Study Abroad at the University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy
Application Deadline: May 26th, 2025
Are you a graduate student interested in advancing your academic and research experience in marine ecophysiology and environmental chemistry while immersing yourself in Italian culture? The University of Washington and the University of Milano-Bicocca (UNIMIB) are excited to announce a fellowship opportunity through the Erasmus+ KA171 program.
This exchange program aims to strengthen international collaboration in marine science by providing a 60-day fully funded research stay at UNIMIB during Fall 2025.
Selected students will work under the supervision of Dr. Francesco Saliu, a leading researcher at UNIMIB. His lab focuses on marine environmental chemistry, chemical ecology, and analytical chemistry with applications in environmental sustainability and pollution research.
Students will gain practical experience in:
Mass spectrometry
Infrared spectroscopy
Chemical analysis of pollutants and microplastics
Advanced techniques in marine chemistry and ecology
Fellowship Benefits
Collaborate with international scientists and peers
Gain experience in multidisciplinary projects associated with plastic pollution, marine ecophysiology and environmental chemistry
Develop practical expertise in cutting-edge analytical techniques
Immerse yourself in the academic and cultural environment of Milan, Italy
Who Should Apply
We welcome applications from University of Washington graduate students who:
Are studying marine biology, environmental science, chemistry, oceanography, chemical engineering, material science, or related disciplines
Are available to travel for 60 days during Fall 2025
Are adaptable, curious, and open to cultural exchange
Have a strong academic background and research interests aligned with the fellowship
Evaluation Criteria
Applications will be evaluated based on:
Proposal, 2 pages (40 points)
Curriculum (50 points)
Language proficiency, adaptability, and cultural awareness (10 points)
Key Details
Location: University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy
Duration: 60 days in Fall 2025
Funding: Travel and living expenses fully supported by the Erasmus+ KA171 fellowship
Proposal Should Include:
Academic and Research Objectives
Describe your academic background and how this opportunity aligns with your field of study (e.g., marine biology, environmental science, chemistry, etc.).
Identify what you hope to learn or achieve during your time at UNIMIB.
Proposed Research Focus
Briefly outline a research interest or question you would like to explore.
Connect your goals with UNIMIB’s strengths in marine ecophysiology, environmental chemistry, chemical ecology, or pollution analysis.
Relevance to Career Goals
Explain how this international exchange experience fits into your future academic or professional plans (e.g., graduate school, international research, environmental policy).
Adaptability and Cultural Preparedness
Reflect on your interest in working abroad, your adaptability, and any past cross-cultural or travel experiences.
How to Apply
Submit your application (including your proposal, CV, academic transcript, and mobility plan) to: jpgamino@uw.edu
Application Deadline: May 26th, 2025
Questions?
For more information, please contact Jacqueline L. Padilla-Gamiño at jpgamino@uw.edu
For many students about to embark on their undergraduate journey at university, they plan to study one thing but end up studying something completely different. This was the case for SAFS undergraduate, Ryan Luvera. “Coming into UW, I, along with many of my peers, thought I would go into medicine. However, my blue-collar fishing family genes had other plans. My love for fisheries has devoted me to protecting Washington and Alaska’s waters, which have fed and clothed my family for three generations,” Ryan said. “The SAFS undergraduate degree was an obvious choice for me. The coursework, capstone, and connections I have gained have been invaluable.”
One of the goals of the SAFS degree is to prepare students through classes, lab work and fieldwork, to undertake and lead their own research project as the final requirement of the major – it’s called a capstone. Ryan, who’s in his junior year, decided to get started on his capstone early, using the skills he’s already learned.
Ryan collecting eDNA water samples in Happy Creek.
Storing the eDNA samples taken from the river.
“I’ve always been a fan of practical science. Environmental DNA is a blossoming field which has applications for management of invasive, endangered, and commercially important species. After being accepted to the Alaska Salmon Program for the summer of 2024, I decided to contact Wes Larson from NOAA Fisheries who had done an environmental DNA project already within the Alaska Salmon Program watershed. My capstone focuses on improving the salmon abundance estimation models that he had created,” Ryan shared.
