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Dr. Jocelyn Alcántara-García, a faculty member at UD's Department of Art Conservation and Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, is a 2024 recipient of an Advanced Dive Training Grant - Technical Diving from the Women Divers Hall of Fame.
The Women Divers Hall of Fame (WDHOF) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to honoring and raising awareness of the contributions of outstanding women divers. WDHOF provides educational, financial, career and mentorship opportunities to the diving community throughout the world. Each year, WDHOF awards scholarships and training grants that provide financial and educational support to individuals of all ages, particularly those who are preparing for professional careers that involve diving.
Dr. Alcántara-García is an educator and conservation scientist – a chemist working for and on cultural heritage, to preserve, understand, and learn from it. Her cross-disciplinary work bridges STEM with the humanities, researching objects from the human past, their making, and their degradation chemistry. Her lifelong affair with water is taking her research on material culture to waterlogged objects: she aims to understand the unique challenges they face using nondestructive methods, and to develop better preservation strategies, including when they need to be extracted.
Dr. Alcántara-García "is a remarkable conservation scientist, educator, mentor, and adventurer," says Debbie Hess Norris, ARTC Chair and Interim Dean of the UD College of Arts and Sciences. "While her classroom teaching is centered on the analysis and care of our global cultural heritage, her love and passion resides 'under the water' . . . . Her deep skills and abilities in the documentation, analysis, and preservation of cultural heritage are connected to the study, conservation, and care of our underwater treasures, both natural and manmade."
Our congratulations to Dr. Jocelyn Alcántara-García and to all of this year's WDHOF Scholarship/Training Grant winners!