A San Jose State masters student has been awarded a $10,000 scholarship from the Aquarium of the Pacific’s African American Scholar program.
Gregory Smith is earning his masters degree in biological science, with a concentration in ecology and evolution.
He was awarded the scholarship for his fieldwork studying seabirds in the Farallon Islands near San Francisco and on seabird islands in Maine, Florida and Oregon, since his graduation from the College of the Atlantic in 2010.
Alie LeBeau, director of STEM Pathway Initiatives at the Aquarium of the Pacific, said this scholarship was created in 2020 as a way to address the lack of diversity in marine sciences and aquarium-related fields.
She said recipients of the award have the opportunity to participate in programs through the aquarium based on their research, including communicating with the public.
According to LeBeau, recipients can also form a “community of like-minded Black and African American marine scientists.”
“[The Aquarium of the Pacific] really hopes that [scholarship recipients] build community among each other as a California based marine science group,” LeBeau said. “We hope that they are able to connect with each other, share resources, be supportive, share interests and just continue to grow that community of Black and African American students that are engaged in similar work.”
Smith obtained his bachelor's in biology from the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine.
He said since then he’s collected bird data for various projects with different universities through fieldwork over the years.
Smith said before the pandemic, he wanted to go back to school to land more desirable jobs, which led him to SJSU’s master’s program led by Professor of Ecology and Evolution Scott Shaffer.
“The seabird world is really small, so you kind of get to know who are the professors who do that kind of work,” Smith said. “Scott Shaffer is a pretty well known name, especially on the West Coast.”
Shaffer said he couldn’t be prouder of Smith for receiving this award.
“I'm continually impressed by Greg's analytical skills,” Shaffer said. “He has done an amazing job working on a complex data set.”
Shaffer’s research at SJSU covers physiological ecology of birds and how living things function within the environment.
Shaffer said Smith’s master’s project is attempting to answer “some fundamental life history questions” of the Cassin’s auklet, a small diving seabird.
“Greg is working with a large data set of breeding histories and population dynamics going back 30 plus years for a population of Cassin's auklets that nest at the Farallon Islands off San Francisco,” Shaffer said. “This is a collaborative effort with our partners at Point Blue Conservation Science in Petaluma.”
Point Blue Conservation Science is a nonprofit wildlife conservation and research organization focused on climate-smart conservation and inclusion across the different forms of diversity, according to their website.
A Cassin’s auklet is a small, but rotund seabird that breeds in colonies on islands throughout the Eastern North Pacific, according to a bird identification webpage created by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
Smith said he worked with and had interest in these birds 10 years prior to his time at Point Blue Conservation Science, which brought him to research the species during his masters.
“This species particularly spoke to me because they are one of the birds you handle pretty often, so you build some sort of relationship with them,” he said. “They have a really cool history and biology that is kind of unique to them, and it's something you don't see in a lot of other seabirds.”
Smith said after college, he wants to do meaningful research that pushes conservation.
“Part of my interest in the sciences is that I want to make the sciences a little bit more accessible, especially [for] the brown and Black folks,” Smith said. “Just making it accessible for folks, opening those doors and kind of making it a little bit easier.”
