Strategic Alliances

Semester at Sea enhances its world-class curriculum by partnering with innovative international outreach and research organizations.

These organizations include:

• Global Nomads Group
• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

Global Nomads Group (GNG)

Employing interactive technologies such as videoconferencing, GNG brings young people together to meet across cultural and national boundaries to discuss their differences and similarities, and the world issues that affect them.

The collaborative project CURRENTS provides a series of live videoconferences, web casts, and Internet communications between schools in the United States and schools and cultural sites around the world. GNG staff members travel aboard the MV Explorer and enlist SAS participants and faculty to help facilitate these dialogues.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu hosted an installment of CURRENTS during the Spring 2007 voyage. Read more about it in GNG's newsletter by watching webumentaries on the CURRENTS and Abroad View websites.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and its Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML) are part of the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC).

AOML's mission is to conduct basic and applied research in oceanography, tropical meteorology, atmospheric and oceanic chemistry, and acoustics. This research seeks to understand the physical characteristics and processes of the ocean and the atmosphere, both separately and as a coupled system.

As part of the alliance between NOAA/AOML and Semester at Sea, SAS students work directly with NOAA scientists to conduct research projects from the decks of the MV Explorer. Using oceanic observation equipment called surface drifters and Argo profile floats participants deploy these devices and then study the data they transmit on ocean currents, temperature, and salinity.

• Read more about how NOAA and SAS students work together.
• View pictures posted by the NOAA scientists.

Soon, SAS and NOAA/AOML will install equipment to measure sea surface temperature, salinity, and dissolved CO2 in the water along the track of the ship, which will be complemented by a NOAA/AOML-developed web page showing real-time ocean currents, surface winds, sea surface temperature, ocean color, and other ocean and atmospheric parameters in the basin where the MV Explorer travels.