Williams-Mystic
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Williams-Mystic is the name most commonly used for The Maritime Studies Program of Williams College and Mystic Seaport, an interdisciplinary semester of study for college sophomores, juniors and seniors. Founded in 1977, the program is run under the auspices of Williams College and has over 1200 graduates from more than 100 different home colleges and universities. The 20 students who participate each semester live and study at Mystic Seaport in Mystic, Connecticut. Learning experiences are intense and hands-on, including original scientific and archival research and three field seminars.
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[edit] Academics
Williams-Mystic is staffed by five professors and two teaching assistants. All students take courses in American Maritime History, Maritime Policy, and Literature of the Sea, and choose between Oceanography and Marine Ecology. Literature is taught in a tutorial format. Policy, history and science classes all terminate with a large final project. Science projects make use of the Mystic River, surrounding marshy habitats, and even the rocky intertidal zone in nearby Westerly, Rhode Island.
History research is conducted in the G.W. Blunt White Library of Mystic Seaport, where students are able to access a variety of primary sources including journals, seaman's papers and logbooks, as well as rare volumes of local Connecticut history.
Students receive an additional physical education or museum studies credit for courses taken with the Mystic Seaport staff. These offerings include small-boat handling, celestial navigation, chantey singing, shipsmithing, boat-building, and demo crew, in which students work on the seaport ships, going aloft to set and furl sails on the Charles W. Morgan and Joseph Conrad, working the capstan and windlass, and setting out on the river in period whaleboats and fishing dinghies.
[edit] Field Seminars
Travel is an essential part of the Williams-Mystic experience. Each semester begins with a ten-day offshore cruise on a Sea Education Association research vessel, often the Corwith Cramer. During the offshore, students live and work much as 17th century sailors might have done, sleeping and working watch-on-watch and learning to man the sails. Students also conduct science research, using such onboard technology as a shipek grab to take benthic samples. The fall semesters sail the North Atlantic, and the spring semesters sail the Caribbean.
For many years, Williams-Mystic's second field seminar was a four-day stint on Nantucket which afforded an opportunity to examine the whaling history of the island and the current questions of ecology, human use, and erosion.
In Fall of 2004, Williams-Mystic took its first trip to the Mississippi Delta, exploring the unique ecology and culture of the region. After a Katrina-related hiatus, the seminar has resumed, allowing students to once again see the aligators, sample the cajun food, talk to the fishermen, and now to see the devastation of the storms and the determination of the survivors first-hand.
The third field seminar is a visit to the Pacific coast. During the fall seminar, in California, students visit John Steinbeck's Cannery Row, take a whale-watching trip, stand before a cove that the Charles W. Morgan visited in her whaling days, and another that may have shltered Sir Francis Drake. They see the container shipping pier in San Francisco; they walk under the Armstrong Redwoods and stand at the cliffs down which redwood timbers were once sluiced into waiting ships. In the spring, students visit the Pacific Nortwest with stops in Seattle, Portland, and Coos Bay.
Professors take their courses on the road (or sea) for each seminar, delivering their lectures in a wide variety of locales. Wherever they go, they seek to explore the connection between humans and the sea.
[edit] Student Life
Students live in co-op style housing in historic houses owned by Mystic Seaport. Students frequently cook and eat together, and are often found bursting into appropriately salty song.
Because students are taking the same courses, they often find themselves working and studying collaboratively. Maritime Policy professor Katy Robinson-Hall has been known to interrupt late-night studying sessions for the dreaded policy final with a drive-by ice cream delivery.
In their free time, students explore Mystic and the surrounding towns, enjoying running trails, the Mystic Aquarium, and other institutions such as Mystic Pizza, Drawbridge Ice Cream, and the Green Marble Coffee House. They take to the roads with Bikes for the People and to the waters with Boats for the People, a flotilla which currently includes a rowing scull and a small sailboat called the Half Hitch.
[edit] Alumni
Williams Mystic boasts a loyal alumni base which recently achieved 57% participation in donations to the Annual Fund. Alumni also show their support for the program by converging on the seaport each September for an alumni weekend marked by whaleboat races, happy reunions, and a charitable auction supporting the Scholarship Fund.
