12 CCU students participated in the Scottish Marine Institute education abroad program

A dozen Coastal Carolina University students participated in the Field Methods in Oceanographic Analysis: Study Abroad at the Scottish Marine Institute faculty-led program for three weeks, studying at the Scottish Marine Institute (SMI) in Oban, United Kingdom. SMI is a world-class research and teaching center with areas of emphasis in Arctic Seas, Dynamic Oceans (climate research), and Marine Renewable Energy.

Students completed a 3/1 credit MSCI laboratory course while abroad, learning how to work with oceanographic data: how to acquire data (online or shipboard sampling), process data using appropriate software, and present data to a scientific audience. Each student chooses a type of data to process, interpret, and display in an oral presentation at the end of the course.

This program leverages the local setting by inviting guest lecturers to introduce students to the types of data they use. The group compared and contrasted data from Long Bay with data from SMI, and students took a sampling cruise aboard one of the Scottish Association for Marine Science research vessels to participate in the collection of physical measurements in Loch Etive for analysis.