26 ForOregonState.org/Stater C u Lt uR E LYNN KETCHUM FOR THE LOVE OF THE SEA New liberal-arts-based marine science degree lets undergrads dive into their passions. BY > KEVIN MILLER, ’78 In 2020, Brett Comsa was spending 10 hours a day making molds of teeth at a Portland dental lab when he fin- ally accepted what he already knew: His career plan needed work. The 25-year-old Idaho native had flunked out of college once “because I didn’t have any idea why I was doing it.” A job opportunity for his partner had landed the couple in Portland, where Comsa staved off the boredom of the tooth room by listening to science podcasts. He especially liked the ones about marine science, and he started to think about going back to school. He didn’t want to be a hard-core ocean scientist, but was drawn to the idea of a career related to the sea. Comsa reached out to Oregon State and promptly found himself on the phone with professor and oceanographer Jack Barth. Barth was founding director of Oregon State’s Marine Science Initiative — now Marine and Coastal Opportunities — launched in 2016 to coordinate and multiply the impacts of OSU’s world-class programs in ocean science, fish and wildlife, and coastal engineering. From its beginning, the initiative included a proposal for an interdisciplinary, arts and social sciences- based undergraduate marine studies degree housed in the College of Liberal Arts. Called MAST, for “MArine STudies,” it was intended to create ocean-literate professionals with the social and communications skills to interpret and translate complex ocean issues. “When you have a degree called ‘studies,’ we’re always talking about interdisciplinarity,” commented Nicole von Germeten, the program’s lead administrator and a professor of history for two decades. Thought to be unique among lead- ing ocean research universities, MAST is offered at the Corvallis cam- pus and via Ecampus. It offers broad choices of science and liberal arts classes, and students are guided into specialties likely to lead to careers or graduate school. The program is
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