JOIDES Office; JOIDES for Joint Oceanographic Institutions for Deep Earth Sampling. The role was twofold. One was to manage the JOIDES advisory structure, which consisted of all the different committees and – well, they weren’t all called committees, but panels and committees. There was probably about eight of those different panels and committees. So, they were staffed by scientists from around the world, from all the countries that were participating in the program. Our job was to manage that advisory structure, so we would attend all those meetings. We also handled the drilling proposals that would come in. Those would get distributed to the advisory committees to review.

BMR: I was surprised when I knew that you were in the Germany office, because I understood that during the IODP, even though there were different countries contributing to the program, the US was managing it from the US. So I don’t really understand why the office should be moved to other continents?

JS: I think because the other countries were part of the program, so it was beneficial for them to have some sense of control over what was going on; or some sense of input or involvement in it. I think that was the reason why the office would rotate every two years. So, before it was in Germany, it was in Woods Hole [Oceanographic Institution], and Susan Humphris was the chair. After Germany, it moved to the University of Miami and Keir Becker, whom I think you interviewed, was the chair there.

BMR: What I’m thinking now is, if you move an office every two years and you have new people from those countries every two years, then it means that these people have to learn from scratch. Was there someone kind of teaching, carrying around the job?

 JS: Of course, we were always able to – in our case – call Susan Humphris and ask her questions about something, if we really didn’t know the answer to it, or couldn’t figure it out. And she was more than happy to help us along, and get us going in the right place, in the right direction. But there was nothing formal in place to do that.

BMR: What happened after those two years in Germany?

JS: Well, after those two years – that was 1999 and 2000. And when did I move to Japan? 2001? Anyways, for a few months I just did some work for Bill Hay, who had been the head of that office, but the office had moved to Miami – and, actually, I had applied to go and work in that office, but I was not picked to do it.

About that time, was when Japan was starting up with IODP. This was all in the works, and Chikyu was being built already by then, probably. So, as part of the job of the JOIDES Office, as I said, we attended many of the panel and committee meetings, which were always held in various places around the world, in all the countries. That was probably one of the nicest things about the job, getting to travel so much and see so many different countries. It was really quite amazing. During those travels, I had met Japanese fellows – Mr. Miki, right? I don’t think I’ve ever knew his first name. He worked for MEXT – well, Monbusho, it was called at that time. He was with the government funding agency in Japan for the drilling program. I really don’t know, but I think he was the one who was instrumental in getting me to Japan. But I don’t know, I’ve never known – but I never applied for the job. I was just invited to come and work in the ISAS Office. And I didn’t have anything else to do (laughs). All of the other jobs that I was applying for, I wasn’t getting. So, I said, “well, why not?”.

What was your family happy with that?

BMR: I don’t know. Bettina, my wife and I, we got married before we went there, because we thought it would be best if we were married. We had been together for a little while. But, we just thought it would be a lot easier to go to Japan together if we were married. So we got married. I think after an AGU meeting in San Francisco, that was the first time that I ever went to Japan, just to check things out. That should be the year 2000, I guess.

BMR: And how are things over there?

JS: Well, I was sick and felt terrible (laughs).  I don’t really remember that much about it, but I just remember that I was not feeling well. I wished that I had felt better.

BMR: Because of the food or something in there?

JS: No, I don’t know, I was just sick with something. I got it before I got on the plane to go there. I was already not feeling well. I wasn’t sick because of Japan, but I couldn’t avoid going to this thing because it was very important. But I don’t remember who I met. I wouldn’t have met you (looks at Nobu Eguchi) at that time.

Nobu Eguchi (NE): I don’t think so, because I was in Kochi.

JS: We didn’t start the iSAS office until April. April is when we actually started. That was when I moved with my wife. We moved together to Japan and we started working in what was called the iSAS office – little i, big SAS (laughs). The iSAS office (laughs). ‘I’ for ‘interim’. At the same time, the University of Miami was running the JOIDES Office and the JOIDES advisory structure. So, there were two side-by-side advisory structures, at the same time. But the makeup of them was very different, because in the JOIDES time, since the U.S. was the predominant player in the game, Japan would only have one person on an advisory panel or a committee. Because Japan was just another country that was involved in the program.

