A nearly perfect 'learning island' gets even better for summer 2002

By Roger Segelken

Fifteen summer courses, ranging from field marine science and underwater research to wetlands resources and biological illustration, taught by experts in their fields from across the country, on a 95-acre" learning island" six miles offshore in one of the most biodiverse parts of the northwest Atlantic in the Gulf of Maine -- what could be better?

Only Internet access, at long last, the staff of Shoals Marine Laboratory (SML) figured.

University of Maryland senior Lauren Battle, shown here tending mussels she moved from Appledore Island's intertidal zone to a saltwater "sea table," joined students from Cornell and other universities last summer in the Research Experiences for Undergraduates program at Shoals Marine Lab. J. Morin/SML

Also, renewal of the popular Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program, so that qualified students from Cornell and the University of New Hampshire, which jointly operate the island laboratory, and from any other school would be financially supported for a summer of scientific study and research.

That would be perfect.

SML staffers fired off proposals to the National Science Foundation, which funds both the Internet satellite access project and the undergraduate research program, and hoped for the best.

"Thanks to diligence and hard work, we got both," said SML Director James G. Morin, noting that the satellite Internet technology, to be administered by the American Distance Education Consortium, will unburden Appledore Island's only other electronic link -- a radio-telephone and what seemed like the world's slowest modem. At first, students at SML will not have all the unlimited Internet access they've grown accustomed to on their home campuses, but that will improve in subsequent years. For 2002, the federally sponsored project promises only "pretty good Internet for remote locations," Morin said. "But we won't feel so isolated anymore at our remote location."

The three-year, nearly $250,000 Research Experiences for Undergraduates program, which will support nine students this year, has been broadened to include funding from Sea Grant in addition to NSF. It supplements other financial-aid and work opportunities at the laboratory, where one long-standing principle is: The need for financial aid has no bearing on acceptance into SML's credit courses.

A typical seven-day, two-credit course at SML costs $1,050, room and board included, and 100 percent of SML applicants who ask get some form of aid -- either scholarships, island employment or both. The NSF undergraduate research program allows students to take on their own scientific projects, with the guidance of a mentor, and concentrate on the field studies that many will use in their honors thesis projects when they return to campus.

If the Internet came late to Appledore Island, it's not because the faculty, staff and students were still burning whale-oil lamps and living in the quaint maritime past. The self-sufficient community boasts a state-of-the-art and environmentally friendly infrastructure to generate electrical power, process data, manage wastes and serve up both fresh and salt water. Salt water is for the "sea tables" to preserve and examine living organisms in the modern laboratories, a few steps away from the Atlantic and the island's rich intertidal zone.

"And this year, our fleet of research vessels has grown 100 percent, to two," Morin said, referring to the newly built and christened R/V John B. Heiser. Named for the former SML director and biology textbook author who still returns to the island to teach, the Heiser joins the larger R/V John M. Kingsbury. The founding director of SML and a professor emeritus of botany at Cornell, Kingsbury now teaches non-credit, adult education classes in a parallel curriculum at SML that starts in late spring each year and continues into early September.

The new boat is faster and more utilitarian, Morin noted, making the Heiser ideal for supply runs as well as for teaching and research. Its shallow draft and jet drive propulsion system allow the Heiser to operate in just a few inches of water with exceptional maneuverability -- an impossibility for the more traditional, propeller-driven Kingsbury.

Other credit courses in the 2002 summer session at SML, which is marking 37 years in the Gulf of Maine, include Introduction to Marine Science; Tropical Marine Science (scheduled for June 9-Aug. 4 at Akumal, Mexico); Field Marine Biology and Ecology; Field Ornithology; Marine Invertebrate Zoology; Seaweeds, Plankton and Seagrass; Marine Vertebrates; Climates and Ecosystems; Coastal and Oceanic Law and Policy; and Marine and Coastal Geology.

More information on summer 2002 credit and non-credit courses at SML, as well as financial-aid resources for undergraduate credit programs, can be found at the web site www.sml.cornell.edu , by calling 255-3717, e-mailing shoals-lab@cornell.edu or by visiting the Cornell office on the ground floor of Stimson Hall.