Maxwell Named Knauss Fellow

Vanessa Maxwell
2008 Knauss Fellow

Louisiana State University doctoral candidate Vanessa Maxwell has been selected as a 2008 Knauss Fellow. She was nominated for the fellowship by the Louisiana Sea Grant College Program.

Maxwell is the daughter of Sandra and Virgil Maxwell of Franklin, Tenn. She is a 1997 graduate of Franklin High School in Franklin, Tenn. She earned her bachelor’s degree in marine biology and aquaculture from Florida Tech, her maser’s degree in fisheries and allied aquaculture from Auburn University, and she completed her Ph.D. in wildlife and fisheries sciences with a minor in environmental planning and management at LSU. She will receive her doctorate in August 2007. During her doctoral studies, she assisted Louisiana Sea Grant researcher John Supan with developing an aquaculture park to demonstrate longline oyster farming in coastal Louisiana.

Longlines are an off-bottom cultivation technique, used widely in Australia, in which oysters are grown in flexible plastic mesh bags suspended from a cable. Maxwell’s graduate assistantship on the project was funded by Sea Grant’s Gulf Oyster Industry Program.

The Knauss Fellowship, sponsored by the National Sea Grant College Program, provides a unique educational experience to students who have an interest in ocean and coastal resources and national policy decisions affecting those resources. The program matches graduate students with hosts in legislative or executive branch offices in Washington, D.C., for one year.

In December, Maxwell will decide in which host office she will work, and the fellowship will begin in February 2008. She is one of 52 Knauss Fellows for 2008.