But once IODP started, then Japan had a much bigger role. It was one third US, one third Japan, and one third Europe. And that’s how the panels and committees were divided up. So, the makeup was very different, but the meetings were in the same place. They were just successive, one after the other. But the makeup of the panel and committee was very different.

BMR: You said that you don’t know what happened behind the scenes of why you got invited to Japan. But do you have any ideas…?

JS: I think it’s because the people in charge in Japan wanted to get off on a good foot, and they knew that I was experienced at it, and could do the job. So, I think, I was probably an excellent candidate for them, to come in and do the job – if they could convince me to come (laughs). But yeah, I was all for it. So, it was a good time for me, and good time for them.

In April we showed up, and I remember our administrative assistant at the office met me. I can’t remember whether she met me at the airport or at the hotel, when I was really sick, or… Yeah, that’s what it was! Tsuji-san, she came – I stayed in a in a hotel in downtown Oppama [note: the nearest train station to JAMSTEC headquarters, in Yokosuka], and she came there to pick me up in the morning to take me to JAMSTEC. I remember I was just like, wiped out (laughs).

BMR: We’re talking about the establishment of that office so, what kind of things you carried on from the Germany JOIDES Office to the Japan iSAS office?

JS: It was basically the same job: Managing the advisory structure, handling the drilling proposals that were coming in – did we handle proposals at the beginning? I don’t quite remember whether we got them at the beginning or not.

NE: For the proposal handling, yeah. I went to Miami office to get the transfer proposals.

JS: So that wasn’t until we went to Hokkaido.

NE: No, for the iSAS office. So I went to Miami office – well, I flew to Miami on September 10^th, 2001. The night before the 9/11. And I was stuck in Miami.

JS: Yeah, well, that was… well, I think we did a good job. I think we figured it out. Nobu and I did most of the work. We had a boss who I still don’t know what he did (laughs). But he just let us work, which was very nice of him, it was very good.

BMR: Were you the one with more experience in the management of the Japan office, at that time?

JS: Probably. I would have definitely been the only one with experience in managing things, at the time.

BMR: Was there anything special, a decision, something that you needed to do, to prepare the program transition?

JS: Other than marrying my wife? No (laughs). Actually, it worked out very well because she was offered a job at JAMSTEC by [Kiyoshi] Suyehiro-san. So, she worked for JAMSTEC for a while, as well. So, that was a big benefit to us. It helped us because, you know, packing up, moving countries… It’s all very expensive, and I don’t think salaries were the same in Japan as I was used to elsewhere. It was a difficult transition, in that regard. But we loved it there. It was a good time and everybody was very nice to us.

BMR: For how long did this interim structure worked?

JS: Just for two years. That was still ODP. Then, the IODP officially began. That was when we moved the office to Hokkaido. That was when IODP-MI, Management International, was created. They had an office in Japan and an office in [Washington] D.C. And, of course, this was very expensive (laughs) because you had to pay people to staff those offices. But that’s the way it was, back then. So, we moved up to Hokkaido. Our boss was a Danish fellow, Hans Christian Larsen.

BMR: Was he also living in Japan?

JS: Yes, he lived in Japan with his wife. So, it was Nobu and I, and at least a couple of other Americans. Was Barry American?

NE: No, those two guys were Canadian.

JS: Oh, okay. So, we had two Canadians.

NE: And one German.

JS: Who’s the German that we had?

NE: Manu Söding.

JS: Oh, that’s right! Well, he wasn’t there at the beginning, though.

NE: No. In the beginning, I think you, me, and the two secretaries.

BMR: Was the office in the US as international as the office in Hokkaido?

JS: No, no; absolutely not. I don’t even know how many people worked in the US office. There was the head of IODP-MI, Manik Talwani, and he was the President or the CEO of it. And then, there was Tom Janecek, who was a vice president. So, Hans Christian was a vice president and in the Hokkaido office, and Tom Janecek was the vice president in the DC office. And they must have had a couple of assistants working there, but I don’t remember who they were. I don’t know that I ever visited that office – maybe once, I can’t quite remember.

