proposals submitted as part of major oceanographic programs versus unsolicited proposals will continue to impact collegiality. NSF/OCE and the major programs themselves should make every effort to correct any widely-held misconceptions. Requests made of NSF/OCE by the last four Committees of Visitors suggest that these thorough and periodic reviews of NSF/OCE, and the issues facing the ocean science community, benefit from timely access to information about resource allocation. Allocation decisions should be based on wide input from the community and the basis for decisions should be set forth clearly to the scientific community. Therefore, NSF/OCE should make a concerted effort to continue to (or begin to) track key metrics regarding the funding for core and major oceanographic programs, including:

• NSF/OCE funding history: total, OSRS, facilities (ships, etc.);
• Total dollars into major programs as compared with core;
• Total dollars into field versus modeling and analysis;
• Annual history of the average size of NSF/OCE grants funded through major programs versus core;
• Number of principal investigators receiving, in a given period of time, more than one major ocean program grant; more than one core grant, and/or receiving a major program and a core grant;
• Annual history of proposal success rate for major programs as compared to core, including number of awards and declinations for each;
• Principal investigator turnover rate (percentage of new principal investigators funded who were not previously funded, divided by total number of principal investigators) for major programs and core;
• Number of ship days for major oceanographic programs versus core projects;
• Number of graduate students supported by major oceanographic programs versus number of graduate students supported by core grants; and
• Number of post doctoral students supported by major oceanographic programs versus by core grants.

In addition, as discussed previously, NSF should seek mechanisms to track the "fate" of these students during their professional careers (perhaps through the Consortium for Oceanographic Research and Education).

By providing the community with timely access to data and information regarding allocation decisions, misperceptions can be avoided and the impact of funding pressures minimized. One such perception is that of a two-tiered system, consisting of scientists who participate in the major oceanographic programs and those who do not. This view reflects, to some degree, the nature of how large research programs tend to evolve. Figure 4-3 depicts involvement in large programs by plotting three components of the population of investigators involved in WOCE. In WOCE, as is probably the case with most large programs initiated