Deep dive: Marine Term a pathway to amazing careers in marine, freshwater sciences

This story first appeared in the Fall/Winter 2024 edition of Lawrence magazine.

Amanda Dwyer ’13 recalls the adrenaline rush of crossing paths with an octopus as she and other Lawrence University students dove in the waters of Grand Cayman in the spring of 2012, doing research on coral reefs as part of the long-running Lawrence University Marine Program (LUMP). An octopus sighting is rare.

“I’ll never forget how magical it was to observe it camouflaging in real time and beautifully blending in with its surroundings each time it stopped,” Dwyer said.

If she wasn’t convinced a career in marine science was for her before that Marine Term experience, she certainly was by the time her group, led by Professor Bart De Stasio ’82, returned to campus following two weeks of research on the Caribbean island. Dwyer went on to earn a Ph.D. in coral reef ecology at Northeastern University and is now a grants management specialist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the federal agency that brings leadership to the development of ocean, fisheries, climate, space, and weather policies and supports cutting-edge research across the sciences.

“The opportunity as an undergrad to spend two weeks dedicated to diving, contributing to long-term marine research, and developing our own experiments led me to realize that this was something I could see myself doing for the rest of my life,” Dwyer said.

A growing list

Dwyer is one of 90 alumni of Lawrence’s Marine Term program who are now working in marine or aquatics careers or related fields or are working toward those careers in graduate school programs.

LUMP has provided a hands-on undergraduate experience in marine biology—mostly every other year—since 1978, when the late Sumner Richman launched the program. Students spend time during Marine Term learning about coral reef ecosystems, ecology, and human effects on reef environments before embarking on the two-week research trip to the Caribbean. 

De Stasio, the Dennis and Charlot Nelson Singleton Professor of Biological Sciences and professor of biology, has led these trips since 1996. The most recent excursion, which took 14 students to the western shore of Bonaire during Spring Term 2024, was De Stasio’s last. He is retiring in June and is handing off leadership of the program to Brian Piasecki, associate professor of biology, who has partnered with him on LUMP since 2014.

De Stasio was a student at Lawrence in 1980 when he was invited to join a Marine Term trip to Grand Cayman.

“That really set me on the path of going to graduate school for aquatic studies,” he said.

That path would eventually lead back to Lawrence, where De Stasio would join the biology faculty and take over leadership of the program following Richman’s retirement.

The program, he said, is centered on the premise that students doing research on coral reefs can apply that experience to a range of aquatic systems. That makes the Marine Term work as relevant in the Midwest as it is in the waters of the Caribbean.

“The challenges are all the same,” De Stasio said. “It doesn’t matter if you are in Green Bay or Lake Baikal or in the Gulf of Finland or in the coral reefs, an animal in an aquatic environment has to worry about getting eaten by something that is bigger than it. So, those food relationships are really what drive it.”

A course on microbiology and studies of local aquatic ecosystems allow students to investigate the similarities and differences between marine and freshwater environments. That approach has helped Lawrence alumni seamlessly traverse related fields—Gretchen Gerrish ’98 is director of the University of Wisconsin’s Trout Lake Station, a year-round research operation of the school’s Center for Limnology; Amina Pollard ’95, a limnologist and ecologist, is coordinator of freshwater research at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); Devin Burri ’14 is a program analyst at NOAA who received a prestigious 2023 Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship to combine interests in marine science and environmental policy. The list goes on.

Christopher Acy ’15, an aquatic invasive species coordinator with the nonprofit Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance, said the Marine Term experience remains relevant as he continues to build a career in applied biology. His current position is a mix of education and field work focused on preventing and/or removing invasive species from the Fox and Wolf rivers in Wisconsin.

“My job now includes field days where I'm on the waters of northeast Wisconsin documenting invasive species populations and implementing plans to remove invasive species where they become a problem,” he said. “I was given the gift during Marine Term of being able to visualize changes to biodiversity over long periods of time. When finding invasive species in Wisconsin, I can visualize how the landscape might change if no action is taken.”

The players change but the constraints of being in a water system are all the same, De Stasio said.

“I’ve always tried to help my students see those similarities,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if you are working on a small lake in Wisconsin or working on a coral reef or in the ocean, those basic principles are the same.”

A draw to Lawrence

It is not unusual for students or alumni to point to Marine Term as a deciding factor in attending Lawrence.

“The uniqueness of going to a small liberal arts college where I could study both music and biology while getting hands-on experience in marine biology is unrivaled,” Acy said. “I'm still in close touch with many of the students in my Marine Term cohort.”

Emma Moya, a junior biology major from Chicago, was one of the 14 Lawrence students on the Marine Term trip to Bonaire in the spring. She had come to Lawrence in part because of Marine Term. She called the experience “impactful” and said it solidified her plans to pursue marine biology as a career.

“Marine Term made me more motivated than I was before,” Moya said. “It became even more of an obsession of wanting to spend more time in the ocean, wanting to continue research on corals and marine mammals, to pursue outreach while ensuring that communities from all over are involved; that these communities are aware of the power they carry to help our oceans.”

Governed by the Netherlands, Bonaire is one of three islands off the coast of Venezuela called the ABC Islands, with nearby Aruba and Curaçao. This marked the second time Bonaire has been the destination for Marine Term. 

The first week in Bonaire was focused on gathering data of fish and coral diversity at seven sites. During the second week, students worked in small groups on research projects of their own design. In a twist, the group was accompanied by the Conservatory of Music’s José Encarnación, associate professor of music and director of jazz studies, who spent the two weeks studying the music of Bonaire and later coordinated a Lawrence University Jazz Band concert in Memorial Chapel that featured both the music of the island and research testimonials from the Marine Term students.

“We always try to make this trip more holistic,” De Stasio said of the music collaboration. “We want our students to understand how the coral reefs are really a part of the society that’s there.”

Besides Bonaire, LUMP students have studied reefs in the Bahamas, Jamaica, and the Cayman Islands. Nearly 350 Lawrence students have taken part over the past four decades, with De Stasio being at the heart of the program for most of that time.

“One of the things that was nurtured during Marine Term and my classes with Bart was a love for education,” Acy said. “I really enjoy the ‘lightbulb’ moment when I’m working with all sorts of people, from 8-year-olds to 80-year-olds—the understanding of how waterways are impacted by invasive species. Seeing someone go from nonchalance to wanting to take action about invasive species or water issues is immensely gratifying.”