BMR: Talking about the start of IODP, and I guess that at that point, Chikyu was still under construction, but about to be launched… What was the sort of the environment, the expectations on the future, at that time?

JS: Well, I think always hanging in the balance in the back of people’s minds was, “Oh my goodness, this all costs a lot of money”. And, “Where is this money going to come from?”, and “How long is it going to last?”. Well, I think we’ve seen the answer to that, now we know (laughs). But even back then, I think that was always sort of an unspoken worry by everybody, is, how are we going to pay for all this?

So, yeah, you couldn’t pay for IODP-MI. When things were reorganized again with the next program, that was done away with. Then, it just became the office that was supporting the advisory structure and the drilling proposals. They didn’t need two offices.

BMR: Did you communicate with funding agencies?

JS: Yes, fairly often, but not directly with them, but only when we would see them at meetings. They always had representatives at all the meetings we went to. Nobu and I would split up the meetings – for some of the really important ones, we would both go together. Then, there were some of the lower panels where we split it up. Nobu would take some and I would take some, and we would switch off and go to those meetings.

BMR: What was a sort of important meeting?

JS: There was – again, the names of all these things changed, but – there was the Executive Committee, EXCOM, and the Science Committee, SCICOM. But I don’t know if those were ODP names or… And then, there was another thing that was called SPPOC. Science Planning and Policy Oversight Committee.

NE: SPC, Science Planning Committee.

JS: Yeah, there was an SPC, and… Oh, there were lots of different committees. They were the ones that were always dealing with the proposals. So, there was two panels that would review proposals, and they would change the name of those in the makeup, but there was always two panels that did that.

Like I said, things always changed, the names always changed, the make up always changed… Most people would serve two-year terms in the committees. So, for the scientists who were volunteering their time, essentially, we would cover it. When I worked back here in, in the USSSP (US Science Support Program), we would cover the travel costs of scientists, to go and attend the meetings. But they were volunteering their time. We weren’t paying them for their time. So, they were usually appointed on a two-year basis, and then every two years, they would get replaced by somebody else.

BMR: So, the money problem that you just talked about, it was more related to the existence of the office itself, not about covering the scientists or the inner workings of the panels, if I got it right.

JS: I don’t know, it’s hard to draw lines between everything. Of course, the main cost is the cost of the ship. The drilling ship, which is millions of dollars. All this other stuff is small change compared to that. But, when you can cut small change, you do (laughs), because you can’t change the cost of the drilling program, because that’s the ship that’s operated by another company, they’ve got a contract… So, they have to live up to that. So, you’re always looking to cut costs somewhere or wherever you can. I know I was accused once, when I was managing the USSSP, of being – what was the word that was used? I made some decision that someone wasn’t happy with, because he didn’t get as much money as he wanted to get from us. So, he used some word to describe me, and then I told him, “You know, I prefer the word ‘frugal’” (laughs). And I explained to them that both of my parents grew up during the Depression, so they were used to being frugal about things. That was the experience I had growing up as a child, it was being frugal about things. So, I wasn’t inclined to, you know, throw money around needlessly.

BMR: You were implementing frugality in program management.

JS: Yes (laughs), but he wasn’t happy about it.

BMR: What were the challenges or the most difficult parts of running that office, from your position?

JS: I don’t know that there were any difficult parts about it. I always enjoyed doing it. Like I said, I really enjoyed the travel, and meeting all of the different people from so many different countries around the world; and chatting with them at the meetings. It was quite a valuable life experience, for me. And the management of the program was – I don’t want to say it was just all textbook stuff but, you know, it wasn’t that hard. You just had to do it, and keep track of the budget, and everything was fine.

BMR: How was the communication like with the other offices in the US?

JS: Oh, when we were in Hokkaido, I don’t know that we communicated with them much at all. That would have been Hans Christian, our boss’s responsibility to do that. I don’t think we ever did at all. I mean, we would see Tom Janecek at meetings and chat with him, but otherwise, no. That was our boss’s job to handle whatever those communications were. And he kept that from us. He did a good job of maintaining that barrier for us, anyway. So, we were able to just focus on our work, and not worry about that at all.

