This past Spring, I studied abroad with SEA Semester as a part of class S-290 with the Global Ocean program, headed to New Zealand. For those of you who aren't familiar with SEA, they run programs split into two parts - a 6-week "shore" component based in Woods Hole, MA, and a "sea" component abroad. I flew out for the program on New Year's Day, and through the experience learned a lot about New Zealand history, the chemistry and biology of the world's oceans, and about current conservation efforts to protect ocean areas. All excellent context to companion my robotics engineering experiences at Olin.
Although the sea component got cut short due to the pandemic, the experience was awesome and I'd recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about ocean sciences in a really unique way. After all, it's hard to beat an educational experience where you're sailing on a tall ship as both a student crewmember and researcher visiting various ports and collecting ocean data for a research project!
I wrote about my experiences in this blog if you'd like to learn more: https://amyphung.github.io/sea/