NOAA Student Opportunities - Special Opportunities

The Population Dynamics Recruiting Program (PDRP) was developed to increase the number of highly qualified applicants for population dynamics positions with the Southeast Fisheries Science Center .

A combination of two factors led to the need for this program:

1) the wave of upcoming retirements at natural resource agencies across the country,or
2) the decline in university natural resource program enrollments.

The PDRP provides unique opportunities for top undergraduate students in the southeastern U.S. to learn about the field of marine resources population dynamics first-hand, all expenses paid, from some of the top experts in the field.

Students interested must enter the PDRP through a one week Undergraduate Workshop, held in early January, each year, in the Florida Keys . The highly competitive application process seeks students with a strong quantitative background and a basic understanding of ecology.

The second phase of the PDRP is the Summer Program where 4-8 of the top, PDRP Workshop participants spend part of their summers learning about current, important marine resource issues. A key part of the summer program is a two week tour where students meet with key university and agency scientists, managers, and policymakers to learn about the issues. The end product of the summer program is a student-developed, web-based case study which can be used in classrooms around the world to illustrate the complexity of the issues studied by the students.

The top students participating in the summer program are offered M.S. Graduate Assistantships with the NMFS RTR Unit at Virginia Tech, as funding allows. Students selected conduct research on a marine resource population dynamics issue of consequence to the Southeast Fisheries Science Center under the supervision of Virginia Tech faculty and NMFS scientists. The RTR Unit maintains excellent relationships with many other top southeastern universities including the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, the University of Miami, and Louisiana State University, among others, where outstanding students are also referred.

This is the first program of its kind in the country. For undergraduate students potentially interested in combining their interests in math, computers, ecology, and conservation, this program provides a tremendous opportunity to explore potential graduate school and career opportunities.