Welcome

Carroll University offers access to majors in marine biology and oceanography via a cooperative arrangement with Hawaii Pacific University (HPU). Students spend their first two years at Carroll, learning fundamental principles in biology, chemistry, and math as well as completing general education requirements. The final two years of the program are spent at Hawaii Pacific University, where students learn about the principles of Marine Science in greater depth.

The objective of the Marine Science Program at HPU is to help students gain a scientific understanding of the world’s oceans and the life they contain, and a sense of appreciation for their beauty and fragility. Students are given a theoretical framework in the basic and applied sciences as well as ample opportunities to get hands-on experience conducting laboratory and field observations and experiments. Lecture and laboratory facilities are located on the Hawaii Loa Campus of Hawaii Pacific University.

The campus is only a twenty-minute drive from Kaneohe Bay, a large natural embayment protected from the open ocean by the only true barrier reef in the Hawaiian Islands. This bay serves as one of the finest natural laboratories in the world for studying the marine sciences, and its protected nature allows HPU students to do field work in almost any type of weather. Students also have access to the research and educational facilities of the Oceanic Institute, a center for aquaculture research and educational partner of HPU.