NEWPORT — Not so many years ago, Jane Lubchenco could often be found on a Yaquina Bay dock at the OSU Hatfield Marine Science Center, pulling together gear in the quiet, early morning hours for a research cruise into the choppy Pacific waters off Oregon’s coast.
Lubchenco’s circumstances in Newport on Saturday were decidedly less modest. Representing the president of the United States, the U.S. Secretary of Commerce and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in her role as its administrator, Lubchenco dedicated NOAA’s Marine Operations Center-Pacific Facility under a picture-perfect blue sky, sun glinting off the calm waters of the bay.
Formerly a distinguished professor of zoology at Oregon State University, where she served on the faculty for 32 years, the internationally respected 63-year-old has headed NOAA since the spring of 2009. She is the first woman to serve in that role and, as such, heads the nation’s first federal scientific agency: NOAA’s predecessor, the Survey of the Coast, was established by Thomas Jefferson in 1807.
“As someone who took biology in college and who wanted to become a marine biologist before I got lost on my way to the boat, I want to say how proud I am to share the stage today with Dr. Lubchenco,” said Gov. John Kitzhaber at Saturday’s ceremonies, only half in jest.
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