State Fellow Update

September 4, 2002

Contact: Christina S. Johnson, csjohnson@ucsd.edu, 858-822-5334

Laura Engeman

California Sea Grant State Fellow Laura Engeman has accepted a position as a project manager at the California Coastal Conservancy’s Central Coast Program. She begins her new job this fall.

“I will be responsible for projects all along Monterey and Santa Cruz counties,” Engeman said. “I will be overseeing water quality projects, restoration projects and land acquisitions.”

Besides taking on new responsibilities at the Coastal Conservancy, Engeman will continue to oversee projects she began earlier in 2007, while a California Sea Grant State Fellow at the Ocean Protection Council, which is housed at the Coastal Conservancy’s headquarters in Oakland.

One of these projects – one she mentioned as being particularly exciting and on the cutting-edge of marine policy debates – is to evaluate the role of wave and tidal energy to coastal ecosystem health. The Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Chevron Co. and AquaEnergy Group, Ltd. have applied for permits to build wave energy farms off Mendocino and Humboldt counties. “We want to understand what the impacts of wave and tidal energy technology would be to the marine ecosystem,” she explained.

Engeman comes to the Coastal Conservancy having declined an earlier offer to work as an environmental consultant at a private land-use firm in Monterey.

“It is much more exciting in government resource management” said Engeman, who holds a master’s in international environmental policy from the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

“My fellowship has been basically to be a staff person at the Ocean Protection Council,” she said. “I was a project manager pretty early on. At the same time, I was mentored. It was a really positive experience.”