On September 21-22, 2010 the S.C. Sea Grant Consortium was evaluated by an external National Sea Grant Site Visit Review Team, which was charged with reviewing and making recommendations for improvement on the Consortium’s program management and organization, stake-holder engagement, and collaborative network activities.
The Team commended the Consortium for its effective management and organization; creativity; stakeholder engagement; collaborative networking; local, state, regional, and national leader-ship; ability to leverage resources and funding; and interactions with the private sector. Of particular note is the fact that the national Site Visit Team made no recommendations for program improvement.
Among the Team’s many positive conclusions were the following:
- “There are currently eight institutions in the Consortium… The Program’s inherent multi-institutional structure has created many opportunities and, given the effective leadership of the Program, significant efficiency and productivity.
- “Site Visit participants noted that the structure and performance of the Consortium helped convince individual institutions that creating and facilitating partnerships would lead to more effective use of funds.”
- The Consortium, “through the use of its Program Advisory Board, gets excellent guidance on initiatives related to coastal and marine resource issues and opportunities.”
- The Consortium “blends science, outreach, and communication components well.”
- The Consortium “can look at a state issue as a national issue, translate it to a regional level and then bring the issue back to a national level, not as a problem, but as a solution. Thus the Consortium is comfortable in describing and solving issues in a simultaneous local (state), regional, and national context.”
- The Consortium’s “stakeholder engagement is broad, impressive, diverse, and multidimensional. The Consortium has been entrepreneurial and has used creative ‘out-of-the-box’ thinking. This has leveraged credibility and provided opportunities to match resources to needs.”
- The Team “was also impressed with the Consortium’s work with the private sector where, through education and creative partnering, private sector resources were brought to bear in areas with aligned public and private goals.”
- Coastal Heritage magazine “is an excellent publication, and the Consortium should attempt to increase readership, in print and online.”