Forget crowded lecture halls and faded textbooks. This summer, ecology and evolutionary biology professor James Gould will be teaching a four-week marine biology course in Bermuda to 15 rising juniors.
The program will feature labs involving snorkeling, sand collection and boat trips to study algae, coral reefs and other marine life.
Students in the course will have six days of class a week with two lectures daily, weekly precepts and a threeto six-hour lab Mondays through Saturdays. Through the four weeks, students will visit marine caves, rim reefs, North Lagoon, Castle Harbor and South Shore.
Gould will be co-teaching the course with Samantha de Putron of Bermuda Biological Station for Research in what he calls a natural pairing.
"She knows a lot of marine biology and ecology. This course will bring together the physiology, ecology and behavior of a wide variety of organisms," he said.
Though students will have to pay $2,500 to go on the trip, the University is paying at least double that amount to subsidize the course, Gould said. The major source of funding comes from a sophomore initiative used to attract students to smaller departments, he added.
"The EEB department had around 40 undergraduates last year. This year there are fewer, around the 30s," Gould explained. "Dean Malkiel is trying to raise that number." Gould added that he has mixed feelings about raising the number of undergraduates in the EEB department.
"Increasing the number of students might get more faculty members in the department. But if we just raise [the] number of students without adding faculty members, then we won't have enough time for all the seniors."
Gould, who designed and proposed the course, said Bermuda is an ideal location because it lies between the tropic and temperate zone and is home to a wide variety of plant and animal life.
"It is the only place on earth where you can find mangrove forests from the tropical region along with normally temperate Marine marshes," Gould said.
The course will be offered for three summers, he said. After that, its offering is conditional on receiving a more permanent endowment.
"I've always had this repressed desire to do something marine and students have always been asking," said Gould, who has taught at the University for 30 years. "We just needed a donor who would donate enough money to pump lots of salt into Lake Carnegie."
Gould said he was optimistic about the upcoming program and held high hopes for the students.
"People should end up happy, well-informed and exhausted."
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