BMR: How many years was this experience in Hokkaido?

JS: It was a little more than three years, I guess. Maybe three and a half, or not quite, I can’t remember exactly. I know we moved back to the US in December of 2006.

BMR: Before we started, you showed me these photos at Chikyu’s inauguration. Please tell me more about that.

JS: That was very exciting, of course. The whole situation was very exciting. There was a lot of people there – you saw the pictures. The ship looked great, when it was launched and all the balls of stuff, and that was a really good experience. And, you know, we got to see the Princess from a distance, but I’ve never seen another Princess anywhere near that close.

BMR: Were you involved at some point with the development of Chikyu? Like the planning phase, the science…

JS: No, I didn’t play any role; other than in general, the drilling proposals that were submitted to us. We handled those, the review of those proposals, and the panels. It didn’t matter what platform was going to be used, the proposals were all treated the same way, and went through the same panels, and went through our office. So, we did handle all that stuff.

BMR: So Chikyu did not yet exist. The capabilities of the ship were not yet a fact. But regardless, you were getting proposals for something. What kind of proposals were those, and how did you handle that?

JS: It takes several years to go from the first version of a proposal to the final approval of that proposal for a drilling project. I mean, 3, 4 or 5 years; sometimes it takes many times more than that. And often the very first version of the proposals gets rejected and the person is told, “No, you need to change this; you need to fix this; you need to revise this and resubmit it”. So, the proposals sometimes go through several cycles before they’re even considered for being a drilling project. Then they were ranked by the Planning Panel or by the Science Committee.

NE: SPC (Science Planning Committee).

JS: Yeah. So, the proposal evaluation panels, once they decided that a proposal was ready to be a drilling project, they would forward it up to the next level. Then it would go to the Science Planning Committee, or whatever it would be called. They would look at proposals and they would rank them. The ones that they ranked at the top were the ones that they would do, depending on the schedule of where the ship was going and all that (laughs).

So, a proposal could cycle through that planning panel several times, several versions of it, before it actually got forwarded up to the next level. So, it could take several years. The fact that the ship wasn’t exactly ready yet was not an issue, because the proposals had to come first. They had to start and work their way through the system, so that they would be ready when the ship was ready.

BMR: I find really interesting that in that office, you were probably very much aware of the scientific interests of the community. At that point, you also had several years of experience in handling proposals. So, could you track somehow, or have a sense of how the scientific interests of the community were evolving?

JS: I don’t know that I ever looked at them in that regard; but I always did very much appreciate the fact that, because of the role that I had, I was exposed to, and involved with, a much broader spectrum of the science and the science community than if I had just been working as my own scientist in the lab, doing some narrow little thing, for years and years and years. The broadness of that spectrum I thought was a very good thing for me, anyways. I appreciated that. So, that was how I looked at. It wasn’t really our job to analyze the science. Our job was just to make sure that everybody had all the parts that they needed to have, so that the panels, the scientists who were evaluating it, could do their job. But it wasn’t our job to actually evaluate the science itself. And I don’t think I ever did that. I don’t think you ever did that either (Nobu nods). We had enough to worry about (laughs); enough things to do to keep us busy.

BMR: Just to have a sense of this, how many proposals did you manage?

JS: I don’t know…

BMR: I mean, are we talking about an order of ten or a thousand?

JS: Probably closer to a thousand, total, over all those years, I would guess.

NE: For each proposal submission deadline, we could treat like 10 to 20, at that time.

JS: Or more, I would think. Sometimes there were around 30. And there were two proposal deadlines every year, and two meetings of the advisory panels every year.

NE: April 1^st and October 1^st, that was it?

JS: yeah. So, we had two deadlines, six months apart, for people to submit the proposals. We had to receive the proposals, and we had to check through them, and make sure that everybody had everything in there that they were supposed to have in there. And if they didn’t, then we’d have to go back to them and say, “hey, you didn’t include this or that”. That was kind of our job. It was a thankless job, but somebody had to do it, you know?

NE: Sometimes the people only submitted the cover sheet (both laugh).

JS: But yeah, focusing on the specifics of the science itself, I don’t think that was something that we really did.

