SEA GRANT COLLEGES 29 



WELCOME 



Francis H. Horn, Ph.D., Yale University, 1949, He has been President 

 of the University of Rhode Island since July 1958. An authority on 

 higher education, he served as Executive Secretary of the Association 

 for Higher Education in Washington, D.C. , from 1951 to 1953 and during 

 1957-58 he was Distinguished Visiting Professor of Higher Education 

 at Southern Illinois University. The Graduate School of Oceanography 

 at URI was established under his leadership. 



I take a great deal of personal pleasure in welcoming all of you to this 

 unique and perhaps historic conference, which will address itself to the proposal 

 that a focus on the marine sciences is as appropriate to our day as was the em- 

 phasis on agriculture and the mechanic arts under the Morrill Land-Grant Act 

 just over one hundred years ago. We of the University of Rhode Island, together 

 with the Southern New England Marine Sciences Association, have been tremen- 

 dously impressed and gratified with the response, both as to number of partici- 

 pants and the high level of the persons in attendance, to this national conference 

 on "The Concept of a Sea-Grant University," and we hope that all of you benefit 

 from the deliberations here in Newport. 



I congratulate you, incidentally, upon having made it to Newport. It isn't 

 the easiest place in the United States to get to. Originally we had planned to hold 

 this conference on campus, but the initial response to our preliminary sugges- 

 tions for these meetings indicated that we could not accommodate the partici- 

 pants while the University was in session so we selected Newport, an historic 

 spot with exceptional associations with the sea, and especially with the United 

 States Navy, which has done so much to bring oceanography to its present state 

 of development in the United States. I am told, incidentally, that Narragansett 

 Bay here, which many of you crossed to get to Newport, can hold all the navies ot 

 all the countries in the world. In any case, Newport is a fascinating town with its 

 historic homes, churches, and other colonial buildings; its great mansions, "cot- 

 tages" as they were called in their heyday; the extensive Navy installations, in- 

 cluding the Naval War College; and its recent eminence as the home of the New- 

 port Jazz Festival and the Newport Folk Festival. Before you leave we hope you 

 will have time to see something of these attractions of Newport. 



I want to acknowledge now the contributions to this conference of two indi- 

 viduals. One is Dr. Athelstan Spilhaus of the University of Minnesota, who from 

 his location about as far from the sea as it is possible to be in the United States 

 first proposed the idea of a sea- grant university system. The other is our junior 

 United States Senator from Rhode Island, the Honorable Claiborne Pell, who 

 brought the idea to the floor of the United States Congress in the form of legisla- 

 tion to achieve such a system. We are privileged that both men are with us at 

 the conference to give us the benefit of their thinking on the subject and are on 

 this morning's program. 



As a university president, I cannot in good conscience let an opportunity 

 pass to beat the drum for our own institution. When I first came to the Univer- 

 sity over seven years ago, I immediately gave consideration to the status and role 

 of the then Narragansett Marine Laboratory. It was at that time a part of our 

 College of Arts and Sciences. I soon reported to our Board of Trustees, "I am 

 convinced that the most significant graduate program the University can develop 

 is in this area of oceanography and that it can make its greatest contributions to 

 knowledge and human welfare in research in the marine sciences. Though popu- 

 larly neglected, there is a growing feeling that research into the nature and re- 

 sources of the sea may hold as great potential for the future as space science." 



