We encourage prospective students to visit, and we have an unusual piece of advice about when.
Come in winter if you can. A campus on the water in September sells itself. Whether you want to be here in February, in the dark and the wind, is the question that actually matters — and it is the question a September visit cannot answer.
Open days
The fall open day runs in October and is the main visit event of the year. Program sessions led by teaching faculty, laboratory and vessel tours, and a session on admissions and financial aid. Registration is required and the vessel tour fills first.
A spring open day runs in March with the same shape and a smaller attendance, which some visitors prefer.
Individual visits
If the open days do not suit, arrange an individual visit. These run most weekdays during term and include a campus tour with a current student, a meeting with someone from the department you are interested in, and time in a class where a suitable one is running.
Individual visits are more useful than open days for anyone who already knows which program they want. Contact the admissions office to arrange one.
Seeing the facilities
R/V Cascadia Strait is alongside at the university dock when not at sea. Open day tours include her, and there are two community tour days a year that anyone can attend without booking.
The Marine Robotics and Test Basin has a viewing gallery open during open days and by arrangement.
Prentice Coastal Field Station is thirty-one miles north. There is no public access to the laboratories, but the shore is public land and the interpretive boardwalk above the inlet is open year-round. It is worth the drive.
The undergraduate research symposium
Held each April, free, and open to anyone. Students present their own work and defend it to people who are not grading them. For working out what a degree here actually involves, it is arguably more informative than an open day.
Practical details
Visitor parking is signposted from the north entrance and is free on open days and after 6 p.m.
The campus is compact and walkable. The walk to the dock takes about ten minutes and boarding the vessel involves a gangway and, below deck, ladders.
Tell us about access requirements when you book and we will arrange what is needed. Some of the facilities are genuinely difficult to make step-free and we would rather plan around that with you than have you find out on the day.