BMR: Was the US-equivalent office doing the same as you were doing?

JS: No, not at all. Totally separate.

BMR: But it was also the MI, Management International, so I assumed you were sharing the tasks.

NE: No, they were totally separate.

JS: Their roles were separate. They were involved more with the ship operations.

BMR: So, the tasks were divided between those two places.

NE: Our office was called the Science Office, we are managing the science advisory structure, including proposals. And then the Washington office, doing more like the money and operations.

BMR: And later on, Chikyu operations was done in JAMSTEC?

NE: It was in CDEX, but for the IODP-MI was the DC office providing the money to CDEX. But I was not involved in that part.

JS: It was all very complicated. And I think the lesson was learned that it was too complicated (laughs).

BMR: Was it also complicated for you, to work within this system?

JS: Not for us, specifically, because our jobs were very clear, we knew what we were doing, and our focus was just on that stuff. So that part of was not difficult for us.

NE: That part still exist in each program, the following programs.

BMR: I see, the management of proposals. So, how come that you decided to move back to the US?

JS: Uhm…

NE: He was tired of me.

JS: Yeah, I couldn’t stand anymore of Nobu (both laugh).

BMR: Tired of white rice.

JS: (laughs) Well, as an aside, the interesting thing is we never had rice in my family growing up because this was another thing from the Depression. Apparently, during the Depression, that was what my father had to eat – lots and lots of rice. He was so sick of rice, that he apparently told my mother, never, ever make rice again. So, we never had rice when I was growing up. My mother never made it. I didn’t have it until I moved out of the house and went away to school. And then I learned how good rice is (laughs).

Anyways. The difficult part of life in Japan is the language barrier. That’s really difficult because, no matter how pleasant the people are, that you’re working with, or how kind they are; or how much they bend over backwards to help you, you’re still living in a foreign country where you don’t understand what’s going on (laughs). And everything is a little bit different from what you’re used to, and you just don’t know. And you don’t know when you don’t know (laughs).

BMR: Yes, I agree, sometimes we don’t know when we are not knowing what’s going on (laughs).

JS: And, of course, everyone in Japan is too polite to tell you that (laughs), “You really shouldn’t be doing this” (laughs), “We don’t do it like that, here”. That was the difficult part. Our daughter was born there. She was born in Yokohama, in the hospital. So, she was with us when we moved to Sapporo, and she enjoyed life there. My wife met lots of friends, women with other kids. And she was learning Japanese – she’s still learning Japanese, still taking Japanese lessons even now. But yeah, after five years, it was kind of like, “Okay, we’ve had this experience”, and there was this other opportunity to go work back in the US. I applied for that, and I got it.

BMR: How did you continue involved in scientific ocean drilling?

JS: I switched over from the international management to the national management. When I worked in Germany, I was employed by JOI, the Joint Oceanographic Institutions, who had their office here in Washington, DC, and they also supported the operations. They funneled the money from NSF to Texas A&M to run the ship. They also paid me to work in the office, and then, when the JOIDES Office was in the US, they would fund that.

Anyways, so when I came back, I came back to work for what is called the U.S. Science Support Program. That’s the program that supports all of the scientists who participate in the advisory committees and panels, and on the expeditions. So, we provided all of their financial support – mostly the travel funds to do all of that. And we helped to assign them, to pick them; accept their applications and sort through them, and all that. And then, we had our own advisory committee, which was called the U.S. Advisory Committee, which would tell us what to do about those things. Like, who to appoint to which panels, and who to submit as a potential participant on an expedition.

BMR: This was from 2007, more or less. So, halfway through the Integrated Program (IODP).

JS: Yes, yes.

BMR: Did you get a different perspective of the management of the program, now from the US than what you had been perceiving in Japan?

JS: I wouldn’t say it was drastically different, no; because I still would attend most of those international meetings. And so, I still could maintain a lot of those friendships and contacts with people, and get to know people. So, we would usually send one of our staff to each of the international meetings that took place. Sometimes I would send some of my assistants, and sometimes to the higher-level meetings, I would go to myself.