The Alaska Salmon Program hosts UW students each summer to spend a month or more at the field camps to live and work in a diverse ecosystem which supports one of the world’s most important fisheries. For Ryan, he used this time to work on his own capstone research under the guidance of Wes, building on an existing, larger project. Wes happened to be in Alaska at the same time, teaching an eDNA section during the Aquatic Ecological Research in Alaska (AERA) Class for the Alaska Salmon Program, so the timing worked out perfectly for Ryan’s research.
Ryan Luvera
Sockeye Salmon pooled in Hansen Creek.
“The larger project aims to use environmental DNA samples (collected in water) which are taken from the mouth of streams (where the stream enters the lake) to estimate the abundance of salmon within the stream,” Ryan said. “My project is focused on samples taken at several points while walking approximately 1km up two streams. At these set points going up the streams, we counted all the DNA copies that were present. From this, we want to hopefully see an increase in eDNA as water flows past salmon swimming in the stream. Ultimately, this data will help make our models better for estimating salmon abundance with eDNA samples taken at the mouth of streams as we understand how much eDNA is actually making it there, not just settling on rocks or being eaten by microbes.”
Sampling two streams that feed into Lake Aleknagik—Happy and Eagle Creek—Ryan worked with the AERA 2024 class, carrying roughly 120 pounds of water down Happy Creek “It was a rough day. I stayed up all night filtering water and putting the filters into preservative solution which allowed us to store the eDNA at room temperature. We then run a quantitative PCR to count the abundance of DNA within each sample and use that data to understand how eDNA is flowing within these streams. Preliminary results suggest that eDNA is better at flowing to the mouth of streams when there are lots of salmon and even with a higher flow of water.” Ryan said.
During their time at SAFS, undergrads are encouraged to seek out opportunities to enhance their experience at conducting research. Ryan not only found useful opportunities within UW—such as the Alaska Salmon Program field season and SAFS classes—but he also worked with external agencies to gain valuable research experience.
Ryan Luvera
AERA Class of 2024 taking flow measurements of the water.
“Doing any sort of field sampling has been very helpful for my capstone. Not just the experience with field sampling, but also the troubles that come with it. It has really shown me that being prepared for anything is key. As for my degree, the writing classes, like FISH 290, have been pivotal as you create a mock capstone project and learn foundational knowledge in scientific writing and presentation. Doing a quantitative science minor has also been very beneficial, and I think the QSCI series really should be required for the fisheries degree,” Ryan said.
One key thing Ryan would share with other undergraduates is to take those opportunities that may seem strange or a bit of a long shot in the moment. “In terms of external experience, I had no degree specific experience before undergrad, unless you count making tuna sandwiches at Subway as fisheries. As an undergraduate, work snowballs fast. My freshman year, I applied to be an intern at King County Department of Natural Resources and Parks (DNRP) which was a long shot, but it worked out,” Ryan shared. “Taking strange opportunities is important. I got a job with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game because of a conversation with my nurse. Applying and working in a variety of positions has also been key for not only figuring out my path, but it also helps with future applications. Once you work in a position and talk to your mentor/advisor, you will start to understand what these positions are looking for. From there you can apply that knowledge to the next position to exceed their expectations. Working for Alaska Department of Fish and Game was hard, but I learned so much about management and fisheries from different stakeholders. Seeing the fishery from many different angles (research, management, family) has allowed me to become more attractive to employers.”
Ryan Luvera
Makeshift eDNA filtering station which couldn’t be in the lab due to contamination concerns.
A frequently asked question for prospective students thinking of applying to university is about scholarships, and it remains an important question even when working your way through an undergraduate degree. Ryan applied for the Washington State Opportunity Scholarship while in high school. “I would recommend anyone in their undergraduate experience who meets the qualifications to apply as the benefits are vast. It’s not only about the money, but the scholarship also allows you to build skills while making connections with potential employers,” Ryan said. “I give credit to the scholarship for giving me a start at King County. They notified me about the opportunity and provided resources, such as peer mentors, who could help with application materials. Now, I am one of their peer mentors for students in their first and second years at UW and Western Washington University. Being able to relay resources that are available specifically through the scholarship, provide support and mentorship, and share information on opportunities such as internships, to other undergrads who were in the same position that I was two short years ago, has been very rewarding.”
