Marine Policy

Marine Policy is a social science degree in a science institution, and that placement is the whole point. Ocean governance arguments turn on scientific claims — how many fish there are, what a restoration achieved, where the water goes — and a policy graduate who cannot evaluate those claims is dependent on whoever hands them a summary.

So you take real science alongside the policy. Oceanography, environmental science, and enough quantitative work to read a stock assessment and know what its uncertainty means.

What you study

Introduction to ocean policy, then marine law and governance, fisheries policy and management, and coastal community resilience. Fisheries policy is co-taught with the fisheries faculty and includes an actual assessment, on the reasoning that a fisheries policy course without one is a course about opinions.

The recurring theme across the program is the implementation gap — the distance between a rule as written and the same rule applied by an agency with a budget, a staff of four and a coastline to cover. Most governance failures are not failures of law.

The policy clinic

You can take real casework for community organizations and small agencies that cannot afford analysis. Clinic students have testified at state hearings and drafted comment letters that changed a final rule. It is the part of the degree that graduates mention most often afterward.

Where it leads

Agency and legislative staff work, nonprofit advocacy, consulting, law school, and graduate study in policy or management. Both of our master's programs take graduates of this degree.

What to expect

A great deal of writing, and science courses that do not go easy on you because you are a policy student. That is intentional.