This is your captain: ALL HANDS ON DECK! SEA achieved many things with its successful Launching Leaders Capital Campaign, yet we find ourselves facing a new and significant financial challenge.

I am writing to update you on our SEA state and to ask for your help.

The recent Campaign, which included the expansion of our campus in Woods Hole, enabled SEA to maintain and improve many of our assets. It funded specific scholarships and faculty endowments. Our ships have benefited from some major maintenance but as they continue to age, will require increasing maintenance. Our dorms have received a great deal of repair and maintenance, and today our new campus building is getting the essential work done to bring it on line for future programs.

The Launching Leaders Campaign advanced our efforts to ensure a sustainable future. Given the declining health of our planet and its oceans, the work of SEA is more important than ever. With the right mix of programs, strategic marketing, messaging, and development, SEA will be well-positioned to offer students a transformative education and experience. What they learn, not only about the dynamics of the oceans, but also about the social, economic, and political aspects of changes in the marine environment and shoreside communities, will enable them to act strategically in exercising their stewardship of the oceans, as so many of our alumni are already doing.

Despite years of thoughtful, devoted leadership, our ability to fill the bunks of two ships has always stayed just over the horizon. External events have contributed to magnifying the problem over the years, and the aftermath of Covid and today’s struggles in higher education have had a dramatic impact. Low enrollments have left SEA with large annual operating-deficits, including this year, which need to be funded with limited unrestricted capital donations beyond what was anticipated in the annual-fund budgets. Because this strategy is not sustainable (and never has been), ongoing refinement of the existing operational model must give way to a bolder course-correction that will connect the realities of today to the promise of the future.

We are developing a new operational model which will base SEA’s future on undergraduate blue-water programs in the Pacific on the Robert C. Seamans. This base will be supported by seasonal secondary-school programs and custom seminar programs on Corwith Cramer operating in the Gulf of Maine and the continental shelf and slope waters south of New England. It will also be supported by maximizing the use of our campus expansion through ongoing program development with partners and collaborators in oceans and climate science, education, and policy.

These new ideas and a different mix of programs will require creative thought, detailed planning, and precise marketing for some transitional years. The substantial costs of this work cannot be funded by the mostly restricted endowment from the Capital Campaign, and thus will depend on both enhanced giving to the Annual Fund and unrestricted capital gifts. We need your help.

SEA is sounding the general alarm and calling “ALL HANDS ON DECK.” We sincerely ask that you both help us to meet our Annual Appeal goal and provide the support required for the development of programs that will allow our new operational model to mature into a sustainable one. Morale is good; all SEA staff and faculty are collaborating effectively and are optimistic that we can succeed. When we all work together, with your broad and significant support, we can. I recall that Cory Cramer, in his creation of SEA, said “It is amazing what you can do if you have to.” With respect to the future of Cory’s creation: We have to.

Sincerely,

John Wigglesworth, W-5

President