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They just have to be willing to go snorkeling in crystalline waters teeming with marine life. 

“In this class, I want students not to be scared of science. I want them to see how beautiful and exciting it is. And I want them to have fun learning,” Plucer-Rosario said.   

Although students sometimes stay in shallow water for some of the weekly lab work, snorkeling is the big draw of the undergraduate class. One week the students might study the plankton in the southern waters near the island’s U.S. Navy base. Another time, they may head to a coral reef to examine seagrasses or fleshy algae. Non-swimmers wear life jackets and Plucer-Rosario stays near at hand as they walk out to close-to-shore reefs that are in shallow water.  

“They’re active duty, dependents, reserves and National Guard. If they have access to the base, they can take the class,” Plucer-Rosario said. “A lot of our students grow up in U.S. cities or way out in the countryside, without any opportunity to experience the ocean. Going to the reefs to see coral is mind-blowing experiential learning.”     

One of the first labs unfolds at Faifai Beach. Students walk out into the water for about 400 feet to the edge of a reef. There, a raised bar of limestone acts as a barrier that prevents the water from rising above their waists at high tide or becoming too shallow for the corals to survive. 

“The change in depth is pretty even, so I can take students who don’t swim there and there are corals galore. There are sand channels so we can walk between the coral,” she said. Students measure off quadrats among the field of coral and identify marine life and characteristics at each quadrat intersect. 

Plucer-Rosario’s relationship with the ocean began when she was a teenager. Her father held high-level corporate positions at multinational companies. When she was 14, he was named president of PepsiCo for the Asia Pacific region and the family went to live in Tokyo for three years.  

“From Tokyo, every winter we would come to Guam,” she said. 

Although she spent her final year of high school and her first years in college in the United States—studying psychology and ecology—she was drawn to the Pacific Ocean. At a work-related conference, she learned about the launch of an experimental school in Palau, the island nation east of the Philippines. She volunteered to teach at the school, and she spent two years living in a coconut grass shack on the beach, being captivated by the ocean and what it contained.  

The experience prompted her to return to Guam to get a master’s degree at the University of Guam Marine Laboratory, where she studied coral reefs, met the man she would marry and settled down on the island to raise a family.  

She worked as an environmental consultant, doing coral reef surveys, and eventually formed her own company. Then one day her neighbor, who was on sabbatical from the ���Ĵ�ý educational campus on the island, mentioned that the school was looking for a biology teacher. She applied and was hired. For nearly three decades she has worked as a full-time faculty member teaching biology, marine biology, environmental biology and human health and disease courses. 

“My classes are not known as easy. It’s not a reputation I have. But it’s obvious that I love what I do and I think it’s a privilege to live here and study marine life,” the professor said.