So, what’s next for Ryan, once he graduates from SAFS? “I am hoping to go to graduate school here at UW, but we’ll see! Government work is my end goal, probably locally at the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) or the Washington Department of Ecology (WDOE). That’s where I see myself making the most impact on my community here in Washington.”
Want to learn more about other undergraduate research?
“Being a part of the College of the Environment, QERM, and SAFS communities is something I am very proud of, and I have loved being a part of it, so it is nice to be recognized for my contributions towards this community,” Zoe said.
The Graduate Dean’s Medalist award recognizes graduate students based on outstanding academic achievement, as well as outstanding leadership or service, on or off campus. Zoe ticks all of these boxes, with Zoe’s nominator sharing that Zoe excelled in so many different dimensions that it was hard to list only a few for the nomination letter: “Seven peer-reviewed publications, six assessment documents, two best poster awards at conferences on marine mammals and on seabirds, multiple heavy duty service assignments, undergraduate mentoring, teaching at high schools, and through all of this, a fabulous attitude overcoming all obstacles with a level, mature attitude and an infectious laugh.”
Zoe uses mathematical and statistical models to study the population dynamics of baleen whales, using primarily historical data from whaling records, looking at questions related to movement, population size, and demographic rates. In relation to population assessments for Antarctic blue whales, Zoe’s method was two orders of magnitude more efficient than previous methods, and Zoe is now working to expand this model to produce the first integrated assessment that fits directly to the available mark-recapture data from photo-ID.
Zoe Rand
Zoe stands next to a blow up whale at the Pacific Island Fisheries Science Center, located in Hawaii, in Summer 2024.
Serving in a wide variety of leadership and service roles while at UW, Zoe was a mentor for the Identity Belonging and Inquiry in Science (IBIS) Program, mentoring undergraduate Ashley Rendon during a project looking at growth rates of Antarctic blue whales in utero. “Mentoring Ashley was a great experience. Her passion and excitement for the project was inspiring, and I think I learned to more deeply understand my own research in the process of answering her questions and guiding her in her project,” Zoe shared.
Zoe Rand
Zoe presents research at the 25th Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals in Australia in November 2024.
These acts of service for the UW community also involved running the SAFS Quantitative Seminars for a whole year and participating in the College of the Environment Student Advisory Council and the SAFS Curriculum Committee. “Being involved in the Student Advisory Council and the SAFS Curriculum Committee gave me a deeper appreciation for the inner workings of the UW and the work that goes into making the College and the department what it is,” Zoe said. “I’ve also had booths or volunteered at the SEAS Open House during my time, and that’s one of my favorite events of the year, just to see the community so excited about our work.”
As a student in the QERM program and a member of a SAFS lab, Zoe has appreciated being able to build community within both. “I really value the SAFS and QERM graduate student communities. Everyone really supports each other, and I couldn’t have made it through graduate school without them,” Zoe said.
Are you interested in applying to the NSF GRFP this fall? This five-year fellowship funds three years of your graduate education. Both undergraduate and graduate students can apply.
We are hosting an information session on the NSF GRFP to explain what it is, who is eligible for it, and a new structure for the workshop. We will also discuss the results of the most recent GRFP competition, and implications for future applicants. This session will be offered in person and online on the following dates:
Funded by the California Ocean Protection Council, SAFS Professor, Corey Garza, and colleagues at Stanford, UC Santa Cruz and the Middlebury Institute have embarked on a project to better understand shark and pinniped behavior off the California coast.
They do this by tagging and tracking the animals, collecting background environmental data through buoys and mapping where pinnipeds gather. The goal is to understand how these variables interact and better predict when and where great white sharks might be on the prowl — and, importantly, how to keep people out of the water when they are.
