Vera Alexander receives career achievement award
March 5, 2015
Vera Alexander, former dean of the University of Alaska Fairbanks School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, has received the Pollock Conservation Cooperative Research Center's inaugural award for achievements.
Jan Jacobs, the center's advisory board co-chair, presented the award in January during the 12th Alaska Marine Science Symposium in Anchorage.
In future years, the accolade will be called the Vera Alexander Award for Marine Science and Education. Alexander was dean when the research center was formed in 2000 and has served on its advisory board since then.
Jacobs is the director of government affairs for American Seafoods, one of the six catcher-processor fishing companies that form the Pollock Conservation Cooperative. The cooperative has supported marine science and education through PCCRC with contributions of $12.6 million.
“It's been my honor to have worked with Dr. Alexander for the last 15 years. She has decided to step down from the advisory board, and members of the board wanted to acknowledge her contributions to our research program and so many of her other contributions and achievements,” said Jacobs.
Alexander was the first woman to receive a Ph.D. from the University of Alaska, in 1965, and she is known worldwide for her pioneering research on the role of sea ice in the Bering Sea. In 1980, she became director of the Institute of Marine Science. In 1987, she was appointed as the first dean of the School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences at UAF, and she served in that role for nearly 20 years.
Alexander has published more than 70 papers during her illustrious career. She is a founder of the North Pacific Marine Science Organization, where she was U.S. delegate from 1992 to 2002, vice-chairman from 1998 to 2002, and chairman from 2002 to 2006.
Alexander was a commissioner on the U.S. Marine Mammal Commission for 16 years, and served 10 years on the Science Panel of the North Pacific Research Board.
“One of her crowning achievements has been the construction and launch of the 261-foot Research Vessel Sikuliaq—among the most advanced research vessels in the world — a project that Vera has been working on for decades, truly a labor of love,” Jacobs said.
“This list is just the tip of the iceberg, as it were,” said Jacobs. “Besides her scientific achievements, Vera is an accomplished concert pianist.”
In recognition of Alexander’s remarkable contributions to the advancement of marine science, PCCRC presented her with a beautiful pottery vase glazed with sediments from the seafloor of the Bering Sea and Antarctica.
ADDITIONAL CONTACT: Joan Braddock, interim dean, School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences , 907-474-7210