Table 7. Papers published, presentations and funding for the review period.

Year

Peer-reviewed

papers

Conference

presentations

of

new awards
Amount ($)
Major funding sources
2007 - 08 57 155 54 4,127,451 NSF, NOAA, NC Sea Grant, ACE
2008 - 09 75 202 61 4,724,880 NSF, SBWA, NOAA, ACE
2009 - 10 65 189 56 3,093,194 NOAA, NC Sea Grant, USDA
2010 - 11 80 162 39 2,226,952 NSF, USDA, NOAA, ACE
2011 - 12 83 152 45 2,533,975 NSF, NOAA, NC Sea Grant, ACE
2012 - 13 55 139 44 2,261,616 NSF, ONR, NOAA, NC Sea Grant
2013 - 14 67 162 39 1,032,134 NSF, NOAA, NC Sea Grant, ACE
Total 482 1,161 277 20,000,202

• Total funding amounts ($) do not include collaborative projects (e.g., the NOAA funded Coastal Ocean Research
  and Monitoring Program)

b. PUBLISHING

The scholarship of the Department of Biology and Marine Biology is documented, in part, in the

summary Table 7 above. The faculty, in collaboration with students, has maintained a consistent rate of

publication in peer-reviewed journals over the past 7 years, averaging 69 papers per year and a total of 482

papers during the review period (a 9% increase over the previous review period). During the review

period, faculty members have published in several leading journals of international scope including

Science, Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Nature Communications, Limnology

and Oceanography, Applied Environmental Microbiology, The ISME Journal, Ecology, Evolution,

Journal of Experimental Biology, American Journal of Physiology and Integrative and Comparative

Biology. The faculty has also published several books and numerous book chapters, in addition to

countless technical reports since 2007. Details of faculty scholarship can be found in their CVs, which are

included in Appendix 8.

c. FUNDED PROJECTS

Since the previous program review, the department faculty has continued to increase the level of

external funding obtained to support research. Total annual funding averaged $2.85 million during the

review period, up 21% from the previous program review. However, during the current review period

there has been a troubling trend toward decreased extramural funding, where in 2013-14 the total grant

support was only ¼ of that in 2007-08. If this trend continues it will severely impact the viability of our

graduate programs. Further evidence of the long-term success of faculty in achieving external funding

includes high departmental representation in UNCW’s “Million Dollar Clubs.” Our department represents

over one-quarter (27%) of faculty on the James F. Merritt Million Dollar Club, nearly one-third (32%) of

the faculty on the 5 Million Dollar Club, and one of five faculty on the Ten Million Dollar Club.

Faculty members have continued to receive financial support from traditional sources that include

NSF, NIH, NOAA, NMFS, and Sea Grant, as well as recent awards from the Office of Naval Research

(ONR) and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). Notable awards during the review period include

funding to initiate studies of the effects of sea level rise on nitrogen removal processes in tidal freshwater

ecosystems (NSF), the evaluation of climate change impacts on the distribution of Antarctic penguins

(NSF), the contribution of a new microbial-mediated nitrogen pathway to fertilizer removal in agricultural

fields (USDA), neuromuscular control of directional swimming in venomous box jellyfish (NSF), aerial

surveys of mid-Atlantic Wright whales (NOAA), fecundity of black sea bass and red porgy in the US