In a time of increasing calls for Washington judges to adjudicate water conflicts that reflect the State’s growth and development, two members of the University of Washington School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences attended the Judicial Education Workshop on Water Resource Science, held on March 28, 2025, at Washington State University (WSU). Angela Dillon, a PhD student at SAFS, gave the judges an overview of the importance of water for the environment and fish, with an emphasis on salmon and the Electron Dam on the Puyallup River, while SAFS Professor, Mark Scheuerell, gave a tour of Lower Granite Dam on the Snake River, held on March 29.
Washington State Administrative Office of the Courts
The Judicial Education Workshop on Water Resource Science brought together judges, faculty, and graduate students to discuss science and water management in Washington State.
“Many judges do not have a scientific background, and so the goal of this workshop was to examine several dimensions of science in support of water management in Washington State, with an emphasis on science process and knowledge: what we know about specific topic areas and how we know it; what we don’t know, and sources of uncertainty,” Mark Scheuerell said.
Attended by 12 judges, the workshop brought together several professors from WSU to speak about surface and groundwater connectivity, water rights, agriculture uses of water, water markets, and climate change. During this session, Angela Dillon presented on issues related to water and salmon.
Washington State Administrative Office of the Courts
Angela Dillon, a SAFS PhD student, gave a presentation to the judges on issues related to water and salmon.
Having previously worked with the WRC (which is located at WSU) on an assessment of criteria for identifying “net ecological benefit” following the 2016 “Hirst Decision” and subsequent passage of a new streamflow restoration law in Washington, Mark Scheuerell was invited by WRC Director, Jonathan Yoder, to participate in the workshop. “In turn, I suggested Angela would be a good candidate to also be involved, to provide insight into issues faced on the Puyallup River,” Mark said.
Through a series of short presentations and hands-on thought exercises, the judges were introduced to the intersections of social, economic, and ecological aspects of water and how they can play out in Washington. “The judges were unanimous in their praise for the breadth and depth of information presented to them,” Mark shared.
On Saturday morning, Mark led the judges on a tour of Lower Granite Dam. Lower Granite is the uppermost dam on the Snake River, that is passable to anadromous fishes like salmon and lamprey. It is also one of four dams on the lower Snake River that are commonly discussed as targets for breaching in support of salmon conservation. The group discussed the proximate and delayed effects of hydropower dams and their operations on salmon survival, and various reasons in support of or resistance to dam breaching.
The judges were given a tour of the Lower Granite Dam by Mark Scheuerell, the uppermost dam on the Snake River.
“One of the recurring themes during the workshop and the tour was that water science is inexact, and many uncertainties remain,” Mark said. “As such, it’s important for judges to ask lots of clarifying questions related to what, if any, models were used in an analysis, any assumptions underlying the analyses, and the sources of data or information used in the analyses.”
This workshop was one of five different events that the judges are participating in as part of their larger education program.
Bleaching. This complicated and foreboding term now lurks around every conversation about coral reefs. Impacted heavily by climate change and associated warming oceans, coral reefs experience bleaching when the algae that live in their tissues and contribute vitally to their growth are expelled, causing the corals to lose their color, and possibly their lives.
Closely related to anemones and jellyfish, corals can obtain algae from the environment and put them in their tissues. “Corals live like a little diaphanous greenhouse, where the algae are safe and consume the waste products from coral. In exchange, the algae give oxygen, sugars, and other nutrients back to the coral animal,” Callum Backstrom, a PhD student at SAFS, describes. The mutualism between coral and algae allows corals, otherwise diminutive, gelatinous animals, to make the massive, multi-ton skeletal structures composing reefs. Home to about 25% of all marine life and hosting up to half of all marine fish at some point in their life cycle, coral reefs are incredibly important for humans too, reducing up to 85% of wave height and storm energy on the coastlines they border.