The different part was that we had this US Advisory Committee, which it didn’t have an international perspective. But every international country, I think, had their own such committee. So, that was the only difference. Being involved at that slightly more granular level; and being in the same city where NSF was located. So, having more direct contact with them.

BMR: What kind of interaction did you had with NSF, at that point?

JS: It was always very professional, very good. We knew all those people, and they knew us. But, there’s always some distance that has to be maintained, because they supply the money. So, you can’t get too close to them, and they can’t get too close to you, because they control the purse strings. And it wouldn’t work out. So, there was always some bit of a distance involved in that, but we all got along fine.

BMR: What kind of feedback did your office got from funding agencies, on the way to continue the IODP?

JS: Since I was just involved in the U.S Science Support Program, I don’t think that they were giving us that kind of information. That would be more going to the international groups, and the panels and committees. So, to us, they didn’t say so much. And again, they were reluctant to say much of anything about anything (laughs) because they didn’t want to be seen as influencing things in an improper way. Officially, they kept pretty quiet about things. They kept their opinions to themselves. Even in the meetings, too. When they were present, they would sometimes be asked questions, and they would be very like politicians, you know? They would give you some kind of an answer, but they didn’t really answer the question because they couldn’t.

BMR: What kind of things did you learned being in that office?

JS: When I started there, I was the associate director. There was a woman who was above me, actually, and director of the office. After a year or so, I became the director, so I was the top person. Then, I actually had people below me, who I was responsible for. And so that was a new thing for me. Having to be the person in charge, and responsible for the activities of other people, and their happiness – of whatever you want to call it. So that was a new experience for me.

BMR: Was it tough?

JS: Fortunately, I had always good people who work with. So, no, it was very easy for me. I don’t know if they would say the same thing or not (laughs). Maybe not.

BMR: Did you keep the interaction with people in Japan and in other places?

JS: Well, I would see them at the meetings. Would always see each other at the various meetings, because you (looks at Nobu) always went to all the big meetings, and I went to them as well. So, we always had beers after work, at the meetings (laughs). Nobu is probably my longest surviving friend, acquaintance, of anybody that I know. I don’t know if for some reason or another we’ve managed to keep in contact, maybe not frequently, but enough over the years. But more so than anybody else that I’ve ever been involved with.

BMR: And it’s a transnational friendship, right?

JS: Yes, yes. But I suspect he’s probably somehow not like most Japanese. I don’t know (both laugh).

BMR: How did you prepare for the next transition of that program, as the director of the US Science Support Program?

JS: Let’s see, which transition are we talking about?

BMR: From the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program to the International Ocean Discovery Program, in 2013.

JS: I’m trying to remember what we did. I think it was shortly around that time. That may have been around when we lost our contract to run the program, in Ocean Leadership.

BMR: Who lost the contract, you say?

JS: The contract was with NSF from the Consortium for Ocean Leadership, formerly JOI. JOI became the Consortium for Ocean Leadership – I can’t remember exactly when that happened.

BMR: Could you explain me briefly about that?

JS: In the beginning, JOI was only managing the drilling program. But there was another half of the organization called CORE, the Consortium for Ocean Research and Education, and we were located in the same office space. I think there was one admiral who was in charge of both things. At some point, it was decided to combine those into one formal organization. And that’s when the Consortium for Ocean Leadership was created. And so those other small programs that were in the CORE folder, and the stuff that was in the JOI folder, all became together and under the Consortium for Ocean Leadership.

BMR: So, it was kind of unifying different groups and programs that NSF, Ocean Division, was paying for.

JS: Yes, more or less. I don’t remember exactly what all those ones were for, but we also had the Ocean Observatories Initiative, there; and there were lots of smaller programs under CORE. I can’t even remember what they all were. So, there was quite a few people who work there. Then, there was the US Science Support Program, and then we also had the Drilling Program Office, the head guy of the drilling program. We had an office there, for that. He managed, at the time – the ship operations were at Texas A&M, and the logging group was at Columbia, Lamont-Doherty. Both of those were managed, overseen, by somebody in our office. And they all had their own abbreviations and acronyms.

BMR: Now I see where the stories converge.

