Reiterating the MOP interview Why you should take advantage of MOP and participate in the activities By Kathryn Lam, Co-editor
W
hen each MOP student joins MOP, they have an interview with the campus coordinator for that MOP program. They attend new student orientation and, more often than not (hopefully), feel as if they are going to be an active student. They will come in to utilize the study center and resources. They will attend activities and events and apply for internships (paid and unpaid) and actively look for job opportunities.
However, there are over 300 UHM MOP students yet Student Coordinator, Nikki Guylay who is always in the office when she isn’t in class, only knows a few of them. It has been hammered into each MOP studen’t’ heads over and over again, and so here is yet another time that it is being drilled into MOPers, take advantage of the opportunities that are being presented while there’s still time and ability to take advantage of them. In this month alone there is a back to school MOP barbeque and a field trip to the Honolulu Fish Auction (yes it’s at 5:30 in the morning. Yes you should go). In addition to that there are three weeks of two night a week classes in which MOP students learn to identify over 200 different species of fish, invertebrates, and limu by sight with their scientific names. And it’s free. These QUEST ID classes culminate in an exam that students with 80% and higher can then use to get into the QUEST field school in May. The best part (besides that it’s free)? It can be taken over and over again. The rest of this semester includes many other fun activities such as a tour of UH’s Kilo Moana Research Vessel, a tour of HURL (Hawai‘i Undersea Research Lab), and a learning to surf day. Each event is free with a $5 deposit that is returned when the participant shows up. The surf lesson costs $22 but this covers the cost of the board. MOP offers many brilliant opportunites for those who wish to have hands on experience with the marine world while the classes students take for their desired major might not. There are three field schools- QUEST (Quantitative Underwater Ecological Surveying Technique), MAST (Maritime Archaelogical Surveying Techniques) which is featured at right, and MUT (Marine Underwater Techniques). Each are dive schools and present students with the ability to get experience. 6|
Seawords
MAST 2013: Students at MAST this year dived on three WWII wreck sites. In this picture they are measuring the width of a sunken amphibious tank from the end of one track to the end of the other. The quadrat held by the third diver is so that the divers can take a picture of the quadrat and then measure the distance from a base line transect to two corners of the quadrat. Later on that night, the divers will use this to triangulate the position of the given square to be able to acurately draw what was in that square on a map of the wreck.