The Center for Ocean Policy and Economics - COPE°
The Northeast Maritime Institute – College of Maritime Science is proud to announce the creation of The Center for Ocean Policy and Economics (COPE°). A culmination of years of extensive research and conversations with leading experts in the maritime and ocean related fields, it was evident that a repository and facilitator for cogent maritime and ocean policy initiatives linking all stakeholders did not yet exist here in the United States.
COPE° was developed to serve as both a driver for change, as well as a vessel for others to share ideas, collaborate, and pool resources to tackle the wicked problems present in our world today. Without collaboration across the entire spectrum of stakeholders in the maritime domain, it will be incredibly difficult for academic, corporate, non-governmental, and governmental partners to create impactful solutions.
Mission Statement
The Center for Ocean Policy and Economics shall be held to an enduring mission: to make pivotal policy, intellectual, ethical, moral and financial investments for the commercialization of breakthrough best practices in maritime commerce, ocean science and technologies for the implementation of sound ocean policy and responsible exploration and sustainable ocean ecology that focuses on the balancing of mitigating and reversing negative climate trends, creation of environmentally sustainable jobs and ocean regulatory regimes while ensuring that people can live, work and integrate on, in and near oceans, estuaries and rivers through sustainable practices.
Innovation and Collaboration
We shall work with innovators inside and outside of education, science, technology, government, and non-governmental organizations to develop and deliver the best practices of current technologies and new technologies in ways that reverse adverse industrial adulteration and remedies these problems to counteract decades and, in some cases, a millennium of ill understood ramifications to the ocean, its rivers and estuaries. COPE° shall deliver solutions on its mission through commercializing science and technology and using it to augment transformative change by transforming revolutionary concepts and even seemingly impossible problems into practical solutions that are facilitated globally.
Through its educational, scientific, and technological consortium, COPE° shall explicitly reach for transformational change instead of incremental advances. But it does not perform its engineering alchemy in isolation. It works within an innovation ecosystem that includes academic, corporate, and governmental partners, with a constant focus on global solutions – the ocean knows no borders. COPE° shall work to create new strategic opportunities to solve adverse ocean, atmospheric and environmental problems through novel and practical options. COPE° shall become the hub for vibrant, interlocking ecosystems of diverse collaboration through a nurturing environment on a world class campus designed to engage its students, faculty, staff, practitioners, and community at large for intense creativity that is designed to cultivate and solve the wicked problems faced in today’s ocean, atmosphere, and environment as a whole.
Economic Growth and Commercialization Shall Deliver
The world must collaborate to solve adverse ocean, atmospheric and environmental problems. These problems are not being solved and there seems to be little to no advancement in resolving them. COPE° is determined to tackle this issue through applying commercial solutions to these global problems. Commercialization needs to be a positive as it has historically driven progress faster than any social, environmental, or industrial change in the last three-hundred years.
In short – COPE° will take the amazing science, technology and engineering that has been sitting on the shelves for decades and commercialize to create meaningful jobs, reversal of temperature increases (in water and atmospherically), increase oxygen output, and stability of adverse environmental conditions. Without a means to scale and incentivize economic growth, science merely serves as an educational tool and not a solution’s-based apparatus.
Passion, Intellect and Courage – The Best of the Best
COPE° shall go to great lengths to identify, recruit, and support excellent ocean-based science and technology and extraordinary individuals who are at the top of their respective fields and who are hungry for the opportunity to push the limits of their disciplines to remedy negative climate trends, ocean pollution, ocean acidification, atmospheric change – all leading to destructive climate change. These leaders, who shall be at the very heart of COPE° history of success, shall come from academia, industry, and government agencies for limited stretches, generally three to five years. That deadline fuels the signature COPE° urgency to achieve success in less time than might be considered reasonable in a conventional setting.
Program managers shall address challenges broadly, spanning the spectrum from deep science to systems to capabilities, but ultimately, they are driven by the desire to make a difference. They define their programs, set milestones, meet with their performers, and assiduously track progress. But they are also constantly probing for the next big dilemma or “wicked problem” in their respective fields, communicating with leaders in the scientific and engineering community to identify new challenges and potential solutions.
Program managers shall report to COPE° office directors and their deputies, who are responsible for charting their offices’ technical directions, hiring program managers, and overseeing program execution. The technical staff is also supported by experts in security, legal and contracting issues, finance, human resources, and communications. These are the people who make it possible for program managers to achieve big things during their relatively short tenures.
At the leadership level, the COPE° Director and Deputy Director, along with this assistance of a Board of Advisors shall approve each new program and review ongoing programs, while setting organization-wide priorities and ensuring a balanced investment portfolio.
