Students in BU’s inaugural Marine Science Career Accelerator Program at Camp Emerald Bay on Catalina Island. Junha Lee (CAS’27) (from left), Harrison Chin (CAS’29), Harrison Carrell, Senior Aquarist, Cindy Belkowiche, Director of the Pennington Marine Science Center, Allison Cinelli (CAS’27), Max Ma (CAS’26), Luis Bello (CAS’26), Julian Eichers (CAS’29), Marielle Legaspi (CAS’27), Robin Muse (CAS’26), Sarah Salinas (CAS’28), and Maddie Lam (CAS’28). Photos by Sarah Das

Marine Science

BU’s New Marine Science Career Accelerator Helps Students Dive into Their Careers

Hands-on program aids students in bridging the gap between the classroom and the workforce by offering professional certifications and field experience

In the field of marine science, even entry-level jobs often require extensive field experience and certifications. BU’s new Marine Science Career Accelerator (MSCA) program is designed to ensure that students graduating from BU’s marine science program (BUMP) have the requisite skills and experience to enter the workforce. 

This summer, a cohort of 10 Boston University rising juniors and seniors and recent graduates participated in the inaugural program at Camp Emerald Bay on Catalina Island. Over the course of a month, they completed hands-on fieldwork at the camp’s Pennington Marine Science Center, earning PADI scuba diving credentials, Red Cross lifeguarding certifications, AALSO life support system certifications, taking courses, and more. 

Luis Bello (CAS’26), who graduated this spring with a degree in marine science, says he had been looking for “a stepping stone into an entry-level position” and the MSCA program seemed like the perfect fit. 

“It sounded like a really comfortable transition from academia, textbooks, and exams into a proper career,” Bello says. 

Other students were attracted by the opportunity to earn certifications. Sarah Salinas (CAS’28), an aspiring aquatic veterinarian, says many marine science positions require applicants to have credentials that would have been expensive to obtain on her own.

“It would have cost me a lot of money out of pocket to try to get scuba diving or lifeguard certifications,” Salinas says. “If I were to apply to be an aquarist, I would need to be scuba-certified, and that’s just not really possible to do where I live.”

Salinas was one of six participants who received a $4,500 stipend from the Yawkey Nonprofit Internship Program to help finance their participation.

“Being supported with some financial help allows me to pursue that path with a little more ease, and without the fear of having to pay out of pocket,” Salinas says. “It just allows me to really focus more on my goals and not so much about financial issues.”

The program isn’t only a certification boot camp: participants also logged 160 hours of hands-on work, including operating a 6,000-gallon aquarium, caring for live animals, collecting specimens, and much more. The program was designed to mirror the credentials, skills, and measurable work experience top marine science employers like the New England Aquarium and Woods Hole Institute require from qualified graduates. 

The work was far from easy: Junha Lee (CAS’27) says the early starts and physical activities were demanding. 

“But deep down, I’m having a lot of fun with this,” Lee says. “So I’m glad that this program’s happening, and I hope this continues in the future.”

Although all 10 participants completed the same core program, they arrived on Catalina Island with different career ambitions. 

For Maddie Lam (CAS’28), who is interested in becoming an aquarist, the wide breadth of topics and certifications covered by the program was one of its draws.

“It’s more expansive and not focused on a single area,” Lam says. “So people who are still figuring out what they want to do can get to know more about themselves through this program.”

The accelerator grew out of a collaboration between the BU Marine Program and BU alum Bryan Biniak (CAS’90), an entrepreneur who has long been interested in improving job prospects for young graduates. In 2014, while serving as a general manager at Microsoft, he developed an augmented reality application called Internship Lens to help Boston University students.

For more than a decade, Biniak has worked with the Pennington Marine Science Center as a board member of Scouting America, a nonprofit youth leadership program that owns and operates Camp Emerald Bay and the center. Having already been involved with the Marine Science program at BU, he saw an opportunity to connect the two. 

The center offered many of the program’s necessary resources in one place, from physical amenities like a dive center, boats for scientific diving and ROVs for specimen collection, to animal husbandry and endangered species restoration programs and opportunities to earn certifications. 

“Our students need both qualifying job experience and the professional certifications employers demand from graduate applicants,” Biniak says. “So we were like, ‘Well, instead of simply helping our students find and apply for jobs, why don’t we develop the job they need?’”

Biniak says the idea for the accelerator program was in response to the changing job market, noting that increasingly, a college degree alone cannot guarantee that graduates will have all the qualifications employers expect from entry-level candidates. 

“[Employers] expect students to be job-ready when they graduate, which means that you need to figure out how to do both: go to school full time and get relevant experience and on-the-job skills,” he says. 

Before heading to Catalina Island, the students took a course co-taught by Biniak and BU Marine Program director Andrew Kurtz, a College of Arts & Sciences associate professor of earth & environment, that asked students to perform a “gap analysis” of their experience and the requirements of their dream job. Biniak and the other instructors then took what was missing from their resumes and turned it into a curriculum, creating the MSCA program. While interning at Pennington, the students took CAS IN 399, a course offered by the CAS Experiential Learning Connector that helps students make the most out of their internship experience.

The class also introduced students to marine veterinarians, aquarists, and other top government agency, nonprofit, business, and academic professionals across the country, allowing them to build a personal network within the industry. 

Because marine science is inherently hands-on, it is particularly well suited to experimenting with this kind of educational experience, says Julia Mendez (CAS’07, Wheelock’16), BUMP program manager. If the model proves successful, she says, other natural science programs at BU could potentially launch similar programs. 

Organizers plan to track what happens after this year’s MSCA students leave Catalina Island, including whether their newly acquired credentials and experience translate into jobs. 

For students like Bello, though, the ultimate motivation runs deeper. 

“Marine science…is not a field you join unless it’s something you’re passionate about,” he says. “None of us are here for any particular wage; none of us are here for benefits. We’re all here because we love the ocean.”