My name is Samuel Filiaggi. I am a graduating senior Marine Affairs major and Oceanography minor at the University of Rhode Island (URI) from Batavia, Illinois. This semester, I am participating in the Williams-Mystic Maritime Studies Program at Mystic Seaport Museum. This national program is the result of a forty-two year partnership between Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts and Mystic Seaport Museum. It blends studies of history, literature, science, and policy, all while students live and study at the Mystic Seaport, with its museum grounds as the campus.

While living with classmates in 200-year old homes a short walk from the docks is an outstanding experience in and of itself, the program is far from limited to the Southern New England coast. A short two weeks ago, my class returned from sailing aboard the  SEA tall ship SSV Corwith Cramer  along Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands for an offshore seminar. We were aboard not as passengers, but as crew, carrying out duties both on deck and in an on-board laboratory. When not on-watch, our professors held class on the quarterdeck, while one class was an all-day field trip exploring the natural and human wonders of St. John in the US Virgin Islands. After this experience, I am certainly looking forward to traveling with the program to San Francisco, California in March and New Orleans, Louisiana to learn about those areas’ relationships to the sea!

Interdisciplinary work like this is the heart of the Department of Marine Affairs at the University of Rhode Island. While my fellow Spring ’19 classmates’ majors range from environmental studies, history, marine biology, Spanish, mathematics, and more, I firmly believe that any Marine Affairs student should be especially be clamoring to apply. URI and Williams-Mystic share a close relationship, as there is usually at least one URI student attending the program in a given semester. Furthermore, students pay the same tuition as they would at URI and a $1,000 fellowship is awarded to one student participating in Williams-Mystic per semester.

While this is a national program, only a couple dozen of self-selected students are chosen to participate each term, and the admissions team is currently seeking applicants to fill Fall 2019 and Spring 2020! Check out their website: www.mystic.williams.edu.

Please do not hesitate to reach out to me with any questions you have about the program, or even about the Marine Affairs program! My email is: rfiliaggi@my.uri.edu.