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NOAA Magazine || NOAA Home Page NOAA CORPS: OFFICERS OF THE NATION'S SMALLEST UNIFORMED SERVICE
This group of approximately 250 scientists and engineers comprise the NOAA Corps, America's seventh service (the others are the four military services, Coast Guard and Public Health Service). NOAA Corps officers play an essential role in NOAA, serving across all line offices.
Formerly the Coast and Geodetic Survey Commissioned Corps, the NOAA Corps came into being in 1970 following two reorganizations in which several science agencies with related missions were brought together as NOAA. With creation of the new agency, the range of responsibilities of the commissioned corps was greatly expanded from its original mission (dating from Thomas Jefferson's establishment of the Coast Survey) to chart the coastlines.
Today's NOAA Corps continues to serve at sea aboard NOAA's research and survey fleet, in flight aboard research aircraft that probe everything from hurricanes to snow cover, and ashore in NOAA's labs and offices throughout the United States and at such remote research sites as the Australian outback and Antarctica.
Unless assigned to NOAA's Aircraft Operations Center, officers spend about a third of their career at sea. Newly commissioned officers first complete basic officer training, then move on to their first assignment aboard a NOAA ship. The officers are on call 24 hours a day; they rotate assignments every two or three years, bringing expertise in the operation and capabilities of NOAA ships and aircraft, as well as diverse program experience to their shore assignments.
Because NOAA Corps officers work under a uniformed personnel system, they can be moved or reassigned without prior notice, as when a disaster strikes or in response to agency needs. Their uniformed status makes them particularly capable in dealing with personnel from the other uniformed services both in the United States and abroad. Officers regularly work cooperatively with the U.S. Coast Guard and Department of Defense; a NOAA Corps officer is currently leading NOAA's involvement in the nation's Homeland Security efforts following the September 11 terrorist attacks.
NOAA Corps officers are trained in earth sciences, engineering, oceanography, meteorology, fisheries science, and related fields; which gives them the background to support research conducted aboard ships and aircraft—as well as work in a variety of interesting billets across NOAA.
For example, an officer might serve as a fishery management biologist and assist the northern California salmon program coordinator in the protection of endangered salmon. Officers seeking to widen their geographic horizons might enjoy serving as the Antarctic station chief for NOAA's Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Laboratory Observatory at the South Pole, monitoring and assessing atmospheric constituents that influence climate change; or work on Seal Island in Antarctica as an ecosystem biologist, conducting research about penguins and seals for NOAA's Antarctic Marine Living Resource Program and indirectly contributing to the formulation of U.S. conservation and management policy.
An officer interested in space weather might be a space environment forecaster in Boulder, Colo., issuing forecasts and alerts of conditions in space that might adversely affect activities on earth. Ocean forecasts are the forte of the officer-oceanographer at the National Hurricane Center in Miami, Fla. He or she generates and disseminates operational oceanographic analyses based mainly on satellite data, and is also the regional CoastWatch operations officer for the Caribbean. The HAZMAT scientific support coordinator in Seattle provides scientific advice to the U.S. Coast Guard for contingency planning and in response to actual hazardous spills. The executive officer of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary manages daily operations and works to promote the goals of the sanctuary in protecting this beautiful marine resource. At some point in their careers, NOAA Corps officers will command a ship or aircraft, in addition to having served aboard as junior officers.
NOAA Corps officers, with their flexibility and cross-cutting research and operational skills, are a great asset to NOAA as the agency strives to achieve its mission goals.
Rear Admiral Evelyn J. Fields is currently the director of the NOAA Corps and the Office of Marine and Aviation Operations, under which the "Corps" falls. She is the first woman and first African-American to hold this position.
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