Scott Glenn

Physical Ocean Guy

Who's in charge around here, anyway? Just take a look around for the man who would be in ten places if he could - Dr. Scott Glenn. From boat cruises, to equipment installation, high in the sky on an airplane to mission control in the COOL room, Scott has a mental plan of every COOLroom operation, and you can almost see the wheels in his head turning to think of new ones.

How He Got Here

Scott's journey to Rutgers began when he ventured from his hometown of Avon, Connecticut to attend the University of Rochester, where he majored in Geomechanics. From there Scott headed for Woods Hole, Massachusetts to enter the MIT/WHOI joint program in Oceanography. Scott left WHOI in 1983 and took his brand spanking' new Ph.D. in Physical Oceanography to, where else, Houston. Scott stayed in Houston for four years doing research for Shell Oil, but the oil shortage of the late 80's caused Shell to tighten the belt on oil exploration, and the researchers were sent packing.

So back east to Massachusetts it was, and for the next four years Scott continued to work as a researcher - this time at Harvard. Toward the end of his stint at Harvard, Scott had the opportunity to pursue a lifelong dream of becoming an astronaut, but as luck would have it he was literally a heartbeat shy of joining the next space shuttle mission. NASA's loss was Rutgers University's gain, and instead of rocketing into space, Scott touched down in New Brunswick. His move was fueled by a friendship with former WHOI buddy, Dr. Fred Grassle, and a crazy idea to build the largest coastal ocean observatory in the world from a run-down former Coast Guard station in Tuckerton.

Scott's Life at Rutgers

Dr. Glenn now spends 11 months of the year teaching at Rutgers and coordinating efforts to expand the scope of LEO-15. The 12th month (July) is what he waits for every year like a kid waits for Santa on Christmas. That's the time when oceanographers converge on the typically tranquil town of Tuckerton in a mass effort to unlock the mysteries of the coastal ocean. Instruments are deployed to measure currents, waves, salinity, temperature, flourometry and just about anything else you would want to know about on the high seas. You can usually find Scott waving from the dock in the boat basin at 6 a.m. each morning as the R/V Caleta sets sail for the Atlantic. His day lasts far into the evening, as he waits for the programmers to process the last of the precious data and publish it on the web.

Work Hard, and Party

Scott has the rare gift of loving what he does, and he's pretty good at it as evinced by the Rutgers University Faculty Scholar-Teacher Award he just received last spring. He claims that he has no "spare" time for other pursuits, but those who have spent any time around him know that he likes a good party - meaning any place with beer and Bruce Springsteen. Also, he makes a point to rush home on Monday afternoons to spend time with daughters Darcy (10) and Carey (8), and he did a gig this year with the Indian Princesses. Besides all that, Scott collects baseball caps and claims to "like things that go fast" (he has a pilot's license). That's no surprise, considering that his brain is always in overdrive. KA

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