Studying in the surf and sand

Students immerse themselves in Bahamian culture

Escape from the unpredictable weather of Georgia to a secluded island with friendly Bahamian inhabitants and crisp blue waters filled with exotic fish and fossilized corals. Students can by studying aboard in San Salvador Island, Bahamas.

Since 2000, Melanie Devore, professor of Biological and Environmental Sciences, has led an ecology based Maymester program that is housed at the Gerace Research Centre, in San Salvador Island, Bahamas. Students will spend much of their time snorkeling around the island studying the coral reef, take part in a mahogany wood workshop, conduct labs and much more. The research center supplies students with dormitories for teachers, undergraduates and graduates, a cafeteria, a total of 10 classrooms and laboratory spaces, two larger rooms for lectures, a wet lab, standard laboratory equipment, and vehicles for professors to carrying students to research spots.

The island has approximately 1,000 inhabitants and is very small, only being 13 miles in length. Devore says that the size of this island allows students to do projects on land in front of the station and also allows them to interact and form relationships with many of the people that live on the island.

“Sometimes it’s hard to go somewhere and be able to get to all the points in a short period of time and what’s nice about short term projects, programs and study abroad and using San Sal is the island is about 13 miles long,” Devore said. “You can spend two weeks there and your not spending a lot of time traveling about, 15 minutes to a half hour you can get anywhere you need to go…. It’s perfect, it’s ideal for anything with environmental science because you can see all of the problems in one small locality. Everything is right at that one spot.”

Each year Devore brings faculty from different schools outside of Georgia College with her on the trip. One person that has traveled with the group frequently is Sandy Voegeli, assistant program director to DeVore. Voegeli is a great asset to the trip because she lived on the island for eight years and during her time there has developed close relationships with the people on the island. She is also a certified The National Association of Underwater Instructors dive master and is knowledgeable in assessing coral reefs. She says students can look forward to interacting with the Bahamian community as well as having the chance to study many of the islands plants and marine organisms.

“The students gain a tremendous understanding of marine environments, humans and connections,” Voegeli said. “Students have the opportunity to learn first hand about mangroves, sea grasses, coral reefs, invasive species, and endangered species. Also, students can look forward to learning about Bahamian culture and out island life.”

Junior biology major Matthew Boyle has attended the trip for the past two years and will be going again this year. During his second visit to the island, he conducted research on algae, studying their distribution counts and growth rates and the research he conducted was published in an article in the Geological Society of America. This year on the study abroad trip he will be doing more research on algae. Boyle says he has thoroughly enjoyed going with Georgia College to San Salvador Island and the trip has only furthered his interest in his major.

“It’s not just our school there (at the research station), there are other schools there too,” Boyle said. “You are in this environment with a bunch of other biology majors who are actively interested in stuff. If you have a question on something there is at least a professor there studying it. If Devore didn’t know something, she would be like ‘Yea go ask that guy over there, its his specialty’ and it was kind of cool to be in a place where anything there these people are specialized in.”

Junior environmental science major Hannah Sadowski attended the trip in 2009. She said the trip not only solidified her interest in marine ecology but it also gave her insight into how the people on the island live.

“It was the first time that I’d been out of the country and actually really interacted with people and saw how they live and so it did give me that sense (of) how other people are living. It’s so small and so you saw how people were living right down the road, your able to talk to people so it was just kind of a bit of an eye opener,” she said.