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By Phil Williams
pwilliam@franklin.uga.edu
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Merryl Alber’s fascination with the sea began in childhood. From her town on the south shore of Long Island, it was just a short walk to the harbor, and each day was bordered by water and salt marsh.
As an assistant professor in the department of marine science, Alber is deeply involved now in the science of estuaries, those rich and productive areas where seas and rivers meet, combining salt- and freshwater creatures. From high school, she knew that science was her passion.
“I always loved science, and I had a teacher in the 10th grade who really inspired me,” she says. The summer after her junior year in high school, she was able to attend an “introduction to oceanography” course at Wallop’s Island, Va., and from that point, she was hooked. The next year, she headed off for Duke as a biology major.
There was another part to Alber’s vision, however: She wanted to “save the world.” Her idealism took her back north after she graduated magna cum laude from Duke in 1981, and she took on two jobs at once, as a research assistant at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole and as a volunteer at the New Alchemy Institute, a non-profit organization in Falmouth, Mass., that worked toward a sustainable future through alternative energy, organic farming and aquaculture, among other things.
She spent three years at New Alchemy, rising to the position of education coordinator and setting up courses for college undergraduates, so they could learn the work of the institute.
Along the way, she realized something important: she could coordinate such courses, but she couldn’t teach them since she lacked an advanced degree. That, as much as anything, is why she began work on a doctoral degree in the Boston University marine program in Woods Hole.
After marrying Brian Binder, Alber finished her degree and joined Binder in Boston, where she used her science and public policy interests to work for the Massachusetts Water Authority on the cleanup of Boston Harbor.
She says it was an important experience. She learned what kind of scientific information managers need, and how idealism can be tempered with pragmatism to come up with creative solutions to intractable problems.
Alber and Binder came to UGA in 1994.
She loves teaching, and offers courses in marine ecology and in coastal marine policy, which she co-teaches with Ben Blount from anthropology and Dorinda Dallmeyer from the School of Law.
In addition to maintaining an extremely busy laboratory dealing with the science of estuaries, she is also working on developing models that will allow scientists to understand ahead of time what might happen if too much water is taken from coastal areas by development.
“We want Georgia to be in a position to move forward rationally in a scientifically informed way,” says Alber. She finds the mixture of research, teaching and service invigorating, since it moves her long-time fascination with the sea out of the lab and into the arena of public policy.
“It’s amazing to see that blue-green openness all the way to the horizon,” she says. “It helps us remember that humans aren’t the only things on the planet.” |
