Celebrating 25 Years of the Semester in Environmental Science
Seventy-five people gathered at the Marine Biological Laboratory this month to celebrate 25 years of the Semester in Environmental Science (SES) and to introduce the new Semester in Biological Discovery.
The reunion symposium, which ran over three days, included lectures from faculty, presentations from alumni, and a round-table discussion about the future of the program.
“It was a wonderful celebration and chance to reunite with SES alumni going back all the way to the first 1997 class to the present, current and past SES Faculty, and some of our partner institutions and friends,” said SES Director Mirta Teichberg. “I was impressed with the discussions on the impact SES had on students and their careers, and we were all excited to celebrate together and to thank Ken Foreman, former SES Director, for all of his years of service to the program.”
Ken Foreman, a research scientist in the MBL Ecosystems Center, served as director of the program from 2004-2022. Part of the reunion festivities included speeches and a presentation by Foreman reflecting on his time as director.
The symposium also served as a springboard for SES’s new undergraduate sister program—the Semester in Biological Discovery (SBD), which will welcome its first cohort of students in spring of 2024. The 13-week SBD program will provide students with an intensive, immersive research experience in discovery-driven biological sciences modeled on the MBL’s world-renowned Advanced Research Training Courses.
