Greetings!
Welcome back SoMAS students! And welcome to new SoMAS students! We intend to make this an exciting time for you. And it is an important time for all of our students – half of you (last year’s Freshmen students, and this year’s new students) have perhaps not yet been to the SoMAS campus! And some of our Juniors will be doing Semester by the Sea, and Seniors will be doing new things like internships or research, and thinking ahead to graduation and beyond. So, many milestones ahead of us. We are working hard to ensure that your classroom experiences are vital, interactive, surprising, stimulating, different, and safe, all at once! Of course at SoMAS, safety comes first, so you will find that everyone in the buildings and classrooms will be masked up, and hopefully every single person you interact with will be vaccinated – we should all take that as our very important social responsibility, to ourselves and to each other. For the latest information, please visit the Stony Brook University Stronger Together website.
This is (as always!) an exciting time to be a SoMAS student. You will learn about and be engaged in what we do – working toward a fundamental understanding about the natural environments – the atmosphere, the oceans, the cryosphere, the terrestrial biosphere, the built environments, and how they interact and depend on each other, and from this we can develop tools that provide predictability, and the capacity to protect those environments. We sure have a lot of challenges – the need for food security, a clean and adequate supply of water, clean air, a healthy and diverse biosphere, ocean conservation, and a stable climate. We most certainly do not have a stable climate, and SoMAS is engaged on many fronts to address climate change, and contribute to successful pursuit of those challenges. I am aware that many of you sincerely want to “save the world.” That’s great, we need you to do that. But you can’t do it alone, and your road to meaningful and important contributions will start with and include things you learn and partnerships you make here at SoMAS. If it all feels overwhelming sometimes, well – it should! But with good partnerships involving smart and ambitious people, you can get many good things done. You will feel that everyone around you here at SoMAS shares your passion for making the world a better, more sustainable, place. Let’s do that together!
We look forward to meeting you at various events at SoMAS, in the classroom, in the hallways, in our labs, and on social media. For that, some of the places we may connect are on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and I’m told from time to time we post on TikTok. We are also in the process of migrating to a new website. For a sneak peek, please visit the new page. Keep in mind that the SoMAS faculty and staff are here to help you succeed. Reach out to us, and ask for help when you need it! And that starts with me. Thanks for joining us, we will have a great time, and not just learn things, we will create new knowledge, together!
Go Seawolves!
Regards,
Paul Shepson,
Dean of the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences
