Meeting Abstract
Questionnaires were mailed to 354 colleges in coastal states, and to 123 colleges in non-coastal states. Coastal schools are more likely to have field/lab components, larger classes, and offer classes more often, but non-coastal schools are more likely to have pre-requisites, like general biology. For non-coastal schools, distance to the coast is positively correlated with time in the field. Most schools don’t have an oceanography prerequisite, but instructors often spend up to 20% of lecture time on this material. More than 90% of the courses use one textbook, which instructors are moderately satisfied with; in coastal schools, about 40% of the instructors would like a text that geared toward local ecosystems, while about 20% of the instructors in non-coastal schools would prefer this. In lectures, prokaryotes and fungi were covered significantly less than any other topics. The greatest discrepancies between textbook coverage and class lectures were: “other vertebrates” > “plants”> “unicellular protists”.
