New graduate program at the University of Rhode Island combines degrees in history and oceanography

By RICHARD C. LEWIS
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- The University of Rhode Island has designed a voyage to the bottom of the sea for students in an emerging field of scientific exploration -- archaeological oceanography.
Graduates of the new five-year program will get a master's degree in history and a doctorate in oceanography. Five students were accepted for this year, and have already begun classes.
"It's a bringing together of two worlds that historically have not granted joint degrees," said Robert Ballard, the program's creator and the underwater explorer who discovered the Titanic. Those worlds "are about as far apart as you can take two sciences and bring them into one," he said.
Only about 5 percent of the world's oceans have been explored, and much of the underwater archaeology, including exploring submerged cities and shipwrecks, has taken place in shallow waters.
The university program plans to take archaeology deeper. Technological advances with unmanned deep-sea submersibles and robotic excavators sensitive enough to handle artifacts much like a human would on land have invigorated the drive to explore what lies at the bottom of the world's oceans.
The students selected for the program say they're attracted to it because of its novelty, and the opportunity to be part of major expeditions.
Upcoming projects
Next summer, the group is scheduled to assist Ballard and other scientists in searches for Phoenician and Minoan ships in the Mediterranean. They'll also help with studies of hydrothermal vents and deep-sea corals in the North Atlantic Ocean.
"I think that it's time that we put those tools to use that we have for other sciences ... to go look for things that actually mean something to human history," said Katy Croff. The 26-year-old has an undergraduate degree in ocean engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a master's degree in maritime archaeology from the University of Southampton in England.
Other students have undergraduate or graduate degrees in subjects including anthropology, geology, marine science and maritime history.
Ballard said they're special because they have a background in human history and an academic foundation in physical sciences.
"I was looking for crossover students," he said.
Similar programs
The university, with its main campus in South Kingstown, has billed the program as the only one of its kind. Other schools offer graduate degrees in archaeology and oceanography, though none has rolled them into one formal curriculum, the university says.
Bonnie Clendenning, executive director at the Archaeological Institute of America, said the school is capitalizing on its strength in ocean sciences, while adding archaeology to the mix.
"That would make a great deal of sense for them to do this," she said.
A few other schools have similar credentials. Texas A & amp;M University, for example, has a graduate program in nautical archaeology with about 10 new students each year. It also offers advanced degrees through its oceanography department.
The school, in College Station, Texas, has asked the state's Board of Regents to create a Center for Maritime Archaeology and Conservation that would somewhat resemble the archaeology oceanography program at URI, said Donny Hamilton, head of the nautical archaeology program at Texas A & amp;M.
How they differ
The main difference is that the course work would concentrate mostly on shipwrecks in shallow water, where extensive excavations can be done, said Hamilton, an archaeologist for nearly 30 years. URI's program is predicated on exploring deep water environments.
"To what degree is [archaeological oceanography] archaeology when you go down in a submersible, and you can only [retrieve] two pieces?" Hamilton said. "They call it archaeology, but I like it hands-on. Theirs is hands-on, but with a remote control arm."
The distinction doesn't matter much to Alicia Coles, whose parents told her about the program after reading about it in URI's alumni magazine.
"We're doing something that nobody has done before," said the 26-year-old University of Nebraska graduate with a master's in anthropology. "That kind of ranks you up there with people who have gone to space or [on] some other exploration."
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