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University of Alaska Fairbanks Student Accepted to Knauss Fellowship

A graduate student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences is the newest addition to the National Sea Grant Knauss Fellowship in Washington, DC. 

The Knauss Fellowship was established in 1979 and is available to graduate-level students interested in how the nation’s marine resources are managed and how policies are made.  The Fellows receive a year’s stipend while working with either marine resource agencies of the executive branch or in congressional committees that set marine policies. 

Thomas Farrugia is the graduate student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks that will be a member of the fellowship.  Professor of Fisheries and Associate Director for Research at Alaska Sea Grant at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Ginny Eckert recruited Farrugia to the University.  She says this fellowship is perfect for him.

“It’s really useful for graduate students. They are trained in a whole different variety of marine sciences, everything from oceanography from fisheries to marine biology and often they don’t get very much policy experience and as we know there’s a lot of policy that effects the oceans. Especially in Alaska, we’re closely tied to the oceans and to the policies that get set.”

Farrugia says he’s looking forward to the program and he has received a lot of support among his professors and peers.

“We have a couple of previous fellows in Alaska one of which is on my graduate committee, Dr. Keith Criddle. He kind of told me that this was something that I would be interested in so he kind of pushed me towards applying.”

Farrugia received his undergraduate degree at McGill University in Montreal and his masters from California State University in Long Beach.  He has been studying sharks, skates and rays. 

The Knauss Fellowship is named in honor of John Knauss, one of the Sea Grant’s national founders. 

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