Press Releases

Fall 1995
Southampton, UK to Southampton, USA: English Students Find a New World of Marine Science in America

Benjamin Tarrant, a 21-year-old college student from England, is finding Southampton to be the ideal place to study marine science.

"The first Sunday I was here I went snorkeling off Orient Point at 6 o'clock in the morning. That was my initiation into the inspired way of life here," he said.

Ben and his colleague Debbie Slater are exchange students who have come from the University of Southampton in England to the Southampton Campus in America to study marine science for a year. Debbie is studying Oceanography while Ben is concentrating on Marine Biology.

"The water is so clean and clear, and there are lots of varieties of habitats and species," said Ben who comes from the small market town of Sturminster Newton in Dorset County.

"You would never go snorkeling in England," adds Debbie, 20, who comes from Monmouth, a small town in South Wales, on the border of England and Wales. "The water is very cold and murky and there isn't as much to see...The University is located at a big industrial port. You wouldn't snorkel there."

While Southampton University may not enjoy the pristine marine environment of the Southampton Campus, it does have a top-grade research faculty, the students said. In addition, an new oceanography center, expected to be the premier center in Europe, has just opened on the waterfront and will be affiliated with the University.

The relationship between the Southampton Campus and its namesake institution in England has been developing over the past ten years. In 1987 Lord Jellicoe, Chancellor of the 135-year-old University, came to Southampton to join in the College's 25th anniversary celebration. Through the efforts of Professor Bob Danziger, a total of four of the Southampton Campus marine science students have traveled to England to do Internships and course work at the University. Debbie and Ben, both of whom have completed two years at Southampton University, are the first Southampton, UK students to come to the Southampton Campus.

The two students are enjoying the smaller, more intimate atmosphere at the Southampton Campus as well as the excellent opportunities for hands-on experience and research and the close interaction with their professors. In England the University has 8,000 students, and classes can be anywhere from 20 to 70 people. In addition, hands-on research experiences and internships are not built into the curriculum.

"If you want an experience like that you almost have to arrange it yourself," said Debbie. Exams and assessments are given more frequently here in America, unlike in England where students are only tested once at the end of the semester.

"It has been most interesting to learn that students in the United Kingdom don't have anywhere near the same diversity of research experiences as they do at the Southampton Campus," said Dr. Danziger. " I only hope we can have more students coming here from Southampton University. They are excellent students and a fantastic addition to our College."

An avid outdoors man, Ben, who says he is "very keen" on sailing, has signed up for SEAmester, a nine-week program offered by the Southampton Campus in which students live and study on board a 125-foot schooner as it sails the eastern seaboard. This fall he is taking Marine Ecology, Phycology, Fisheries Biology and Ichthyology as well as a course in sailing. "Actually seeing sea horses and pulling them out of the bay ... seeing these things for the first time, is very inspiring," he says.

Debbie is taking Physical Geology, Physical Oceanography, an independent study in Physical Oceanography, and Field Biology. She is planning to undertake an internship in physical oceanography at a research institution during the spring semester.

All-in-all the two students from across the ocean are adjusting well to life in the oldest English settlement in New York state. "It's a dream come true to come here to college for a year," said Ben.