The September Courses @ MBL 2025 application is now Closed!
Check back here in Spring Quarter!
In September 2025, the College will be offering five courses at the Marine Biological Laboratory. Each course will be taught by University of Chicago and MBL faculty.
These intensive, three-week long courses meet for up to eight hours per day for 5–6 days per week, combining lectures with immersive labs and fieldwork. Each student can only enroll in one course.
Program Information
The MBL September Program is part of the September Term.
- Please note that HIPS 18507 does not count for BIOS credit
- $2,250 Program Fee which covers three weeks' dorm-style housing and meals at MBL, as well as all course supplies and excursions.
- $4,790 Summer Quarter Tuition for one 100-unit course.
The program will run August 25 - Sept 12
Classes will be held on Labor Day
The schedule ensures that students have ample time to return to campus for Autumn Quarter.
Students register for a September MBL course as part of the Summer Quarter, and each course carries 100 units of credit.
With a maximum of 15 students each, classes are small and offer an interactive teaching environment where instructors spend considerable time with each student.
College participants in the September MBL courses are responsible for:
Students are responsible for covering their own airfare and related travel expenses to and from MBL.
Scholarships and Financial Aid
Need-based aid is available for the MBL September Program; students who receive such aid during the academic year are automatically reviewed for Summer financial aid eligibility.
Learn more about Summer scholarships and financial aid HERE.
Billing
Bills for the MBL September Program will be sent to students in June, and payment in full will be due in late July.
Applications for the 2024 September Program are currently OPEN.
APPLY NOW
Application Priority Deadline: March 3, 2025
We are now into rolling admissions - STILL ACCEPTING APPLICATIONS
Decisions will go out on or before: March 21, 2025
There are no pre-requisites for the September courses at MBL. Both STEM majors and non-majors are welcome in these classes. The BIOS courses can count either towards the general education requirement in Biology OR as an upper-level elective. The HIPS course will satisfy one credit in the Science, Culture, and Society Civilization Sequence.
Course Descriptions
Each course is worth 100 units of credit.
Instructor: O. Pineda-Catalan
Course Description: In this course, student will have the opportunity to explore the large diversity of marine animal species in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and its surroundings. We will combine fieldwork with genomic and bioinformatic approaches to study different aspects of the evolution, ecology, taxonomy, physiology, and biogeography of marine animals in this unique location. Student will integrate knowledge and analytical tools from different biological disciplines to develop short research projects. During the three weeks of the course, student will have access to the Marine Biological Laboratory's collection of living marine animals, participate in ongoing research projects at MBL, and contribute data that will advance our understanding of marine biodiversity.
Instructor: Eric Larsen
Course Description: Students will explore various aspects of the biota of the region surrounding the Marine Biology Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA. The focus of the course will be to examine various patterns in the distribution and abundance of the flora/fauna in the islands and associated mainland habitats over the course of 3 weeks through a combination of in class lectures and laboratory sessions, combined with field studies. Penikese Island will receive special focus for extensive inventory of the biota, to update previous contributions to the flora of the island and begin an inventory of mammals, birds, and invertebrates. Similar surveys will be made of nearby mainland habitats for biogeographic comparisons between island and mainland patterns of abundance.
Read about the 2021 Biogeography course here!
Instructor: Alexandra Worden
Course Description: Students will study coastal marine habitats, connectivity to ocean and climate, dynamics of microbial community structure, and marine conservation alongside gaining experience on laboratory microbiome science and environmental field work. Students will gain firsthand experience with the types of microbes that that influence climate and that impact health through laboratory experiments on culturing and analyzing microbes in ‘pristine’ and highly impacted coastal ecosystems. Methods to be learned include plating, epifluorescence microscopy, flow cytometry, DNA extraction, and sequencing.
Guest Instructors:
Dr. Cinda Scott
Director for the Center for Field Studies, Panama
Prof. Alejandra Ortiz
Colby College
Instructor: Michael Paul Rossi
Course description: This is a three-week intensive history course in the history of the life sciences, taught on-site at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA. This course will satisfy one credit in the Science, Culture, and Society Civilization Sequence. In this course, students will not only learn about crucial turning points in natural history, biology, and medicine between the 1800s and the present; they will also visit key locations in those transformations, will conduct historical research in archives and using historical instruments, and will gain experience in both modern and historical techniques in biology, ecology, and the life sciences. Topics and activities include a visit to Penikese Island, location of the first natural history school in the United States; the history of whales, whaling, and natural science; salt marsh ecology and contemporary genomics; and the conjoined histories of squids and neuroscience - among other topics.
Read about a previous MBL course taught by Dr. Rossi here!
Instructors: S. Himmelfarb
Course Description: Using a wide variety of traditional and experimental mediums, this foundational class is a hands on investigation of what an image can do and be. Readings from a range of fields, including poetry, dance, and anthropology will inform our discussions and studio practice over this 3 week course held at the Marine Biological Laboratory, in Woods Hole, MA. Many classes will take place at least partially outdoors, where we will forage for pigments, discuss observational methodologies, and gain experience with plein air image making. Student driven assignments will encourage interdisciplinary thinking and research in visual meaning making. Field trips to nearby natural resources and historic sites will ground the class in local ecosystems and histories, while slide lectures will help contextualize our conversations within the rich global understandings of visual language.