When Christine Hirt was named a John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellow for 2019, she never thought that by the end of her tenure, she would have experienced opportunities such as traveling to Hawaii or getting to draft a chapter in a report to the President of the United States. But that’s exactly where she found herself as she wrapped up her time as a Coastal Policy Analyst for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Office of Coastal Management. 

The John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship is sponsored by NOAA’s National Sea Grant College Program, and Hirt was nominated for the fellowship by the Delaware Sea Grant College Program, based at the University of Delaware’s College of Earth, Ocean and Environment, where she received her master’s degree. 

Working within the Office of Coastal Management’s Division of Policy, Planning and Communications, Hirt said that the best way to describe the work she’s done over the past year is as an inch deep and a mile wide. 

“I work on anything policy related to our office, and that could be new executive orders, new initiatives that our office is working on, different legislative analysis for our office or things that are related to coastal management,” said Hirt. “I also work on talking points and speech writing for leadership, both in our office and then leadership in NOAA.”  

She also helped to plan congressional visits to the National Estuarine Research Reserves, a network of 29 coastal sites designated to protect and study estuarine systems, where members of Congress are able to visit and see research that is being done in picturesque locations. 

The Knauss Fellowship provides a unique educational experience in the policies and processes of the federal government to graduate students who have an interest in ocean, coastal and Great Lakes resources and in the national policy decisions affecting these resources. Fellows are matched with hosts in the legislative and executive branches of government located in the Washington, D.C. area. Applications for the 2021 fellowship are being accepted until Feb. 21.

Hirt said that some of her fellow Knauss Fellows have been placed in positions where they work on one big project or report over the course of their year with the program, but she has enjoyed being able to work on a variety of different projects. 

“What I really like about my position is how broad it is and how I’ve been able to have my hands in a whole lot of different places throughout the year,” said Hirt. 

That included getting to travel to Hawaii to present at the OceanObs’19 international conference that happens only once every decade. Hirt shared a new web-based tool developed by the Office of Coastal Management called OceanReports.

It also included getting to draft a chapter in a report that will ultimately land on the desk of the president. 

“It was a draft of a chapter that I’m sure will go through lots of different reviews and up many different chains for a while before it’s ever published,” said Hirt. “But just to draft that for the leadership in my office, that was pretty cool to be able to say that I wrote something that’s going to be in a report to the president.” 

Coastal policy interest

Hirt’s interest in coastal policy began as an undergraduate studying environmental science. Originally, she thought that she’d be more interested in geology and meteorology, but as she progressed through her undergraduate work, she realized that she was more interested in the social sciences and exploring how government shapes policy and how those decisions affect people.