Benefits

The dynamics of the Zanzibar Channel is virtually unkown, which represents a unique combination of benefits to the students. They can learn about and carry out standard coastal modeling and standard oceanographic measurements and at the same time produce nevertheless new results worth publishing. This combination of benefits is hard to find in the case of the US coastal ocean, which has most likely been modeled to some degree and where standard measurements have been taken already.

The students benefit from the supervision by primarily Dr. Javier Zavala-Garay at Rutgers University, who will be with the students at the Institute of Marine Sciences (IMS) in Zanzibar. His expertise in research and education perfectly matches those required for supervising the student projects. While the students' advisors at their home institutions naturally have many other responsibilities besides providing student supervision, Dr. Zavala-Garay is exclusively dedicated to supervising the students in Zanzibar.

Besides the above immediate research and education benefits, the students gain less tangible but also important other benefits. In an increasing competitive and globalized academic community students strive to excel in their research and education while also seeking opportunities to develop complementary skills. Such opportunities are given by the Zanzibar Project. By participating in the Zanzibar Project, they experience working on an international assignment which allows, for example, developing skills in becoming immersed and accepted in a different culture, working within a network of people that has a large range in geography, expertise, and level of seniority, and solving applied problems. By making these experiences students can thus differentiate themselves from others and become more competitive. This is particularly crucial since many students will nowadays pursue a career in science and engineering in the private sector, as pointed out by a study of the National Academy of Sciences (Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy (COSEPUP), 1995). This study furthermore states that "employers complain that new PhDs are often too specialized for the range of tasks that they will confront and that they have a difficult time in adapting to the demands of the nonacademic world." This world is globalized and therefore this demand is for a workforce that can operate in a diverse and interconnected world. The Zanzibar Project gives the students the opportunity to develop skills to meet this contemporary demand.

Although the study of the National Academy of Sciences recommends that students become more versatile it also emphasizes that this should not be achieved at the expense of the existing strength of their training for careers in academic research. Following this recommendation the Zanzibar Project therefore offers student research projects that allow for an intensive learning experience and at the same time the opportunity to produce new and publishable results.