Boot Camp connects students to School of Marine Sciences, ocean
The annual Marine Sciences Boot Camp at the University of Maine Darling Marine Center offers first-year students a concentrated preview of what their lives will be like as marine sciences majors.
“I loved every minute of it,” says Miranda Furnari, a student from Danvers, Massachusetts.“It was so incredible to actually get a taste of what a career in marine science would be like … .”
Boot Camp is open to 30 first-year UMaine students enrolled in the School of Marine Sciences. Held Aug. 23–26 in 2016, the orientation began with a scuba diving lesson in Orono, followed by two days at the DMC, the university’s marine lab in Walpole.
“This experience is a snapshot of what makes our program one of the best in the country,” says William Ellis, undergraduate program coordinator and associate professor of oceanography.
Boot Camp included presentations, fieldwork and the chance to explore the DMC labs and classrooms, as well as the Damariscotta River aboard the Ira C., UMaine’s 42-foot research vessel.
Sydney Leonard, a first-year student from Wisconsin, calls Boot Camp a unique experience.
“It made me feel welcomed by the university and the program,” she says.
Bonds formed during Boot Camp can be strong. Juniors Hanna Deon and Abigale Shaughnessy met in 2014 at Boot Camp. Now they’re friends and roommates again at the DMC for Semester By the Sea, the SMS residential undergraduate program in which participants take classes in marine biology, ecology, oceanography, environmental microbiology and fisheries.
“I signed up for Boot Camp because, as an out-of-state student, I didn’t know anyone who would be attending the University of Maine with me,” says Shaughnessy, who is from Enfield, Connecticut.
“Going to Boot Camp made me decide to go to Semester By the Sea my junior year. I absolutely loved the Darling Marine Center.”
Deon, from Farmington, Maine, applied to UMaine because of the Darling Marine Center. She had been exclusively considering out-of-state schools until her mother convinced her to take a look at UMaine, a land and sea grant institution.
On a tour, she met Ellis, who gave her pamphlets about Boot Camp and Semester By the Sea. The out-of-state schools she had been considering didn’t offer similar programs, says Deon.
“He said, ‘If you come here, you can do fieldwork.’ I definitely wanted to be in the field. That’s what got me,” says Deon. “As soon as I got to Boot Camp, I was like, ‘This is what I want to do.’”
This year, 70 first-year students are enrolled as marine science majors at UMaine, the largest-ever cohort in the School of Marine Sciences. That’s in line with increased first-year student enrollment at the university, which welcomed its largest class in its history — 2,248 students — for the fall 2016 semester.