Improvement of Computing Facilities for Undergraduate Education in the Marine Sciences

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Western Washington University (WWU), with support from NSF, serves a broad undergraduate audience through the Shannon Point Marine Center (SPMC) and its marine science curriculum. At present, this includes 1) WWU science majors who may pursue graduate education; 2) community college students who are assessing their interest in pursuing marine science as a major; and 3) advanced undergraduates participating in SPMC National undergraduate Marine Education Center (NUMEC) programs. NUMEC allows students from around the United States to study at a marine center within the context of their on-going undergraduate programs at their home institutions. All of our programs provide undergraduates with unique opportunities to become educated in the most recent concepts in marine science, to be trained in state-of-the-art techniques used in marine research, and to engage in supervised, independent research. A critical component of this training absent at SPMC is instruction in the use of sophisticated data analysis and presentation techniques. We are requesting funding for computer equipment needed to establish a local area network (LAN) at SPMC that would be linked to mainframe computers at WWU. We are also requesting 6 new personal computers dedicated to student use that would allow us to incorporate training in state-of-the-art data analysis and presentation techniques in our NUMEC programs. The new computer network also would facilitate communications between remotely located students and faculty and allow SPMC to produce and use World Wide Web based materials in our teaching and for community outreach projects.