Following the Fall mission of RU23 by the MOO students along the Rutgers Endurance Line out of RUMFS, the students have successfully deployed, piloted, and recovered RU23 for a Spring mission. This allows for a seasonal comparison of the NJ shelf waters and served as vital experience of working with operational technologies as part of an ocean observing lab. These two deployments are the foundation of a new student-led sampling effort along this transect over subsequent cohorts of MOO students – an opportunity unique to the MSc. of Operational Oceanography program of Rutgers University.
In line with this effort, MOO Program Advisor Alexander López has been selected to be in the 2023-24 cohort of the Provost’s Teaching Fellows. Chancellor-Provost Conway initiated the Teaching Fellows Program in 2021 to support faculty excellence and pedagogical innovation aimed at improving student learning outcomes through the adoption of new practices and redesigned courses. The program is a collaboration between the Chancellor Provost Office and the Office for Teaching Evaluation and Assessment Research (OTEAR).
Moving forward, this exciting experiential learning opportunity and research effort will be incorporated into the fall curricula. The Endurance Line has been sampled for decades by COOL across various grants and projects, and now the MOO students will lead the effort across cohorts, monitoring the real-time seasonal dynamics and changes to the NJ shelf waters.
