MEES GRADUATE PROGRAM DIRECTOR HALL OF FAME
Dr. Robert Menzer
(1978 - 1989)
Dr. Robert Menzer is the founder of the Marine Estuarine & Environmental Science (MEES) Graduate Program and became its first Director in 1978. Dr. Menzer received his Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania in June of 1960. He then earned his Master’s in Entomology at the University of Maryland, College Park in 1962, and continued on to the University of Wisconsin, Madison for a Ph.D. in entomology, which he received in August of 1964. Dr. Menzer served in various roles including Professor and went on to serve in campus leadership at the Graduate School as Associate Dean of Graduate Studies and Research (1974-1977), and Acting Dean in 1977 where he remained until 1989. Dr. Menzer left College Park to become Acting Director of the Office of Exploratory Research at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency before relocating to Florida to become the Director of the EPA’s Environmental Research Laboratory in Gulf Breeze.
Dr. Kenneth Sebens
(1991-1997)
Dr. Kenneth P. Sebens is currently a Professor in the Department of Biology and School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences at the University of Washington (UW). Dr. Sebens served as the MEES Graduate Program Director from 1991-1997. He is currently resident at the UW’s Friday Harbor Laboratories (since 2005) and was Director of FHL from 2005 to 2013 and Dennis Willows Director’s Endowed Professor (2011-2013). Dr. Sebens received his BA from the University of Connecticut in 1972 and his PhD from the University of Washington in 1977.
Dr. Kennedy Paynter
(1997 - 2019)
Dr. Paynter is an Associate Professor at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. He completed his PhD at Iowa State University, Department of Zoology, studying amino acid metabolism in bivalves. Dr. Paynter then moved onto to a post doc at John’s Hopkins University examining lactate metabolism in the mummichog, Fundulus heteroclitus, and was a research scientist at the John’s Hopkins Chesapeake Bay Institute from 1988-1991. He started working at the University of Maryland in 1992 and became the director of the MEES program in 1997. When he is not studying oysters and advising students, Dr. Paynter enjoys hanging out with his family, including their three dogs, and fly fishing.
Dr. Timothy Canty
(2019 - 2026)
Dr. Tim Canty is Associate Professor at the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science (AOSC) and also currently the Associate Director of Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center (ESSIC). Dr. Canty has been with the University of Maryland since 2007 and helped create the undergraduate program in AOSC, and is the program director for AOSC’s Professional Master’s graduate program (MPAO). Dr. Canty joined MEES in 2019, to become the Robert E. Menzer Director MEES. Before joining UMD, Canty was a research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and a lecturer in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at UCLA. He has a Ph.D. in Physics from the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology and was a Postdoctoral Scholar at Caltech and NASA JPL.
Dr. James Carton
(2026 - present)
Dr. James Carton is the Robert E. Menzer Director of the University System of Maryland’s (USM) interdisciplinary Marine Estuarine Environmental Sciences (MEES) Graduate Program appointed July 2026. Carton is a professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science (AOSC) who holds a joint appointment in the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center and is a faculty member in the Applied Mathematics & Statistics, and Scientific Computation graduate program at the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP).
Carton joined UMCP in 1985 as an assistant professor and served as AOSC associate chair from 2001 to 2007 and as chair from 2007 to 2018. Since 1990, he has been an adjunct professor at Horn Point Laboratory. Carton earned his Ph.D. and M.A. in atmospheric and oceanic sciences from Princeton University, M.S. in oceanography from the University of Washington, and B.S.E. in electrical engineering from Princeton University.