JS: The US Science Support Program had to be renewed. So, we had to submit a proposal to NSF to renew it for five years, or something. I think they did it every five years – I can’t quite remember. And maybe this was when the new drilling program (IODP) was supposed to start; I don’t know if they were synchronized or not. But, anyways, we lost. So, NSF didn’t approve our proposal. They preferred the one from Columbia.

BMR: Do you have any idea of why?

JS: Most likely it was because of the money.

BMR: In which sense, yours was more expensive?

JS: Yeah. Ours was more expensive because – what are the right words for it? Well, at the Consortium for Ocean Leadership, we had a lot of people working there, and we had office space in Washington, D.C. So, there was a lot of money that all that cost to run. I can’t remember what the term, was that it was called, but every time we would submit a proposal, we would say, “We need this amount of money to support this program, and this project, and this travel for these people to go here”. Then, when we would make the proposal, we would have to add on a percentage fee that just went to our organization, for the organization. That fee was getting larger and larger, a percentage. So, it wasn’t so much the cost of our program. It was the cost of our organization. And I think that’s where they beat us out. Was that they were able to come in with a much lower cost.

So, that was that. I stayed around until all of the proposals that we had, people that we were funding, on expeditions and whatnot they were done, and then that was it. I was out of a job.

BMR: At the moment you submitted the proposal to renew the contract with NSF, how confident were you on getting it? Did you know that there were other people submitting competing proposals?

JS: I did not know. I assumed that there would be, but I did not know who or what. So yeah, it was a little bit disconcerting to learn where it went, instead of to us, and who was competing against us. I can’t remember if we had already lost the management of the drilling program at that point, too. That was another reason why that extra fee from our organization increased more, because we didn’t have the money coming in for the drilling program, which was a lot of money. I think that caused the fee to go up. I don’t remember.

But, no, I was not 100% confident that we were going to get it. And like I said, I asked them and apparently it was about the money. But I don’t know what the difference was.

BMR: It must have been kind of shocking, because by the time you had been involved in the program’s management for many years. How did you continue after that? Did you try to bring something, get into some ocean drilling office?

JS: I started applying for other jobs. Well, actually, I probably didn’t until left. I applied for a lot of other jobs and had a lot of interviews, many of them with NSF and, for one reason or another, I didn’t get anything from them. I think it was just because I was too old, and nobody wanted to hire somebody at my age to start off, because somebody younger than me would be a lot cheaper.

BMR: But you had all that experience.

JS: That doesn’t really matter as much as you think it should, or maybe as much as it should matter. What matters is the money.

BMR: Did you keep any relation or involvement with scientific ocean drilling after that?

JS: No, I did not. I mean, until I left there, it was 2016, I think. March, maybe, was the end of my time. That was that.

BMR: Is there anything else you want to explain about this last period of your involvement in IODP?

JS: I don’t think so. We sort of covered everything. Do you have more questions?

BMR: Yes, I have some more questions (laughs).

JS: Well, then keep asking questions (laughs).

BMR: I know sometimes I go into lot of detail because I find interesting to see how these big programs work. So, when you start zooming in and seeing how all the different bits and pieces connect together… So, for example, your work has been management the proposals, and that’s a job that has always existed within the program, but at the same time has evolved as the programs and their needs chanced. What I find interesting is that you carry that from the ODP, all the way to the end of IODP, in offices located at the three major partners (Europe, USA, Japan), which is kind of a unique experience.

JS: When I moved from Japan to JOI, the guy who was standing in that one photo, Steve Bohlen, as I mentioned, he was the leader of the Joint Oceanographic Institutions, at that time. And the woman who was the director of my program, Holly Given. I met with them, and they decided to hire me. So, I came in to be her second in command in the program. After – it might have been after less than a year, she switched over from managing the US Science Support Program to managing the Ocean Observatories Initiative, still in JOI. So, she moved over there. And then, I didn’t get promoted because I hadn’t been there long enough or something, or they weren’t sure that I was ready for the job. So, they brought in another person from outside to take her position. After a year, or less than a year, she left and I got that position. I became the director, then, and I had a couple of people working under me.

