Photo: NYSG’s 2023 CEI student participants worked in diverse areas. Credit: NYSG

Contacts: 

Kathleen Fallon, NYSG Coastal Processes & Hazards Specialist, E: kmf228@cornell.edu, P: (631) 632-8730

Lillit (Lilli) Genovesi, NYSG Long Island Sound Outreach Coordinator, NYC, E: Lillit.Genovesi@cornell.edu, P: (718) 847-0120

Antoinette Clemetson, NYSG Marine Fisheries Specialist, E: aoc5@cornell.edu, P: (631) 824-4407

Stacy Furgal, NYSG Great Lakes Fisheries and Ecosystem Health Specialist, E: slf85@cornell.edu, P: (315) 234-1329

NY Sea Grant helps underrepresented students to receive hands-on training to address timely coastal issues

Stony Brook, NY, March 25, 2024 - The Sea Grant Community Engaged Internship (CEI) Program’s goal is to encourage and broaden participation by students underrepresented in coastal professions by providing hands on training and mentorship to the next generation of scientists, decision-makers, and industry employees.

New York Sea Grant’s (NYSG) participation in the CEI Program provides on-the-ground learning experience that includes professional development and completion of a project that extends the knowledge of community stakeholders to address a coastal, marine, or Great Lakes issue of environmental, economic, and/or social importance.

In 2021, NYSG supported its first CEI fellow. In 2022, the program grew to include two fellows. In 2023, NYSG staff mentored four students in the CEI Program, ensuring new experiences, providing networking opportunities, and developing valuable skills over the course of the 10- week experience. Each CEI fellow worked with a NYSG Extension Mentor to plan hands-on field projects. This field training was supplemented with professional development workshops and national networking opportunities.

The CEI fellows prepared various products to educate residents in coastal communities across
New York State. Topics were focused on natural and nature-based feature monitoring in New York City, development of phytoplankton monitoring training resources for citizen scientists along the Great Lakes, creating outreach cards that identify plant species for shoreline stabilization, and a video describing ongoing research of the early stages of fish in the Atlantic Ocean.

Through 2023, NYSG has hosted a total of seven CEI participants, providing valuable learning opportunities to undergraduate students to work in communities and laboratories across New York to address current coastal issues.


NYSG’s 2023 CEI student participants worked in diverse areas. Credit: NYSG

Project Partners:

• Cornell University
• Long Island Sound Study
• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Hollings Marine Laboratory
• Natural Areas Conservancy
• New York City Parks
• SUNY Maritime College
• Stony Brook University School of Marine and Atmospheric Science


NYSG’s 2023 CEI student participants worked in diverse areas. Credit: NOAA


NYSG’s 2023 CEI student participants worked in diverse areas. Credit: NYSG


More Info: New York Sea Grant

New York Sea Grant (NYSG), a cooperative program of Cornell University and the State University of New York (SUNY), is one of 34 university-based programs under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Sea Grant College Program.

Since 1971, NYSG has represented a statewide network of integrated research, education and extension services promoting coastal community economic vitality, environmental sustainability and citizen awareness and understanding about the State’s marine and Great Lakes resources.

Through NYSG’s efforts, the combined talents of university scientists and extension specialists help develop and transfer science-based information to many coastal user groups—businesses and industries, federal, state and local government decision-makers and agency managers, educators, the media and the interested public.

The program maintains Great Lakes offices at Cornell University, SUNY Buffalo, Rochester Institute of Technology, SUNY Oswego, the Wayne County Cooperative Extension office in Newark, and in Watertown. In the State's marine waters, NYSG has offices at Stony Brook University and with Cornell Cooperative Extension of Nassau County on Long Island, in Queens, at Brooklyn College, with Cornell Cooperative Extension in NYC, in Bronx, with Cornell Cooperative Extension of Ulster County in Kingston, and with Cornell Cooperative Extension of Westchester County in Elmsford.

For updates on Sea Grant activities: www.nyseagrant.org has Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram, and YouTube links. NYSG offers a free e-list sign up via www.nyseagrant.org/nycoastlines for its flagship publication, NY Coastlines/Currents, which is published quarterly.