Prospective Students

Cal Poly has an ideal geographic location for training future marine scientists. Diverse ecosystems are incorporated into the teaching and research programs, including the Center for Coastal Marine Sciences pier marine laboratory facility in Avila Beach.

The B.S. in Marine Sciences degree program is designed to provide students with a broad foundation in multiple areas of marine sciences, including ample opportunities for active application of knowledge-based projects to the lab and field.

Below are a list of disciplines at Cal Poly and how one could match that with a marine topic.

• Biology – Study of marine organisms, populations, communities, ecosystem function.
• Chemistry – Cycling of inorganic salts, transformation of dissolved organic material.
• Computer Science – writing code to command/control autonomous underwater vehicles.
• Engineering – design/building of instrumentation resistant to pressure and salts.
• Mathematics – modeling the 3D current flows along the California coast.
• Physics – instrument design, applications of lasers to detect particle fields.
• Soil Science – coastal erosion, sediment transport in Morro Bay Estuary.
• Statistics – validation of model output, determining significance in population changes.