Mike McCollough
Callum dives to collect corals in Kahekili Beach Park, Maui, to assess the extent of heavy metal contamination from the Lahaina Fires of 2023. He uses a titanium axe and rubber mallet to break and remove coral fragments for metal toxicology analysis. Collection under permit of the Department of Land and Natural Resources, Hawaiʻi.
A member of Jacqueline Padilla-Gamiño’s lab group, Callum is interested in the resilience of certain corals to bleaching. “I’m asking questions like why are some corals more resilient? And for the ones that do survive, how could coral reproduction be compromised after a bleaching event?” Callum shared. A primary cause of bleaching is ocean warming, which causes the algae to go into “overdrive,” producing toxic forms of oxygen that in turn stress the coral into expelling their primary food source. Bleached corals may resorb their reproductive cells for nutrition and otherwise forego reproduction altogether to survive starvation until they can regain their photosynthetic algae.
Katherine Lasdin
The Padilla-Gamiño lab has been growing coral colonies in Kāneʻohe Bay for almost a decade, providing a diverse pool of corals to use for experiments and to measure growth rates over time. Here, Callum is inspecting the lab’s coral racks, including colonies that he is monitoring to determine for the first time whether male and female corals grow and respond to bleaching events differently.
More resilient corals that resist bleaching may contain strains of heat-tolerant algae, but, as Callum explains, there are issues associated with this: “When oceans are cooler and times are good, these resilient types of algae are not generally the best partners for the coral. They aren’t as efficient, or don’t provide as much energy to the coral as less resilient algal strains and therefore can cause the coral to be outcompeted by other coral colonies in their environment.” Another way that more resilient corals combat bleaching is by increasing their rate of feeding on zooplankton and detritus from the water column; however, more feeding could mean these corals are prone to consume more pollutants, such as microplastics and heavy metals, in the marine environment.
The effects of these pollutants are a specific area of interest for Callum: do bleached corals accumulate more pollutants from a less photosynthetic, more feeding-driven diet, and could these acquired pollutants damage the health or reproductive success of bleached corals well after recovery of their symbiotic algae?
Some pollutants, like microplastics, are synthetically produced by humans and therefore have a clear origin as environmental contaminants. One difficulty faced when asking questions about elemental contaminants like metals is that many metals are used in low concentrations as essential trace nutrients for healthy coral function. But most studies on this topic focus on vertebrates, and very little is known about contaminants in organisms without a backbone, such as corals. “So, a key piece of this puzzle is to find out what the normal concentrations are for corals, what kind of contaminants are building up and at what level, and is this happening when they’re stressed and eating more?” Callum said.
Jacqueline Padilla-Gamiño
Callum displays a live colony of rice coral (Montipora capitata) at the Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology in Kāneʻohe Bay, Hawaiʻi. By collecting the egg-sperm bundles released by these hermaphroditic coral colonies on nights around the new moon in the summer months, Callum can compare the metal toxicology of the corals’ egg and sperm cells, and of the algae cells packed into the eggs, to the metal levels of the adult parent and its algal cells.
The breakdown in the symbiosis between corals and their algae helps to answer this question. Callum has extensively studied the mutualistic exchange of resources between corals and their algae – last year, he published his work investigating the role of photosynthesis in mesophotic corals from deep, almost pitch-black depths of the ocean in the Proceedings of the Royal Society.
Callum Backstrom
In controlled experiments in onshore tanks with waterflow from the reef, Callum simulates bleaching events on clonal fragments of coral colonies to monitor how trace metal nutrients are exchanged and lost during the bleaching process. A healthy clone with its brown algal symbionts is shown on the left, while a bleached clonal fragment (white) is shown on the right for comparison. In some experiments, Callum further compares how bleached fragments change their feeding rates and preferences for microplastic pollutants relative to healthy fragments.
