Why I Came to COAS
Graduate students take many paths to get to COAS at Oregon State University. Students come directly from undergraduate work, after several years work experience, or with a master's degree. They might be drawn by the national standing of COAS, the reputation of faculty, the nature of research they will be doing, the impressions from a campus visit, or a combination of reasons. They often have clear ideas of what they are looking for in a graduate school, even if their career plans or research interests are not set when they enter.
Since this article was written, several students have graduated and are now working. In those cases, their new careers or career plans are included.
For the Marine Resource Management Program
The COAS MRM program has earned international recognition for its training of marine management professionals. Often, MRM students enroll after some work experience, in order to make greater impact on policy, broaden career prospects, or gain credibility within their profession.
Alicia Christensen took a degree in zoology at Colorado State University, studied for a year on the Great Barrier Reef, then held several jobs in marine outreach: as an educator at a Denver aquarium, instructor at a sea camp in the Florida Keys, and interpretive park ranger at Acadia National Park. Alicia was attracted to a new COAS focus on marine education and to the beauty of the Pacific Northwest. Her research project is evaluating an informal learning program with Whale Watch Spoken Here and developing evaluation tools for the program.
[Update: Alicia will be working in SMILE (Science & Math Investigative Learning Experiences) at Oregon State University.]
Wesley Shaw attended Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, and then moved to Southeast Alaska for several years. Although he is interested in social science questions, he realized that a strong science background would give his future projects credibility. His thesis project studies the people who live and work in fishing communities and how they adapt when fisheries collapse. He chose COAS because the MRM program offers a much broader core of science classes than other programs that are policy based.
[Update: Wesley is currently living in the greater Boston area while doing a NOAA Coastal Services Center Coastal Management Fellowship in the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management. There he is Lead Developer and Project Manager for StormSmart Coasts, a new program designed to help municipal officials working in coastal communities to address storms, flooding, sea level rise and climate change.]
To Work with a Particular Faculty Expert
Matthew Alkire discovered the Arctic while doing a master's at Florida Institute of Technology with John Trefry, tracing Arctic river water plumes moving beneath the ice on the north slope of Alaska. He came to COAS to work with Kelly Falkner. "If you're a chemical oceanographer and you want to work in the Arctic, Kelly Falkner is the person to come see. I felt fortunate to be able to work with her, and although I've never been to Oregon before, I just packed up and drove. All other considerations were secondary in my opinion; however, since arriving here I have been very happy in Corvallis."
Because of Integrated Departments and Research
Rebecca Poulson took a master's at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, working on iron isotopes in the hydrothermal system at Yellowstone National Park. She liked isotope geochemistry, but wanted to incorporate other research interests so that she wouldn't end up in a lab managing a mass spectrometer every hour of the day. Rebecca came to COAS to work with Jim McManus, who suggested broader isotope research that incorporated paleoceanography, and to be in the IGERT program, which emphasizes the integrated nature of the subsurface biosphere. She liked the idea of having many different departments and professors open to her. She feels the integration of COAS, as well as the interdisciplinary research topic, will give her more flexibility when looking for a job.
[Update: Rebecca is now a Faculty Research Associate in Marine Geology and Geophysics at COAS.]
During her master's work in coastal and oceanographicengineering at University of Florida, Kristen Splinter became interested more in sediment and circulation processes and wanted more science background and alsoto get out into the field, to understand the numerical modeling she was using. She came to COAS in the Ph.D. program in geological oceanography and works with Rob Holman. "I liked the fact that Rob and the nearshore group that he is part of is closely linked with engineering here. He encourages us to take ocean engineering classes because they are very much linked to what I do. It's great having the ability to collaborate with different people inside and outside the college." For Kristen, having a great work environment was key in deciding on COAS for her study.
For Program Strengths
Daniela Zima is taking a Master's in chemical oceanography, using chemical records in bivalve shells and tracers in the water column. Her undergraduate degrees were in chemistry and marine biology. She had lived in New Jersey her whole life and wanted to go somewhere totally different that had a strong oceanography program. Daniela applied to COAS after learning that OSU was in the top five nationally, for ocean sciences. She was taken by the intensity of the program, the quality of work she had seen in papers and posters, how nice people were when she visited the campus, and the project she was offered.
Nilesh Araligidad is from the state of Goa, on the west coast of India on the Arabian Sea, known for its tropical sand beaches. After an undergraduate degree in physics, Nilesh took a master's degree in electronics and then worked several years as a programmer in the National Institute of Oceanography in Goa, where he became interested in the atmospheric-ocean coupling. He applied to COAS in atmospheric sciences for further study because of its strengths in air-sea interaction.
While an undergraduate, Melissa Frey majored in communications and worked at television news stations. She wants to go into meteorology—forecasting the weather and presenting the science at a news station. Although the atmospheric sciences program is not tailored for creating forecasters, Melissa wanted to enroll here to learn more breadth on the broader topic of atmospheric science than she would be exposed to in a synoptic meteorology program elsewhere. She is doing a project with the Oregon Climate Service on climatology and forecasting.
[Update: Melissa is now working for KEZI in Eugene, Oregon.]
For a Combination of Reasons
As an undergraduate at Long Island University, Southhampton College, Jeffrey Krause did an REU(Research Experience for Undergraduates) at Western Washington University with Hans Jakobsen, in Suzanne Strom's lab. This was his first interaction with oceanography—before that he had been working with octopi. Although at first he was unsure of his preference among graduate programs and schools, as he was leaving Corvallis after a visit to COAS, he knew this was the place he wanted to be. What stood out about COAS was not only the quality of the faculty but of the general program. Also, everyone was welcoming. Jeffrey came to COAS to work with Dave Nelson on silicon cycle variability. His research has focused on the Sargasso Sea and a new method for measuring silica dissolution in the open ocean.
Sam Kelly majored in physics at Carlton College in Minnesota. An REU in ocean engineering at the University of Rhode Island, paired him with Isaac Ginis on hurricane prediction. He applied to programs in ocean engineering and marine physics; COAS was the only school he applied to in physical oceanography. When he visited schools, he thought that Oregon and Corvallis were beautiful. Sam talked to several COAS faculty and was directed to Jonathan Nash, who researches internal waves and ocean mixing. Kelly arrived early, in July, to take the RISE cruise, looking at the Columbia River plume. Although he didn't know even the fundamentals of physical oceanography, before coming to COAS, Sam feels he has found where he fits.
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