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GLOBE Program Office News Brief
November 2008

Greetings from the GLOBE Program Office. Starting now, in November 2008, the GPO Communications Office will provide a monthly news brief containing featured highlights about community members, outreach programs, and GLOBE success stories, our GLOBE Stars promoting collaborative student research around the world. The News Brief will also feature the "Community Spotlight," a short introduction to an active member of the worldwide GLOBE Community whose GLOBE work is making a difference in his or her part of the world. Our first six highlights will concentrate on the GIAC members, in alphabetical order by region. Once we have introduced you to these important leaders of the GLOBE community, the stage will be open to anyone whose work for GLOBE deserves special recognition. Please send the name of someone you know whose work might serve as a model for service to the GLOBE community to communications@globe.gov, and help us identify fresh faces for future issues of the GLOBE News Brief.

Community Spotlight

student research image

We begin this month by highlighting Mr. Mark Brettenny, Chairman of the GLOBE Africa Consortium and the most recently appointed representative of the GLOBE International Advisory Committee (GIAC). Mark represents the 22 member nations of the GLOBE Africa Consortium and will serve in this capacity from 2008-2010.

Mark Brettenny was a driving force behind the GLOBE Learning Expedition in Cape Town, South Africa, this past June. Formerly the Country Coordinator for South Africa, Mark completed his under-graduate education at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology in Cape Town. Having started his career in Marine Engineering in the Naval Dockyard in Simonstown, and then as a design draughtsman and project manager at a Cape Town steel construction and engineering firm, Mark began to feel pulled toward the education field and took a job designing a community uplift development program. Later he held a high school teaching post in Namibia where he was subject head for various technology subjects, computer literacy staff development and curriculum development before returning to South Africa to teach Design and Technology and Computer Literacy. He became involved with GLOBE in 1997 while working for the Ministry of Education, shortly after the signing of the GLOBE / South Africa bilateral agreement occurred between former President of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, and former Vice-President of the United States, Al Gore.

Mark served as a GLOBE teacher trainer in Nigeria and Uganda and represented South Africa at the first GLOBE Learning Expedition in Helsinki. His GLOBE activities continue to occupy most of his professional and leisure time. Mark has developed various models for implementation and sustainability and has presented them on various platforms throughout the world. He is currently working on the GLE Legacy project for eradication of invasive species of plants, and developing the first draft of the Invasive Alien Plant Protocol along with Dr. Rico Gazal from Glenville State University, in Glenville, West Virginia USA.

When not working, Mark enjoys spending time with his wife Rogeline, an Atmosphere Master Trainer, and his teenage son Leigh-Roy and daughter Macaila on the Garden Route, in the second mildest climate in the world.

Mark also owns a construction company and is actively working on the redesigning of cost efficient housing for the poor and needy. The designs will later be introduced to all of Africa.

ESSP HIghlight: FLEXE Team on Deep Sea Expedition


Jamie Larsen with Ann Curry of the Today Show on the deck of the R/V Atlantis

Jamie Larsen, FLEXE Project Lead, and Eric Simms, part of the Ridge 2000 FLEXE team, were invited to take part in a deep-sea research cruise aboard the R/V Atlantis. Jamie has just returned from the cruise to the Guaymas Basin where he followed the research efforts of a diverse team of scientists as they collected data and samples of microbial life found in the water column, at hydrothermal vents, in tubeworms as well as on and in sediment. Dr. Stefan Sievert, from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, was the Chief Scientist on the cruise. Dr. Sievert invited the FLEXE team to participate allowing them to collect important background information as well as to explore potential datasets for future FLEXE Forums on microbial life for a series of microbial life activities under development by the FLEXE team. Part of Jamies experience included a dive in the submersible Alvin to 2018 meters below the ocean surface. Alvin Pilot Mark Spear guided the submersible to various seafloor study sites where Alvins arm deposited or picked up several microbe colonization devices, took sediment cores, microbial mat samples, water and vent fluid chemistry samples, and visited several vents populated with Riftia tubeworms and various other deep sea organisms. The GLOBE/FLEXE team would like to thank Ridge 2000, Dr. Sievert, the scientists, and the crew aboard the R/V Atlantis for the opportunity to experience the science of extreme life first hand. We look forward to bringing this exciting research to GLOBE students soon.

GLOBE Around the World: Regional Update

We are very pleased to report that all GLOBE regions completed the creation of their own Regional Consortium, with governance board structures, in 2008. In response to this success, the GLOBE Program Office has approved the transition of regional management to each regional consortium.

As a result of this decision, the GPO will be awarding each region start-up funding for the establishment of their own regional office to facilitate advancement toward programmatic sustainability. The official request for proposal process will begin in November and we hope to have all new regional offices in place by the end of January 2009!

At this time, the GLOBE Program Office (GPO) would like to thank the exceptional work of the GPO Regional Desk Officers-Dr. Russanne Low, Africa and Near East-North Africa; Mr. Noah Newman, Europe-Eurasia and Latin America-Caribbean; and Mr. Eric Stonebraker, Asia and the Pacific-for their contributions toward regional sustainability of GLOBE. Their hard work and dedication to the GLOBE Program is to be commended. We are pleased to announce that Noah has returned to working with the GLOBE Help Desk, and we wish both Russanne and Eric well in their future endeavors.

Please watch for more information during this transition period. We are confident that together we can further strengthen the GLOBE Program and continue our collaborative vision to create a more international GLOBE Program in support of student research around the world.

Travel without even leaving home, by reading GLOBE Stars, stories of GLOBE at work in the world! Recent Stars on the GLOBE Web site include:

THE GLOBE Program Office has been on the move this month, giving presentations at several U.S. national conferences in October:

In closing, the GLOBE Program Office invites you to consider the following: How do you build community? By creating something worth building a community around! GLOBE is at work in the world uniting students, teachers, scientists and citizens in research that crosses international borders. GLOBE is all of us working together, an educational and scientific force that unites people, nations and cultures for peace and a sustainable future.

We encourage your interaction with the GLOBE Program Office. Send comments, questions, and nominations for the monthly Community Member "spotlight" to communications@globe.gov.

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