Workforce Development for the New Blue Economy: Progress and Evolution of a Master's Program in Operational Oceanography at Rutgers University

Rutgers University's accelerated master's degree program in Operational Oceanography (MOO) was established in 2019 to fulfill the workforce gap of the New Blue Economy (NBE), which includes satisfying renewable energy demands as the global population approaches 9 billion by 2050. The MOO program provides students experiential learning opportunities throughout the entire 12-month curriculum, often intersecting with the various technology and data teams that operate a state-of-art ocean observing network and comprise RU COOL (Rutgers University's Center for Ocean Observing Leadership), an internationally oceanographic center of excellence developing new technologies, research, outreach, and educational paradigms for working in the ocean. Students collaborate as a cohort on hands-on activities and assignments involving operational oceanographic equipment, specifically the large fleet of Slocum gliders and expansive network of High-Frequency Radar, both of which are key data pillars for RU COOL. Students work independently on data analysis, learning to analyze, synthesize, and visualize large datasets of real-time oceanographic data and numerical ocean model output on Rutgers University's High-Performance Computing (HPC) cluster, all using the versatile and transferable Python programming language. These were the tenets with which the program was initialized. In the past 4 years, the MOO program has evolved considerably. The first 2 years saw the students mostly remote due to the COVID-19 global pandemic, with limited experiential learning opportunities either in the lab or in the field. The program was pivoted to a strong focus on data processing during this time, such that the graduates would still be both competitive and capable upon degree completion. As those restrictions lifted in the third year and the program returned to the original intent, focus was redistributed across both tenets. Internalizing both student feedback and performance after each course and year, as well as industry feedback on desired skills, the program curriculum shifted significantly for the fourth year. Students were tasked to collaboratively run two quarterly glider deployments. This included coordination with our glider staff team for preparation, and real-time marine weather-based decision making for the operation and piloting, as well as extensive subsequent data analysis. This unique learning opportunity came with significant student responsibility, but the cohort collaboration and tapered support from the glider staff team ultimately allowed for great student successes. The endeavor realized the student-led glider transect offshore of New Jersey, originally conceptualized at the creation of the program. This element of the ocean observatory of RU COOL now enables applied, operational experience for subsequent cohorts in the MOO program. The program's goal has been to capitalize on the unique ocean observing lab resources and capabilities of RU COOL and Rutgers to meet the NBE workforce needs with the accelerated, experiential learning of a new generation of operational oceanography graduate students. Through the continual evolution of the program towards this goal, all MOO graduates have received employment in an oceanography-related career. The program curriculum continues to refine and adapt with each cohort, both to enhance the applied, experiential learning opportunities and to ensure skill proficiency that continually aligns with industry and government workforce needs. And while these global needs exceed the capacity of the MOO program to solely meet, our program may serve as a model for other universities to begin developing their own NBE pipelines.