The Larry Monroe Scholarship Award 2009

Daniel Bevan

The Larry Monroe Scholarship Award is presented annually here in Sun Valley in memory of former FBI Agent Lawrence J. Monroe, one of the founders of the National Executive Institute. Larry played a crucial role in the initial program design, curriculum development, and administration of many NEI programs during his long, distinguished career at the FBI Academy. His untimely death in 1999 led to the creation of this coveted scholarship.

Candidates for this award include all eligible NEI members' children and grandchildren who are enrolled in an accredited two - or four - year undergraduate program or who are pursuing a masters or higher level degree. Selection for the award is based on monetary need, demonstrated work ethic, scholarship record and service orientation.

This year, we received four outstanding applications. The Scholarship Committee unanimously decided that the 2009 Larry Monroe Scholarship Award, in the amount of $10,000, should be granted to Daniel Bevan. Daniel is the son of Vince Bevan, former Chief, Ottawa Police Service, Ottawa, Canada and the graduate of the 24th NEI session.

Daniel, during his high school years, was recognized as team MVP eight times in four different sports and graduated as class Valedictorian. He has just completed a Bachelor of Science Degree, with Honors in Biology at Queen's University where he also started three years for the Queen's baseball team and was named Pitcher of the year in 2009.

Daniel has demonstrated his work ethic, and service orientation by coaching youth at risk in basketball, assisting with girls' basketball and volleyball, helping raise money and participating on a humanitarian project in the Dominican Republic, as well as being involved in campus security at Queen's University.

Daniel is the only student to be admitted to the master's program for a degree in Fisheries Oceanography at the University of Victoria this September, where he will seek to make connections between the health of wild salmon stocks and the abundance and species composition of plankton communities in Southeast Alaska and Northwest British Columbia.

An excerpt of Daniel's letter of application for this scholarship follows:

"Fish is the largest source of protein in the world, and since the late nineteenth century, wild stocks have been disappearing at an alarming rate. The biological, economic, and social effects of these collapses, originating on both the Pacific and Atlantic Coasts, have resonated across North America. The collapse of the Atlantic cod fishery in the latter half of the 20th century robbed countless coastal communities, both Canadian and American, of their way of life. Declines in salmon stocks on the Pacific Coast threaten to do the same to the West Coast fisheries. For example, a 2001 outbreak of sea lice concentrated around salmon farms in the Broughton Archipelago (British Columbia) caused a catastrophic decline in pink salmon abundance, to the point where the affected generation of salmon was 99% smaller than their parental generation. This collapse sparked backlash from fisheries of all sizes, whose economic sustenance was simply no longer there.

Fisheries scientists are only now beginning to understand the linkages between the health of salmon stocks and their environment. This relationship is a complex one, but it is imperative that future fisheries management be closely linked to fluctuations in the characteristics that define the environment encountered by heavily-fished species. I have decided to pursue an education in Fisheries Oceanography with the goal of uncovering further relationships between salmon and their environment. Looking forward, the health of fish-dependent people and perhaps even peace between nations will be at stake unless the gap left by collapsed fisheries can be bridged, if only temporarily, by a better understanding of the physical and biological controls over fish productivity in aquatic ecosystems."

We believe that Larry Monroe would be proud to have Daniel Bevan as recipient of the 2009 scholarship award, presented at the NEIA Annual Conference, Sun Valley, Idaho, June 10, 2009. Congratulations Daniel!

Richard M. Ayres
Chair, Scholarship Committee