The School of Oceanography Yesterday and Today
The School of Oceanography at the University of Washington is a national leader in oceanographic research and education of graduate and undergraduate students. The UW Oceanographic Laboratories, founded in 1930 and directed by Professor Thomas G. Thompson, were the precursor of the School. The School of Oceanography was organized formally in 1951. There are currently 66 faculty. An additional 41 adjunct and affiliate faculty, mainly drawn from the UW Applied Physics Laboratory and NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, are also active in graduate advising.
The School offers outstanding educational opportunities. Seventy-six graduate students are in residence working within four areas of specialization (biological, chemical, physical, and marine geology and geophysics) and on a variety of interdisciplinary topics (climate change, extreme environments, and coastal systems). The School is the only leading oceanography program to offer a bachelors degree, with 92 undergraduate students enrolled for Autumn 2008.
The School occupies modern laboratories in three principal buildings at the southwestern edge of the University of Washington campus overlooking Portage Bay: the Marine Science Building, the Ocean Teaching Building, and the new Ocean Science Building, dedicated in January 2000. Additional facilities are located at the UW's Friday Harbor Laboratories on San Juan Island.
Observation, theory and experiment all contribute to research and education in the School. Access to the sea is provided by our two ships: R/V Thomas G. Thompson, a state-of-the-art 274-foot, 3000 ton vessel, operating virtually anywhere in the world's oceans, and the 65-foot R/V Clifford A. Barnes, working in Puget Sound, nearshore areas, and the Columbia River estuary. The School of Oceanography has utilized several research vessels over the years. View the ghosts from the past.
Technological advances have opened opportunities for new observing systems and the School is active in the ARGO float program, development of the SeaGlider system and the proposed Ocean Observatory Initiative/Regional Scale Nodes(OOI/RSN) optic telescope to inner space. Specialized shore-based laboratories offer unique facilities for experimental investigation and for analyzing samples collected at sea and drawn during experimental runs.
Over 500 computers are connected to the School's network: desktops, laboratory controllers, data servers and special facilities for physical modeling, for spatial analysis and for drop-in student computing. The Spatial Analysis Lab is a research and teaching facility designed for both graduate and undergraduate level programs. Our courses emphasize the integration of technology in the earth sciences with special attention to the role of GPS, GIS, and Remote Sensing.
The many research activities of the School advance our knowledge of the oceans and contribute to the understanding of societal concerns. The School maintains strong links to other programs within the University of Washington and is active in national and international programs. Sponsored research funding averages $14 million per year.