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CBE 5th Anniversary
Center for the Blue Economy Director Jason Scorse (at right, with microphone) speaks the crowd at an October 13 reception celebrating the center’s fifth anniversary. To Scorse’s right are Dean of the Institute Jeff Dayton-Johnson and CBE Advisory Council member and supporter Deborah Hicks.

The Middlebury Institute’s Center for the Blue Economy (CBE) celebrated its fifth anniversary at a lively event this week, fittingly held at a Cannery Row location overlooking the Monterey Bay. “Today, the CBE is conducting work on every continent and every ocean, partnering with the most influential ocean conservation organizations in the world, and empowering people to care for our vital blue economy,” said CBE Director Jason Scorse, who shared some of the center’s key accomplishments with the assembled crowd of alumni and supporters. “We make the most current data about ocean economic values available to the people, communities, and governments stewarding our ocean environment.”

Scorse is also the program chair of the International Environmental Policy degree program and he is especially proud of the high number of graduates of the program who are employed in their field. Through the CBE, students in the program who are pursuing the concentration in Ocean and Coastal Resource Management are eligible to become Summer Fellows, a fully-funded fellowship with top marine organizations.

The CBE publishes the Journal of Ocean and Coastal Economics (JOCE) and is home to the National Ocean Economics Program. The scientific and economic data the CBE has produced has played a significant role in recent years in important policy decisions such as the U.S. Department of the Interior’s decision to not open up the Southeastern coast to offshore oil and gas drilling. Congressman Sam Farr has described the CBE as “the nation’s leading organization in advancing our understanding of the ocean economy.”

For More Information

Jason Warburg
jwarburg@middlebury.edu
831.647.3156

Eva Gudbergsdottir
eva@middlebury.edu
831.647.6606