Topic summary
Sea Grant Colleges
Extracted from the Wikipedia article National Sea Grant College Program.
History
At a 1963 meeting of the American Fisheries Society, a University of Minnesota professor, Athelstan Spilhaus, first suggested the establishment of Sea Grant colleges in universities that wished to develop oceanic work. The name "Sea Grant" was chosen to draw a parallel with the land-grant college program that was funded by grants of western lands to the states by the 1862 Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862. Early in the legislative process, there was consideration of leases of offshore parcels of ocean and sea bottom to fund the program by John A. Knauss and bill sponsor Claiborne Pell much like the 1862 land grants, but that plan was eventually scrapped in favor of direct congressional appropriation for the program. The 1966 Act allowed the National Science Foundation (NSF) authority to initiate and support education, research, and extension by: