Dr. James Merritt Collection

Collection

Identifier: SC-MS-188

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

Dr. James F. Merritt, former Professor and Director Emeritus of the Center for Marine Science, dedicated 34 years at UNCW to conducting and facilitating research in the coastal environment. This collection includes materials related to the Marine Expo in Wilmington, N.C., an educational convention that brought together and focused on marine activities in the region. Dr. Merritt helped to organize the event and served as chairman of the first Marine Expo. The material in this collection consists of committee minutes, correspondence, photographs and articles relating the Marine Expo held in Wilmington, NC from 1985 to 1995, with emphasis on expos held during 1985-1987.

Dates

Creation: 1984-1995

Creator

Merritt, James F., 1944- (Person)

Conditions Governing Access

This collection is open for research use.

Copyright Statement

Copyright retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Biographical / Historical

Dr. James F. Merritt was born in 1944 in Wake County, North Carolina. For his education, he went to East Carolina Univeristy for his bachelor and masters degrees in general biology, and earned a Ph.D. in genetics at North Carolina State University. In 1973, Merritt started at UNCW as an assistant professor of biology and marine biology and even became the chair of the Marine Biology Department from 1978 to 1988. In 1980, UNCW debuted the Graduate program of Marine Biology, one of the first for the school, that Merritt helped developed. Dr. Merritt was the chairman for the first Marine Expo in Wilmington, NC in 1985. He would go on to help organize the next two Marine Expos. He was also the director of the Center for Marine Science from 1986 to 1999. For 34 years, Merritt helped teach, lead, and conduct research for the marine biology field at UNCW. In 2007, Merritt retired from UNCW.

Extent

2 Containers (Contains 2 document boxes)

Language of Materials

English

Additional Description

Arrangement

In this collection, all materials will fall under the series of Marine Expo 1985, Marine Expo 1987, Marine Expo 1989, Marine Expo 1991, Marine Expo 1992, Marine Expo 1995 with each folder labeled clearly.

Related Materials

Materials related to the Marine Expo are also archived in several collections retained in Randall Library University Archives. Dr. James Merritt discusses the conception of the Marine Expo in an oral history interview given on November 9, 2006.

http://randall3.uncw.edu/ascod/index.php?p=digitallibrary/digitalcontent&id=86&q=+merritt+