Find out more about a semester of coastal & ocean studies at Williams-Mystic!
One Life-Changing Semester
Whether it's studying biodiversity off the coast of Maine, the impacts of a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico or the depths of our humanity in ocean literature, Williams-Mystic Coastal & Ocean Studies students embark on the exploration of a lifetime.
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“This program really is for everyone ... because the ocean necessarily creates the connection between all these fields that society tells us are different.”
- Alex, Spring '19, Williams College
Poem & Place
Avery Gohla, a Marine Affairs major from the University of Rhode Island, did not expect to fall in love with sea poetry during her Williams-Mystic semester. But Professor Ned Schaumberg’s Global Ocean Literature course changed how she thought about the genre, especially after a literature class held via kayak on the Mystic River.
An urban field seminar to Brooklyn with WM →
Williams-Mystic’s urban field seminar in Brooklyn pulled students into the real crossroads of industry, transit, art, history, climate, justice, and community. It also gave them a lens to compare what they’ve seen all semester in port towns and cities trying to build resilient futures while juggling rising seas, housing pressures, economic shifts, and long-standing environmental inequities.
An interdisciplinary look at hurricanes →
We do have classes in an actual classroom at WM, too! Each semester faculty lead students through an interdisciplinary hurricane panel, exploring how warming oceans fuel stronger storms, how levees and land loss influence vulnerability, and how recovery depends on people, influence and power as much as engineering and funding. Students study maps of past disasters, examine the science and hear human narratives about storm experiences. In an interactive exercise, they consider messaging protection and preparedness for different audiences and platforms, from making a TikTok to creating a flow chart to talk about climate change at Thanksgiving dinner.
