Lieutenant Junior Grade Theresa Smith, a Westerville South High School graduate, spent the day in Chris Henricksen’s classroom at Mark Twain Elementary School talking about her experiences in the NOAA Corps.
Lieutenant Junior Grade Theresa Smith, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Corps (NOAA), spent the day in Chris Henricksen’s fifth grade classroom at Mark Twain Elementary School on Friday, November 7. She had an interesting tale to tell about her journey, which began as a Westerville City Schools student (Annehurst Elementary, Heritage Middle School, and Westerville South High School, Class of 2006).
After attending Bowling Green State University for two years, and then transferring to California State in Monterey Bay, Smith went to work for the NOAA. Having just rotated off the NOAA ship Fairweather, she currently works in Seattle for the agency’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center, assessing fish habitat using sonar.
Through that experience she learned, through a newsletter, that Westerville’s Henricksen had been selected as one of 26 teachers from across the United States to participate in the 2014 field season of NOAA’s Teacher at Sea program. On April 29, 2014, he took off from Boston aboard the Henry B. Bigelow for a 21-day “critter cruise.” The mission of that endeavor was to conduct a fisheries survey. Working alongside research scientists, Henricksen maintained a daily blog and reported the important scientific findings and other aspects of life and work aboard ship. The Henry B. Bigelow is a state-of-the-art research ship with multiple science mission capabilities. It supports NOAA’s mission to protect, restore and manage the use of living marine, coastal and ocean resources through ecosystem-based management. Its primary objective is to study, monitor and collect data on a wide range of sea life and ocean conditions, primarily in U.S. waters from Maine to North Carolina.
Smith contacted Henricksen and offered to spend the day in his classroom, where the two discussed their common interests and students learned about what it’s like to be a sailor for the agency.