From Proposal Writing to Data Collection to Presentation: Physical Oceanography Laboratory Class Students Explore the Fundamentals of Science

To better prepare first-year Department of Marine Science MSc students of the University of Southern Mississippi for their science careers, we plan to execute a semester-long Physical Oceanography laboratory class that exposes the enrolled students to all aspects of interdisciplinary research: writing a proposal, planning a cruise, collecting and analyzing data, and presenting their results. Although some of these aspects may be taught in any such class, the incorporation of all these aspects makes this class unique.The fieldwork will be conducted by boat in the Rigolets in Louisiana, a 13-km long tidal strait up to 1 km wide connecting the Mississippi Sound with Lake Pontchartrain. The students have the opportunity to collect ADCP, CTD, multibeam sonar, sediment and water samples.A second novel characteristic of this class is that the instructor partnered with the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation, a not for profit environmental advocacy group. The foundation will give an hour-long seminar on the natural history of the study area and its environmental problems. This information provides context for the students' research proposals and allows them to formulate research questions and hypotheses that connect their research objectives to societally relevant issues, such as coastal erosion, salt water intrusion, and water quality. The proposal writing and cruise planning is done in the first month of the 3.5-month long semester. In the second month two surveys are conducted. The remainder of the semester is spent on analysis and reporting. Whenever possible we teach Matlab for the students to use in their data analysis. In this presentation, we will report on the successes and difficulties associated with teaching such a multi-faceted class.