Introductory oceanography is the ideal course for students who do not expect to go any further in science, in that it incorporates physics, chemistry, geology, meteorology and biology, it holds wide fascination for the general public, and it relates directly to a large number of social and environmental issues currently receiving media attention. If the goal is creating a general public informed about the methods and function of science and able to make links between science and their lives, then teaching oceanography to undergraduate non-majors is an excellent means to the end.

Undergraduates at the School of the Art Institute are exclusively art majors, each of whom must take distribution requirements in math and science. A standard introductory oceanography course there has always been quite successful. In recent years the course was redesigned to focus on the specific goals of experiencing and appreciating the hands-on nature of science, promoting critical thinking and writing skills, relating science to current events and issues, and - as a unifying theme - understanding the implications of natural selection and the interrelationships between organism/community and physical environment. Active learning techniques were incorporated as much as possible, local resources such as the Lake Michigan coastline and Shedd Aquarium were used to emphasize the experiential nature of science, and guided journal writing provided links between the students’ aesthetic and civic lives and the science they were studying, as well as addressing writing skills. The semester culminates when each student, having selected and investigated a marine environment and its stressors, designs and makes an organism with specific adaptations to those conditions and presents it to the class.