Available courses through the Center for Deep-Sea Ecology and Biotechnology
Oceanographic Learning Community
Course Code: 11:015:100
This first-year seminar introduces students to the application of technologies used in ocean observing systems. Students work in small groups mentored by undergraduates with prior observing system experience and participate in ongoing COOLroom research and development.
Introduction to Oceanography
Course Code: 11:628:120
The course is designed to introduce students to the oceans through methods, rationale, discoveries and relevance to our lives with emphasis on the seafloor. We will learn the basic principles behind the exploration methods, and examine what these methods are revealing about the ocean. Students will experience the discoveries that are changing the way we think about our planet and beyond.
Exploring and Understanding the Worlds Oceans
Course Code: 11:628:125
This course that will provide an exploration of the world's oceans. The course will explore the geology, chemistry and biology in the world's oceans and include a strong focus on how this impacts human society. We will study the fundamental science but through an emphasis on the human stories of exploration. This will provide understand of how the ocean operates and highlight the potential impacts on human society which increasingly rely on the ocean for food, commerce, and natural resources.
Ocean Observatories
Course Code: 11:628:200-211
These courses are taught in fall and spring by faculty in the COOLroom. Specific topics depend on ongoing research on expanding and applying ocean observation technologies, and in the past have included flying an autonomous underwater vehicle (RU27) across the Atlantic for the first time. The class meets weekly for an 80-minute period and, in addition, students participate in weekly 60-minute out-of-class group meetings. Each group presents their work to the class at the end of the semester. These classes may be counted toward the Marine Sciences major or minor elective requirements or, to fulfill the hands-on research experience required for the major.
Dynamics of Marine Ecosystems
Course Code: 11:628:320
An overview of the fundamental processes in the marine environment with emphasis on interdisciplinary linkages in the functioning of marine ecosystems. Understanding the dynamics in the physics, chemistry, and biology of the oceans will be emphasized.
Hydrothermal Vents
Course Code: 11:628:341
This course provides detailed coverage of deep-sea hydrothermal vent communities and environments. The instructors explore these unique systems via classroom lectures, videos of recent cruises to active hydrothermal vent sites along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and East Pacific Rise, seminars on recently published literature, and examination of a recently released IMAX film on the subject. Guest lectures by acknowledged experts in the field are also given. Focus is on the composition and dynamics of hydrothermal vent communities, as well as geology of seafloor spreading centers.
Oceanographic Methods and Data Analysis
Course Code: 11:628:364
A field and laboratory course in the analytical tools of oceanography. A three-hour laboratory each week and two field trips, one of which is overnight at the Rutgers Field Station in Tuckerton, NJ.
Biophysical Interactions: From Barnacles to Jellyfish
Course Code: 11:628:410
This course emphasizes understanding how organisms interact with and are affected by their physical fluid environment. The aim is to introduce fundamental principles of major topics, including life at low Reynolds numbers, benthic boundary layers, biomechanics, and diffusion and dispersal. We will discuss physical processes and their impacts on the ecology of algae, zooplankton, fish, jellyfish, and benthic invertebrates. Many principles we cover will also be relevant for microbes, terrestrial plants and animals, and chemical tracers. Specific topics may vary depending on students' interests.
Physical Oceanography
Course Code: 11:628:451
Physical and chemical properties of sea water. Sound and radiation in the oceans. Heat, water, and momentum exchange at air-sea interface. Tides, waves, and currents.
Ocean Ecology
Course Code: 11:628:462
Interactions between biological, physical, and chemical components of the marine environment, including primary production and secondary production, biogeochemical cycles, food web interactions, and ecosystem analysis.
Chemical Oceanography
Course Code: 11:628:472
Chemical description of the ocean and its major chemical cycles; salinity and the elements of seawater; nutrients; the carbonate system; marine organic matter; radioisotopes; hydrothermal processes and ocean evolution.
History of the Earth Systems
Course Code: 11:628:476
This course integrates atmospheric, oceanographic, geological and biological concepts in an historical perspective to introduce the student to the major processes that have shaped Earth's environment. The course will examine climatic processes on geological time scales, the evolution of organisms, the cycling of elements, and the feedbacks between these processes. Prerequisites: Introductory courses in Chemistry, Biology, and Physics (or by consultation with the Instructor).
Coastal Ocean Observing Systems
Course Code: 16:712:504
Theory and operation of sensors that comprise the Rutgers' Shelf Observing System. Class combines lecture and lab to introduce oceanographic instrumentation and includes a shipboard survey on the New Jersey Shelf.
Marine Benthic Ecology
Course Code: 16:712:521
Emphasis on fauna living in soft sediments: roles in nutrient cycling and marine food webs; feeding biology, reproduction, and recruitment; community structure as influenced by physical and chemical properties of the environment.
Dynamics of Waves, Currents, and Sediment Transport on the Continental Shelf
Course Code: 16:712:545
Equations of motion; linear theory for surface waves, wave boundary layers; current Ekman layers, coastal current circulation patterns; sediment transport in steady flow, oscillatory flow, and combined waves and currents.