When young women graduating from CC go on to graduate studies or careers in the sciences, they owe a great debt to the women who have blazed a trail to the laboratories, to the oceans, and to space.<\/p>\n
Sharon L. Smith \u201967<\/strong> is among those pioneers.<\/p>\n She became fascinated by ocean ecosystems when she was 10 years old. Her family spent four months on a freighter traveling from New York to Buenos Aires and back, with multiple stops along the way.<\/p>\n In the late 1960s, it was rare for women to study science in graduate school and difficult to find professors who would even accept women as graduate students.<\/p>\n \u201cIn retrospect, indeed discrimination based on gender was very challenging, but as life unfolds one deals practically with the \u2018constraints\u2019 one faces, keeping in mind larger goals. I am a competitive person, so I just kept going,\u201d says Smith, who emailed from Miami, where she\u2019s a professor emeritus in the\u00a0University of Miami\u2019s Department of Marine Biology and Ecology.<\/p>\n \u201cI marvel at the confidence of women entering oceanography now. They can\u2019t believe how challenging it was. CC was a lovely sheltered start!\u201d<\/p>\n Two professors in particular were responsible: Dick Beidleman, who taught Smith field ecology and found her a mentor at Duke University; and Jim Enderson, who encouraged her in her field ecology pursuits\u2028after graduation.<\/p>\n Smith is also grateful for the training in writing and the exposure to art, literature, and history she received at CC.<\/p>\n After earning her master\u2019s in zoology in 1969 from the University of Auckland in New Zealand, Smith went on to Duke University for her doctorate in zoology and a post-doctoral fellowship at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. She also has honorary doctorates\u00a0 of science from CC and the Southampton College of Long Island University.<\/p>\n But the world\u2019s oceans have been her true classroom.<\/p>\n \u201cI always have felt privileged to investigate the ocean off places like Peru, Mauritania, Somalia, Oman, Greenland, and Alaska \u2014 extreme environments that have offered challenges and remarkable discoveries.\u201d<\/p>\n Oman, its people, and its complex ecosystem have captured her heart.<\/p>\n \u201cOver the 20 years I have experienced the country, it has developed explosively into an intensely consumer-driven culture with a standard of living well beyond the average in the U.S. Omanis are exuberant, generous, and hospitable.\u201d<\/p>\n Smith is writing a book about the fauna, oceanography, and geology found on and around Oman\u2019s Masirah Island.<\/p>\n \u201cOf the seven species of turtle we have on Earth, five of them lay eggs on Masirah Island\u2019s remote and pristine beaches. The world\u2019s only non-migratory population of humpback whales makes its home at the southern end of the island. Pilot whales, spinner dolphin, and bottlenose dolphin use the fishery of Masirah\u2019s coral reefs.\u201d<\/p>\n Smith returns to Oman every year to collect plankton samples from the Arabian Sea during the onset or die-off of the Southwest Monsoon.<\/p>\n \u201cThe strong winds of the SW Monsoon are in part caused by how much snow and ice are on the Tibetan Plateau, and climate change is causing those glaciers to recede. The rich ocean ecosystem off Oman right now could change dramatically.\u201d<\/p>\n Her advice for young women passionate about science: \u201cThe fundamental suggestion I make to all our students is, \u2018Pay attention to your heart.\u2019 If you are doing what you enjoy, it will be easy to accomplish important things and every day will be fun and gratifying.<\/p>\n \u201cChoose what makes you happy, truly deeply happy. That love of what you do every day will give you the perseverance and strength to face challenges of whatever sort.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When young women graduating from CC go on to graduate studies or careers in the sciences, they owe a great debt to the women who have blazed a trail to the laboratories, to the oceans, and to space. Sharon L. Smith \u201967 is among those pioneers. She became fascinated by ocean ecosystems when she was…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":10998,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[63],"class_list":["post-10997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-august-2016","tag-peak-profiles"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/files\/2016\/08\/BUL-AUG16-PG23-PeakSmith.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10997"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10997\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10999,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10997\/revisions\/10999"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}