This gave him a basis to hypothesize about how bleaching events can show us what is essential to that mutualism. “When a coral undergoes a bleaching event and dumps out all its algae, when it gets them back, the metals found in the newer algal cells could be the ones important for normal cell function, as opposed to lifelong contaminants. I have found that algal cells packed inside coral eggs prior to reproduction have different, often lower metal concentrations than those in the adult coral, which could corroborate a baseline level of “healthy,” essential trace levels of these metals. Everything else above these baselines, or that does not get transferred to the offspring, then has a much more compelling basis to be called a contaminant,” Callum explains. An example of an elevated metal that Callum has seen in the eggs of coral is arsenic. Used in herbicides in Hawaii’s agriculture, atomic pollutants such as arsenic don’t degrade, meaning arsenic released into the environment 100 years ago remains in the system. “And now we might be seeing it work its way through corals and other marine organisms,” Callum shares.
To study these issues, Callum conducts his fieldwork at the Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology on Moku O Loʻe (Coconut Island), off Oʻahu. There, for projects spanning the last three years, Callum has collected and grown corals on the reef, stained corals to track their growth rates, and even brought them to large tanks on the shoreline for months at a time to simulate bleaching events, run feeding experiments, and collect coral eggs and sperm during spawning events. His work in the summer of 2024 investigating the effects of the Lahaina fires of summer 2023 on corals in Maui concluded various studies of the bioaccumulation of metals and microplastics in corals, which will serve as the foundation of his PhD dissertation.
Allyson L.T. Ijima.
Callum with members of the University of Hawai’i’s coral collection team in west Maui, undergraduate Jasmine Alip (l) and Ph.D. student Justin Berg (r).
Callum hopes that his work studying bleaching and pollution events in coral reefs will help us understand and predict the needs of corals into the future. More immediately, his pollution-oriented research will help isolate specific metals to be targeted by remediation efforts across Oʻahu and Maui, especially in the wake of the Lahaina fires. For example, certain plants like Chinese Brake Fern could be integrated into coastal zones to remove arsenic from contaminated soils that is leaching into Hawaiian reefs. However, by characterizing the exchange of trace metal nutrients between corals and their symbiotic algae, and the breakdown of this exchange during bleaching, Callum can further identify metals that could help boost coral resilience. Emerging studies are testing the potential for trace metal seeding to boost thermal resilience in marine algal populations; Callum believes his work can help these applications expand to corals as well.
In addition to various SAFS course guest lectures and department symposia, Callum has been featured as a speaker at the International Coral Reef Symposium in Bremen, Germany in 2022, the Western Society of Naturalists in Monterey Bay, CA, and at a microplastics research workshop at the Seattle Aquarium, both in 2023. For his talk describing his heavy metals research at the annual meeting of the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology in Seattle in 2024, he earned the Mary Rice Award for Best Student Presentation. Callum mentors six undergraduate students across various departments, who have been instrumental in his research toward his PhD dissertation. He also leads weekly lab meetings with his undergraduate research students to discuss topical papers and/or share experiences and ideas related to their work as a team. These meetings have also provided opportunities for feedback among coral team students as they communicate their findings across venues throughout the college, such as undergraduate research symposia. This year, Callum has been recognized as one of the Husky 100 for his PhD research and undergraduate mentorship at the UW.
Some members of Callum’s undergraduate research team (from l to r: Kat Arnett, Eliana Shankar, Edith Holmsten, Maricor Sefe, and Andrew Vasey). These students have helped with various projects including measuring coral growth rates, counting microplastics and zooplankton consumed by experimental coral fragments, and removing coral tissues for metal toxicology analyses.
Callum with one of his research students, Eliana Shankar, a member of the College of the Environment’s Identity, Belonging, and Inquiry in Science (IBIS) program, presenting her measurements of male and female sex cell development in Hawaiian corals at the UW Undergraduate Research Symposium in the spring of 2024.
Most days, you can find Callum tinkering with corals in the Fishery Sciences Building or preparing live-organism demonstrations in the class laboratories of the Fisheries Teaching & Research Building. You can catch him and his undergraduate team displaying live invertebrates and plastic pollution-catching devices at the upcoming Aquatic Sciences Open House on 17 May!
University of Washington
Congratulations to Callum Backstrom, one of UW’s 2025 Husky 100.
