Other Useful Information

University of the Virgin Islands

UVI is located in the beautiful northeastern Caribbean. It was founded in 1962 and now has two campuses: one on St. Thomas and one on St. Croix. UVI offers 38 undergraduate degree programs and 7 graduate degree programs including the Masters in Marine and Environmental Science. For more information about UVI, go to www.uvi.edu.

Center for Marine and Environmental Studies (CMES)

CMES is ideally situated for empirical studies of coral reefs and associated tropical marine habitats. CMES is comprised of the MacLean Marine Science Center, the Virgin Islands Marine Advisory Service (VIMAS), the Virgin Islands Environmental Resource Station (VIERS), the Environmental Analysis Laboratory (EAL), and the Institute for Geocomputational Analysis and Statistics (GeOCAS). Dr Smith's lab is located in the MacLean Marine Science Center (denoted by star in image below), the heart of UVI's coral reef research efforts.

MacLean Marine Science Center (MMSC)

MMSC is located on the shore of Brewer's Bay on UVI's St. Thomas campus. It supports education and research focused on the ecology and biocomplexity of Caribbean coral reefs. This location provides easy access to a variety of tropical marine environments for faculty, students, and visiting scientists.

The facilities include five research vessels, a brand new state of the art circulating filtered sea water system, an array of field and laboratory equipment, and support for air, Nitrox, and technical Nitrox diving.

Masters of Marine and Environmental Science (MMES) Graduate Program

The Masters of Marine and Environmental Science Graduate Program provides students with the training and skills necessary for planning, conducting, and evaluating research in marine and environmental science. Additionally, students explore how to utilize research to manage natural resources, with a particular focus on the issues and challenges related to natural resource management in the Caribbean region. The program draws upon the expertise of faculty within several units of UVI, in particular the Center for Marine and Environmental Studies and the College of Science and Mathematics. Further, it is a bridge between academia and natural resource management sectors within the US Virgin Islands, the greater Caribbean, and beyond.

There are two tracks of study in the MMES program: a science based track for those students who wish to focus on research, and a management based track for those students who wish to focus on resource management issues. The program structure allows students to become conversant in the language of both research and resource management, and then to focus on their area of particular interest. Graduates of the program are prepared for a wide array of careers in academic, government, non-profit, and private sectors.