Western's Shannon Point Marine Center offers ideal learning ground for students

The mission of Western Washington University’s Shannon Point Marine Center is to support and promote academic programs at WWU that relate to the marine sciences. The center offers courses at the beautiful marine laboratory in Anacortes and provides undergraduate students the opportunity to engage in research.

“It’s this class element of our program that is particularly distinctive,” says Steve Sulkin, director of the marine center. “We have a fine research vessel fleet that gets students out into the environment and lets them use the tools that we use in the field, and our laboratory facilities are excellent in terms of maintaining organisms so that they can be studied and researched.”

The center, which includes 27,000 square feet of laboratory space and housing for students staying at the facility, features extensive analytical facilities for the study of geochemistry and biochemistry, Sulkin says.

“These are very important areas in modern marine science, and we have a lot of activity in that area going on,” Sulkin says. “The opportunity for undergraduates to study at the marine center, combined with the very strong programs on campus in biology and environmental science, provides students with as good an opportunity to study marine science as you can find anywhere in the country, and I feel comfortable in saying that.

“The combination of excellent faculty and excellent basic coursework on the main campus, coupled with the opportunity students get when they come to the marine center to get out in the field to study marine organisms up close and personal and to engage in research is just extraordinary.”