You’re writing a research paper or you’re teaching a high school science class and you’re stumped – you need an answer, and pronto. What to do? You ask Dr. Bob.

Dr. Bob, also known as Bob Stewart to his students and friends, is a professor of oceanography at Texas A&M University who has tried to communicate his love of science and the ocean to as many people as possible – students, teachers, fellow professors, anyone he can help.

To do so, he started his “Ask Dr. Bob” ocean science website seven years ago, and as they say in the science world, eureka! He found his calling, and like a creature in a science fiction movie, the site has taken on a very real life of its own.

From one or two questions a week, he now receives dozens of queries every month as the word as gotten out about his Oceanworld site and his helpful – and accurate – information that is available for free to anyone who needs an answer.

On the information highway, there is now a helpful Q and A science rest stop that is hard to beat.

The Fort Worth native has become a sort of Wizard of the Web who has a loyal following. About 1,000 other websites around the world now have links to his Oceanword site.

“We’ve been doing this for years now and it’s still fun,” Stewart explains from his campus office.

“But it’s rewarding to know that we are helping people, too, and many of them are thousands of miles from the Texas A&M campus. Every day is a new challenge and we always seem to get interesting questions that we are glad to help answer.”

Not only are students and teachers impressed, but so have been the folks at NASA. In previous years, they’ve awarded Stewart a $100,000 yearly contract to support his Internet operations – they like to see those questions coming in, as many as possible, because such sites get the general public interested in science, not an easy trick to do.

Others have noticed, too. A few months ago, Oceanworld received the 2007 Best Web Site Award from the Geoscience Information Society for its content, technical considerations, design, organization and overall effectiveness and Stewart accepted the award in Denver, Colo., during the group’s annual meeting. The “Ask Dr. Bob” site is a link from the main site.

The questions, meanwhile, keep Dr. Bob busy.

A third-grader needs some help regarding tides, while a middle school teacher wants some information about carbon dioxide sources. A professor at another university is asking about detailed tsunami research. They all contact Dr. Bob, who makes a determined effort to answer them as quickly as possible – knowledge has deadlines, too, he understands.

The million dollar question: Has he ever been totally stumped?

“Not yet,” Stewart replies.

“I’ve learned that if I don’t have answer right at hand, I can get it very quickly, often in less than five minutes.”

Oceanworld was developed with the help of several graduate assistants who write material for the website, but when it comes to answering the questions, it’s all about Bob – he answers each and every one himself.

He can often tell if a student is doing a homework assignment and he or she wants Stewart to answer a series of questions. If that’s the case, he will list some sites and try to point them in the right direction for the answer.

“And we’ll get a question once or a month or so that has to do with medicine or a cancer treatment. We have to say that we cannot give out medical advice and politely tell them that Dr. Bob is not a medical doctor,” Stewart adds.

Stewart, who has taught at Texas A&M for 18 years, served as a researcher at the renowned Scripps Institute of Oceanography for more than 25 years. He learned then that relating others to science is part of the big picture.

“I’ve said this before and I will say it again: I think it is very important that we in the academic community try to make knowledge more available,” Stewart believes.

“We should try to help everyone who is trying to learn, not just students. The Ask Dr. Bob site shows that Texas A&M cares about all people who want to learn, and it’s a way to pay back the people who pay our salary. If we can help people with an answer to their question, we should do it.”

He practices what he preaches.

Noting that many college textbooks cost $100 or more, Stewart has made available free copies of the three textbooks he has authored, and students can download off the Internet at no cost the full content of his books. Some of those books are now available in Portugese, Spanish, Italian, Russian and other languages.

Inquiring minds – the kind Dr. Bob likes most of all – can learn more at http://oceanworld.tamu.edu.


Contact: Bob Stewart at (979) 845-2995 or stewart@ocean.tamu.edu

Writer: Keith Randall at (979) 845-4644 or email at keith-randall@tamu.edu. This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it