The Kachemak Bay Campus Semester by the Bay Program is in their 14th year of the program that “brings students from around the country to the campus for the opportunity for academic hands-on learning experiences studying biological sciences with easy access to the cold-water marine habitats of Kachemak Bay.” Current campus director Bryan Partridge describes it as a “grassroots program,” mostly coordinated by local biology professor Debbie Tobin. Carol Swartz was the campus director when the program was instigated and stated in a 2014 story for the Homer News the hands-on experiences provided here give students unique exposure to careers available in the marine sciences. This 2025 fall semester started several weeks ago and five of this semester’s cohort provided comments on their interests in attending the program.
Student interviews/ backgrounds:
Logan Hytten
“My name is Logan Hytten. I'm from the University of Vermont. I went into school as a pre vet student, and then due to my scuba diving background, I got more interested in marine just Marine in general, like marine mammals, especially, and then just marine species. I still love animals as a whole, due to my interest in veterinary medicine. So this program really appealed to me due to the like, very specific concentration on marine mammals….my internship here is with the Center for Coastal Studies, and I'm doing the education internship. I am very excited about it, because I'm learning a lot about Alaska and the environment around here as I'm doing that, and then I also get to work with the kids and kind of do some education.”
Jordan Best
“My name is Jordan best, and I joined the program down here because I separated from the Air Force earlier this year, after nine years, and I didn't know what to do, so I thought I'd go back to school my GI Bill, and I just jumped on the UAA website and scrolled through their list of programs, and thought this sounded fun, because I like seeing the marine mammals when I'm out fishing and stuff, because I live in Alaska, and so I just decided to do this because I thought it would be something fun to do and know more about the animals. And I'm interning with Center for Alaska Coastal Studies as well. And we're doing, I'm doing environmental monitoring, so it's a lot of phenology, looking at trail cam data out for the moose, bears, lynx, all those things, and then harbor monitoring, looking at the invertebrates and the harbor.”
Lauren Fliearman
I'm Lauren Fliearman. I'm originally from Michigan, from Michigan Technological University, obviously, in Michigan, we don't have any marine life at all. And I've always been interested in ocean since I was a kid. And I stumbled upon this program randomly through online. I was like, Oh my gosh, I really want to do this. And I got accepted, and I feel honored to be here, back in Michigan, though, I got the opportunity to take toxicology courses and really learn about pollutants and what humans are doing to impact the environment. And I really want to help the conservation route, help these organisms, because humans are unfortunately doing bad things with that route. My internships with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, where we're focusing more in the coastal ecology with, like, sea grass monitoring and some of the micro plastics, and plastics are getting dumped here in the former area. As for like, what we can specifically do with that data? We're gonna do like, monitoring, looking into, hopefully, some toxicology, for my personal route of it, but I'm excited”
Heather Cormier
My name is Heather Cormier. I'm from Massachusetts. I go to school at the University of Maine, doing a double major in marine biology and zoology. I've always wanted to work with animals, so I found this program from my advisor back home, who sent out an email. I initially signed up like my sophomore year. I'm now in my senior year, but I've been so excited to come just because I like, I want to work up close and personal with animals. My dream is to do rescue and rehab for animals. So I work with the kbner program doing harbor purposes, harbor purpose research. And under that, we have the NOAA permit, which allows us to get up close and really good pictures of them, which is so cool.
Savannah Lyle
I'm Savannah Lyle. I go to school at University of North Carolina, at Wilmington. I got into marine biology when I moved there a couple years ago. Because I'm from I've lived. Texas my whole life. And so the Dallas area, we do not have any water near us. So moving to North Carolina really opened my eyes to that. And I did some undergrad research with fence out identifications with bottlenose dolphins cool. And I learned about this through the Texas A and M job board online. Yeah. And then my internship is also with Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies, and I'm a environmental educator. Sounds really cool to learn more about the environment in Alaska and then teaching other students about it and learning about from the other students.
In a report provided to KBBI from outreach coordinator Jill Burnham, over 162 students from 32 colleges and universities have already attended the program in previous years. Undergraduate students have joined the semester program from schools both in Alaska and many other parts of the country. More information on the program and how to apply is available at https://semesterbythebay.org/.