Coming to the UW in Autumn 2025! We’re excited to announce a new undergraduate degree in the School of Aquatic & Fishery Sciences (SAFS): Bachelor of Science in Aquatic Conservation and Ecology (ACE)
The Aquatic Conservation and Ecology (ACE) degree is about the ecology of aquatic organisms, the rivers, lakes, and oceans in which they live, and how we conserve them for the benefit of people and the planet. This degree integrates the disciplines of ecology, evolution, and quantitative sciences and applies these principles to contemporary conservation and natural resource management issues.
Graduates of the ACE major are uniquely qualified for careers in universities and other educational settings, management agencies at the local to international levels, environmental consulting, and non-profit organizations.
Learn by doing
The ACE degree equips students with knowledge and skills for lifelong learning about the ecology and evolution of aquatic species and ecosystems, and how we sustain them for generations to come.
Central to the degree is an integrative approach to developing communication, quantitative reasoning, and data science skills that careers in this field increasingly demand.
Learning outcomes
Understand the ecological processes that influence aquatic biodiversity, and apply that knowledge to well-known ecosystems and species
Implement the tools and methods used in ecology, conservation, and resource management
Diagnose conservation and natural resource outcomes based on the inter-relations of natural, social and governance systems
Apply mathematical and data science methods to the study of aquatic ecology and conservation science
Recommended Preparation
First Year Students: Composition, calculus, chemistry, biology, FISH 200 or FISH 250
Second Year Students: Statistics, ACE intro coursework, Communicating Science coursework, College of Environment’s General Education requirements
Major Requirements
Foundation Math & Science – 39-47 credits:
Quantitative (Calculus & Statistics) 15 credits
General & Organic Chemistry 9-17 credits
Biology & Physiology 15 credits
ACE Introduction – 13-15 credits:
Life in Water – choose one:
FISH 200 Freshwater Ecology & Conservation
FISH 250 Marine Biology
People in the Environment – choose one:
FISH 230 Economics of Fisheries & Oceans
ANTH 210 Intro to Environmental Anthropology
ESRM 235 Intro to Environmental Economics
Connecting to Career Pathways – choose one:
FISH 300 Exploring Opportunities in Aquatic Science
MARBIO 301 Current Topics in Marine Biology
Programming & Data Science – choose one:
Q SCI 256 Intro to Data Science Methods
CSE 160 Data Programming
Skills – 7-8 credits:
Communicating Science – choose one:
MARBIO 305 Scientific Writing
FISH 290 Scientific Writing
Data Analysis & Modeling for Ecology and Conservation – choose one:
Q SCI 483 Statistical Inference in Applied Research II (has prereq: Q SCI 482)
FISH 454 Intro to Quantitative Ecology
ACE Core Knowledge Areas – 15 credits:
FISH 323 Conservation & Management of Aquatic Resources
FISH 312 Aquatic Ecology
Genetics – choose one:
FISH 340 Genetics & Molecular Ecology
FISH 370 Marine Evolutionary Biology
Advanced Topics – min. 20 credits
Upper-division electives, from approved list of courses:
Aquatic Ecology
e.g. Parasite Ecology, Watershed Ecology, Salmonid Behavior
Aquatic Conservation & Resource Management
e.g. Stream/Watershed Restoration, Sustainable Aquaculture
Quantitative Analysis, Modeling, Applied Data Wrangling
e.g. Quantitative Conservation & Management
Practicum Option – Independent Study/Research
Recommended for students who want to pursue advanced degrees
For More Information:
Students will be able to declare the new ACE major beginning in Autumn 2025. In the meantime, if you would like to learn more about the major, contact our undergraduate adviser:
In the upcoming documentary Scale of Change, we explore how individual actions, no matter how small, can lead to monumental transformations for the Atlantic salmon. One person restores a river system. Another removes a dam. Each action is a drop in the bucket, but together, those drops fill it—creating a ripple effect of change that, while not always immediately visible, holds the power to shape the future. If we believe in that shared vision, and have hope, we can make a meaningful difference.