When the Sapporo office was cut out and eliminated, the function of that, that handling of the advisory structure and the proposals, moved to an office at Scripps. And the person who was put in charge of that was Holly Given, my former boss at JOI. So, she was there, and she was running that office. And there was a Japanese woman who worked, Michiko Yamamoto. Did she work with us?

NE: No, she was the science coordinator after we left.

JS: Okay. So, she was there, and they had a few other people working there. It was a couple of years ago, I think – Holly Given was retiring, so they needed to replace her as the director of that office. Nobu informed me about this, so I applied and I interviewed for the position. And, I thought it went really well. And afterwards I learned that, well, I didn’t get the job.

BMR: I guess its kind of sad, that you’ve been sort of pushed to disconnect from this…

JS: Well, the other thing was that, since my wife has a good job here in DC, we didn’t want to leave the area. So, I could only apply for jobs that were nearby around here. That one at Scripps was the first time I had applied for a job that wasn’t around here because I thought, “well, if I can’t do this job…”. I mean, at one point they had talked about me buying a house or something there, and at that point I had said that I wasn’t really planning on moving there, because I knew it would only be for a couple of years, until the program was over, and until I was in retirement age. “My son is in school, my wife has a good job, and I’ll rent an apartment here, and be here however often I need to be. But I’m not going to move here”. I don’t know if that played a role in it, as well.

BMR: I understand it, when you say that the experience is not the only thing that is considered for these kinds of positions.

JS: yes.

BMR: What’s the most valuable thing you take from your career related to scientific ocean drilling?

JS: Nobu, my wife, the people that I just met here on the street whom I haven’t seen in years, and we recognized each other. I don’t know if they know my name or not (laughs), but they recognize me, even though we haven’t seen in years. I think that’s the big thing. It’s just all the connections; all the people I got to meet and talked to; and all the places I got to go. That, to me, was the best part of it.

BMR: Great; and this is my last question – the one that’s more difficult to answer nowadays. How do you see the future of scientific ocean drilling?

JS: Boy, I don’t know. That’s a tough question. Obviously, I don’t have the answer to that question, and I don’t know that anybody does. I think there’s a large group of the science community that would love to see it keep on going, because they’ve invested large parts of their careers in that, and they think there’s still more work that could be done, and more science that could be learned from it. And I think they’re probably right. At the same time, wow, it’s the money thing. It just cost a lot of money to do those projects, and run those ships. Governments are always strained to the limit on what they’re going to spend their money on. There’s always some different program that wants to be brought into existence, or that the prices of it go up. Unfortunately, government spending doesn’t seem to increase at the same rate as the costs of other things of actually doing the science. I don’t know what the answer is. I’d love to see something happen. I’d love to somehow see the US better involved with the Chikyu and the ECORD project. And now, I just learned from Nobu that the Chinese built a new drilling ship, or are about to do it. I don’t know if that could somehow take the place. And the US could still support the scientists to be involved in projects, but just not have to pay for the drilling ship; or not pay as much. That would be that would be great. But, again, it all just boils down to the money, and there’s never enough to go around. And I’m sure ocean drilling is not the only scientific endeavor that has that problem.

BMR: Looking back at your career and the evolution of scientific ocean drilling, is there something that you think should have been done differently?

JS: I don’t know the answer to that either. I don’t know that I’m qualified enough or had been involved enough at the right places, or levels to give a good answer. Certainly, what we were doing, we made our best effort all the time to streamline the process, and do it more efficiently. But we were only at a certain low level in the whole process. So, it’s hard to say how the whole thing could be different. But, yeah, if there was just a way to do it without having to spend so much money, or if you could get more countries involved – I don’t even know how that happens, but, I mean, Russia used to be involved at one point, but only for very briefly, and long time ago. I don’t think there are any South American countries involved. So, how do you get more countries involved, and increase the budget? Because, otherwise, you’re only going to go downhill. You’re not going to go up.

But what could be done differently? I don’t know, other than hearing that the Chinese are going to provide us or have a ship. That’s a big deal, to me, that I hadn’t heard that before today. That’s a very exciting bit of news, but how it will work out, I guess we’ll see.

BMR: Well, thank you very much. That’s all for my side.

JS: Thank you.