DURHAM, N.C. – The Nicholas School’s Division of Coastal Systems Science and Policy has been renamed the Division of Marine Science and Conservation. 

Cindy L. Van Dover, division chair and director of the 91ÉçÇø¸£Àû Marine Laboratory, announced the name change to the Nicholas School community following approval by the university’s Board of Trustees. 

Van Dover noted that the new name reflects the division’s newly revised mission statement: Education, research and service to understand marine systems, including the human component, and to develop approaches for marine conservation and restoration.

She explained, “Our academic philosophy is distinctive from other marine science programs in the United States in its explicit inclusion of humans as an integral part of the marine environment, whether the research at hand has to do with charismatic marine megafauna (marine mammals, large predatory fish, sea turtles, sea birds), shallow-water habitats, or the deep sea. We embrace the ethic that professional responsibility includes the use of scientific results to inform policy, in addition to publication of scientific studies in scholarly journals. These distinctions are transformational: they bring societal relevance to marine science studies in the most direct manner possible. This is an ethic that is passed on from the faculty to the next generation of scientists and policymakers."