“The best way we learn something is if we hear about it, we speak it, we share about it, we do something with our hands around it…and then we teach it to somebody else.” – Gillian Ashenfelter, Marine Ecology teacher at Lick-Wilmerding High School

For LWHS’ Marine Ecology students, the Bay Area is one big classroom. In this year-long interdisciplinary science course, students go out into the community, roll up their sleeves, and get to work – rain or shine – on all kinds of projects. They engage in fieldwork such as gathering data at beach and intertidal locations, cleaning up coastal regions, visiting seafood processing facilities, teaching grammar school students about ocean life, and more. Back on campus, students hear from guest lecturers and spend time on laboratory activities like dissection, live organism exploration, and microscope work.

Along the way, they make connections between the science of what they are learning and the real world implications for climate, the health of our planet, and the fishing industry. And the research they conduct is not merely for academic purposes: they also generate valuable data that they give to the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary Association and the NOAA Marine Debris Monitoring Program. Even in high school, they are already contributing to our collective understanding of environmental issues impacting our local ecosystems.

Marine Ecology at LWHS is a Public Purpose Program class, meaning that the curriculum intentionally helps students recognize how to apply their learning in order to affect positive change in the world.

Recently, students Augie N. ‘25 and Saahil M. '25 captured the story of the Marine Ecology class on film. Check out this video to hear from more of our students and from Ms. Ashenfelter!