Letter from the Executive Director
Spring 2025: Renewal and Growth
Energy and enthusiasm always arise from a long cold winter as days lengthen and hints of green sprout on trees and erupt from the ground. It’s all relative, I realize, as friends and family across the nation often make fun of our North Carolina winter and “snow.” But the peek of new color across the landscape is a welcome sign of good things to come every year.
Winter can be a reflective time, and North Carolina Sea Grant spent this last winter completing a review of our program’s impacts and accomplishments back to 2018. Regular program reviews offer an opportunity to assess program investments in research, extension, and outreach. It’s an opportunity to take a moment away from the fast-paced forward progress today, and to remind our team, partners, and funders of the enormous successes we’ve achieved together to support NC’s coastal and watershed communities, economies, and environments.
The landscape continues to change in communities and across the coast with major impacts from hurricanes Matthew (2016), Florence (2018), Dorian (2019), and Isaias (2020), among other weather events — not to mention the devastation Hurricane Helene wrought over western NC last year. The COVID-19 pandemic also changed the landscape in terms of adjustments in approach and engagement through our research and extension partnerships. But these challenges have resulted in new and strengthened partnerships, a renewal of energy to achieve progress together to support increased resilience within communities and even within each of ourselves. It’s an ongoing Spring, if you will, and a welcome reminder of growth and positive forward motion.
In a snapshot, external reviewers recognized how North Carolina Sea Grant’s team experience and efforts have resulted in important on-the-ground impacts with communities, industries, and other partners — and at an impressive pace and scale. Clearly, this reflects the program’s excellent and extensive collaborative networks, those valuable partnerships we’ve sustained and developed over time in the spheres of research, extension, and communication.
And so, as we continue to move forward together into this Spring, we also remember that 50 years of history buoy North Carolina Sea Grant today. One of the most important captains of the program was Ron Hodson, an aquaculture specialist with a farmer’s instincts. He served North Carolina Sea Grant from 1981 until he retired in 2006, the last nine years as director of the program. His colleagues described him as a hard-working man without any pretenses.
When Hodson retired, Jim Murray, a former North Carolina Sea Grant extension director who went on to serve the National Sea Grant College Program, said of him simply: “What you see is what you get.”
Ron Hodson passed away earlier this year, and on behalf of our program we hope his family finds comfort and peace in the legacy and stories he has left with us and everyone he touched. You can read about his colorful career here.
In his memory, our team finds renewed commitment this Spring to the beautiful coasts and communities where we live, work, and play.
— Susan White, Executive Director, North Carolina Sea Grant
