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Minerals Leasing Specialist Minerals Management Service, Dept. of the Interior 
James Lima credits a class on marine policy from UCSB Extension for completely changing the
direction of his career. He received his Bachelor’s Degree in Aeronautics from San Jose State,
and after a year as an air traffic controller in Monterey, spent the next 10 years in the
aerospace industry. During that time, he developed an interest in ocean resource management
and eventually took that course from then Political Science Professor Biliana Cicin-Sain.
Additional interaction with her encouraged him to enter graduate school.Lima chose to study political pcience over marine biology or geography because he was more interested in the policy and management issues of offshore resources than the science and felt the broad approach of political science was the best fit for what he wanted to do. Professor Cicin-Sain left UCSB for the University of Delaware midway in his program, but Lima credits others such as Eric Smith, Dean Mann, and particularly John Woolley for “stepping up to the plate” to help him and a couple of other graduate students with similar environmentally based research interests to finish their degrees. “This is why I remember the department so fondly—I always got support when I needed it.” When Lima finished the Ph.D. program, he initially followed a traditional teaching/research career track and accepted a position at Troy State in Alabama, teaching in environmental science and management and American politics, while conducting summer research at their institute on Dauphin Island in the Gulf of Mexico. But all along, he wanted to return to Southern California, so he applied for an opening for a social scientist in the Minerals Management Service office in Camarillo. In that position, he worked on selected portions of environmental impact reports related to ocean resource management and got to join their dive team. After about five years, staff reductions within the department affected the Camarillo office, so when a position opened up for an Environmental Impact Statement Coordinator in Alaska, Lima transferred there. His job was not strictly office work: it included going into the field to talk to people in remote villages and conducting aerial whale surveys. (Go to http://www.geocities.com/cove_diver/dhd1.html to read a diary of his experiences on a 2005 Bowhead whale survey in the Beaufort Sea). A year ago, he went through Department’s executive development program and was promoted to Minerals Leasing Specialist. In his current position, he performs “coastal consistency analysis”—that is, he makes sure all federal activities are consistent with state coastal management policies—and he’s learning more about the business side of MMS: what goes into leases, how sales are conducted. He says he loves living and working in Alaska and he’s “never been bored” since he’s been there. Jim Lima strongly recommends political science to any undergraduate who is interested in a career in public policy. “It teaches you an analytical method and trains you how to transfer specialized knowledge into a policy or process everyone can understand. In other words, you take the science, then build a program around it. Knowing how things work and why they work is just as important as the science.” He also recommends that graduates with political science degrees look to the Federal government for careers. “A degree in ‘Social Sciences’ is often all that is required for very interesting jobs and the Federal government is quite decentralized. Though the big senior positions are still in Washington DC, there are exciting mid-level career opportunities available all over the country, so you can work in pretty much any place you want to live.” |