{"id":1446,"date":"2016-05-12T11:42:36","date_gmt":"2016-05-12T15:42:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cmast.ncsu.edu\/?p=1446"},"modified":"2020-11-30T13:59:39","modified_gmt":"2020-11-30T18:59:39","slug":"first-semester-cmast-a-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cmast.ncsu.edu\/2016\/05\/first-semester-cmast-a-success\/","title":{"rendered":"Semester @ CMAST"},"content":{"rendered":"
CMAST welcomed its inaugural cohort of undergraduate students for the 2016 Spring Semester@CMAST Program. With seed funding from the Provost\u2019s Office, the Semester @ CMAST is the first-of-its-kind NC State commitment for a semester-long, academic coastal and marine program for a large class of undergraduate students, and offered courses taught by experts in their respective fields, as well as courses not offered on main campus. Courses ranged from Oceanography, to Fisheries Ecology, to Marine Mammal Biology & Aquatic Animal Health, to Applied Marine Ecology, to Marine Resource Management and Policy, to Experiential Learning courses that provided hands-on research and internship experiences.<\/p>\n
The experiential learning opportunities ranged from assisting with wild horse population studies on the nearby Shackelford Banks barrier island, to characterizing light levels along Atlantic Beach that might impact sea turtle nesting success, to necropsies of stranded dolphins to determine the cause of death, to quantifying ecosystem services provided by shellfish aquaculture in nearshore waters, to characterizing the timing of larval ingress of fish from the Atlantic Ocean that replenish fish populations in estuaries.<\/p>\n
The academic experience for our undergraduates students spanned the interdisciplinary themes of the environment, natural resources, physical sciences, health, policies and economics ensuring students learned how coastal and marine systems are linked, and relate to human activities\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/a>Coastal and marine sciences are a vital part of the environmental make-up of North Carolina, and an essential part of the socioeconomic fabric of the state. NC State University has a large and growing commitment to CMAST, and to activities there that span the missions of the University. CMAST Director David Eggleston indicated that, \u201cwith the Semester@CMAST Program, we created a special, repeated opportunity for NCSU students to experience the North Carolina coastal and oceanic environments.<\/p>\n