Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium is proud to announce that Dr. Aly Busse, Mote’s Associate Vice President of Education, has been awarded the 2025-2027 Early-Career Research Fellowship – Education Research Track from The Gulf Research Program (GRP) of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
This fellowship focuses on advancing STEM and environmental education in the Gulf region or Alaska by examining how a sense of place influences learning in both formal and informal settings. In addition to financial support, it offers structured mentoring to help researchers gain independence, pursue innovative collaborations, and build a strong professional network. It also advances innovative science, informs data design and monitoring efforts and fosters enduring networks that create lasting benefits for both the Gulf region and the nation.
Over the next two years, Dr. Busse’s work will advance research on how place shapes affective and academic outcomes in marine STEM education, particularly within the Gulf region. She aims to examine how learners’ attachment to place influences motivation, identity, belonging and persistence in environmental sciences, and to develop a scalable framework for place-based STEM mentoring. Rooted in applied research at Mote Marine Laboratory, her program integrates place-based and experiential approaches across formal and informal learning settings, exploring how locally grounded experiences and mentoring practices cultivate science identity, self-efficacy, and long-term engagement in STEM.
Her work aligns closely with Gulf Research Program priorities in environmental education, workforce development, and community resilience. By investigating how place-conscious strategies affect student development, it will inform more culturally relevant STEM pathways while contributing evidence that links environmental learning to regional identity and sustainability. As an early-career scholar at the intersection of environmental science and educational research, she seeks to help reimagine STEM learning as rooted in place, shaped by relationships, and grounded in broad participation which will ultimately strengthen how the field recruits, mentors, and retains the next generation of environmental scientists.
The National Academies’ Gulf Research Program is an independent, science-driven initiative dedicated to developing and applying knowledge that improves offshore energy safety, strengthens environmental stewardship, and enhances the well-being of Gulf communities for future generations.
Joining Mote Marine Laboratory in April 2011, Dr. Busse comes from a diverse background in informal science education, including aquariums, museums and community outreach programs. In her past and current position, she works to bring scientists and their research to the public, translating current scientific findings into meaningful, interactive opportunities for a variety of audiences.