MS

Marine Resource Management is for people who will be in the room when a decision is made about how much of something can be taken, and by whom. The degree is built on the conviction that the decision cannot be made well by someone who understands only the biology or only the economics.

What you study

Fisheries policy and management, stock assessment, and marine resource economics. The assessment course is the same one the fisheries science students take — this is not a simplified version, and graduates report that being able to work through an assessment themselves is what distinguishes them in the job market.

The economics half addresses the parts economics handles badly as well as the parts it handles well. Adjustment costs are the recurring case: when a fishery declines, the barrier to a household moving out of it is usually licensing, debt and vessel capital rather than skills or willingness. Most transition programs are designed the other way, and understanding why is a large part of the degree.

Valuation is taught with its limits attached. Putting a number on a coastal wetland is useful in a process that would otherwise value it at zero, and that is not the same as the number being right.

Where it leads

State and federal fishery management, regional management councils, seafood industry and certification bodies, consulting, and international resource organizations. Several graduates have gone into the co-management arrangements the department studies.

What to expect

Quantitative work throughout, and case material drawn from real management decisions with all of their compromises intact. Students who want clean answers find the first semester uncomfortable.

Coastal Resilience is a joint program between Marine Policy and Economics and Ocean and Earth Sciences, and the joint delivery is the substance rather than an administrative arrangement. The problem it addresses does not belong to either department.

A planner deciding what to do about a stretch of coast needs a sea level projection, an understanding of what the projection's uncertainty means, a grasp of what engineering can and cannot deliver, and a working knowledge of the regulatory and financial machinery that will decide what actually gets built. Programs that teach one of those produce graduates who are dependent on someone else for the rest.

What you study

Climate change and coasts, coastal community resilience, and coastal engineering design, with a capstone project taken on real terms for a real client wherever possible.

The recurring theme is uncertainty and what to do about it. Handing a planner a range and no guidance on how to use it transfers a scientific problem to someone with less capacity to solve it. Much of the program is about the alternative.

The certificate option

The same core can be taken as a graduate certificate by professionals already working in planning, emergency management or coastal engineering. The certificate is four courses and can be completed part time. Students often start on the certificate and transfer into the full master's.

Where it leads

Municipal and regional planning, state coastal programs, emergency management, consulting practice, insurance and infrastructure risk, and nonprofit work. A substantial share of students are already working in one of these and come back for the degree.

What to expect

A mixed cohort, in discipline and in career stage, which is the most valuable feature of the program and the one that takes the first semester to settle.

The MS in Ocean Engineering is a research degree for engineers who want to work on machines and structures that operate where nobody can reach them. Two years, a thesis, and a great deal of time in the basin.

What you study

Underwater robotics and autonomous marine systems form the technical core, with data analysis alongside. The thesis dominates the second year and is expected to involve something that gets built and tested rather than only simulated.

The group's particular interest is in autonomy that admits uncertainty. A vehicle cannot use satellite positioning below the surface, cannot be reached by radio, and cannot be recovered quickly. Every decision it makes, it makes alone, from sensors that drift and a map that may be wrong. A vehicle that recognizes it is lost and surfaces is a success. A confidently wrong one is how expensive equipment is lost.

The test basin

Thirty meters long, five deep at one end, with a wave maker and a movable false floor. Graduate work has priority outside teaching hours. The point of the facility is that failure happens on a Tuesday afternoon with everyone watching, rather than offshore where it costs a day of ship time and leaves no evidence.

Sea trials aboard R/V Cascadia Strait follow basin work for projects that get that far.

Where it leads

Subsea and offshore engineering, autonomous vehicle manufacturers, defense and survey contractors, national laboratories, and doctoral study. Graduates are hired on the strength of having built something that worked, which is why the thesis expectation is what it is.

What to expect

Long hours, wet equipment, and a research group that treats a failed deployment as data. Coming in with programming beyond the minimum makes the first year substantially easier.

This is a graduate program. It is the specialization more prospective students write to us about than any other, and a large share of those letters come from people still in high school. If that is you, the honest answer is that the route in is the BS in Marine Biology, and that four years later you would be a strong applicant here. Several of our current students arrived exactly that way.

The degree is a research master's in marine mammal population assessment: the science of estimating how many animals there are, where they are, and how those numbers are changing, from data that are sparse, biased and expensive to collect.

Why it is graduate level

Because the interesting problems are statistical, and the statistics assume a foundation. A population estimate for a whale or a seal is built from sightings shaped by weather, observer, platform and luck. Turning that into a number with a defensible confidence interval requires population biology and quantitative methods that a four-year degree is where you acquire.

A program that admitted students without that foundation would spend its two years teaching the undergraduate degree again.

What you study

Marine mammal biology, population dynamics, and data analysis for ocean science, alongside a research thesis that occupies most of the second year. The methodological focus is on integrating data types that were historically analyzed separately — visual survey, passive acoustics and photographic identification of individuals — each of which has a different blind spot.

Field work

Survey work is seasonal and weather-dependent. Students should expect time at sea and at Prentice, and should also expect that a planned survey week will sometimes produce no data at all. Learning to design around that is part of the training.

Where it leads

Agency stock assessment, consulting for offshore development, conservation organizations, and doctoral study. Graduates of the first cohort are working in all four.