Educating and Recruiting the Next Generation of Fisheries Professionals

Fisheries resources provide an important source of employment, high quality protein, cultural identity and recreational opportunities throughout the country and world.  As a result, understanding and managing these resources is critically important.  To accomplish these goals, it is necessary to educate future fisheries professionals in a wide variety of scientific and humanist specializations.  To attract these future fisheries professionals, it is imperative to recruit our country’s youth to college and university fisheries programs.  Historically, higher learning recruitment efforts involved mail and telephone communications with junior- and senior-level high school students.  Recently, successful recruitment efforts have changed dramatically and involve outreach and educating youths in grades K-12.  In this poster, we provide a case study that describes the recruitment efforts started in 2005 that were used to increase student enrollment and rebuild the undergraduate Fisheries Program at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.  These efforts, conducted by a dedicated Recruitment and Outreach Coordinator with the help of Fisheries faculty members, are aimed at all K-12 students and include a variety of programs including on-campus educational activities, visits to schools throughout the state, college fairs, volunteer and internship opportunities, summer science camps, academic competitions and social media.  As a result of these efforts over the past five years, undergraduate student enrollment in the UAF Fisheries program has nearly tripled.  We will also discuss future outreach and recruitment strategies to increase our undergraduate enrollment by another 33%.  In conclusion, our wide variety of outreach and recruitment activities is a valuable tool for increasing our enrollment of undergraduate students who will become the next generation of fisheries professionals.