There may be opportunities in between meetings to provide additional bits of advice, guidance, thoughts, suggestions along the way. I'd welcome you to do that. I'd like to really open the doors to really increasing that dialogue as much as we can. So with that, I'll stop. I don't know if I have time for questions, but I'll be around all day too. PERKINS: Yes. Actually, we do have time for questions. DR. CALLENDER: Okay. Joyce. MEMBER MILLER: Yes. I think this is really valuable, but I have a question. Pretty much not every meeting, but every other meeting at least that we have -- that I've been involved in, PORTS has come up, and it's come up in many ways. You know, it's come up with what stakeholder needs are not being met, you know, what opportunities, and we really
survey crews and only having two vessels, and then NOAA also having, you know, hydrographic survey contracts, and knowing that the nation has a tremendous capacity in the private sector to provide those services, is the mechanism in place that if your vessel were down for maintenance or repair or assigned on some other priority, do you have MOA in place where you could reach out to the Office of Coast Survey and get hydrographic survey support from NOAA? Do you have the contracts available in the Charleston District, where you could reach to the private sector for that support? LT COL LITZ: I know I have contracts in In fact, that's how we would remove debris or vessel from the harbor. We don't have that capability So it would all be through our contracts, IDIQ contracts that are basically standing contracts.
PERKINS: Id like to ask one more, and then I'll relinquish the microphone. You know with the advancement that NOAA is seeing in, you know, and they're now contracting for bathymetric LiDAR, you know, in the land/water interface, do you see that being added to your course load? DR. SAUTTER: What we would like to see with the expansion of the program is that more short courses are developed, where experts can come in and they are paid by the tuition of the students, and/or we can supplement their salary, where they come in and teach a dedicated course in maybe a summer week or a Maymester, something like that. And it would be only to the students who already have the background training. We've seen students who didn't have the background come into a workshop and
triagency listening sessions. I Rear Admiral Glang, the Board has tasked the three directors to give an overview about how we've performed outreach. I think that's coming up on Thursday to various customers, and I think you'll be really pleasantly surprised to hear that all three offices are actually completely attuned with what different users are looking for and what their expectations are. The triagency listening sessions helped to reemphasize for us that we were heading on the right track with issues and concerns. But I'd be happy to go over that at another later date, and then speak to how we're trying to address those concerns as well. CHAIR PERKINS: Okay, great. If we can try to make that happen in the next 30 days, I think that, you know, hopefully
They have a group that lobbies for engineering research and all these types of things. So I've actually been talking to them quite a bit about how to help out the Ocean Engineering Program at my alma mater. I was wondering when it comes to engaging a stronger voice, the academics typically have been not very organized in terms of advocating for research and making the case. I was just wondering how a partnership with NOAA, how you partner with NOAA now, and how you might see some improvement in that. MEMBER JEFFRESS: We've done a lot of that in the past, up until when earmarks went away. That stopped the whole process. It's back to chaos now. MEMBER BARBOR: And I don't think that's partnershiping. That's, you know, forced indenture, but more on NOAA's side. I mean we obviously benefit. But I think