For Marissa Miller, a first-year student from Oahu and a member of the Cal Poly surf team, the ocean is an inextricable part of a healthy mindset and successful academic life.

“I try to at least get out to the beach once a week,” she says. “If I don’t feel like I’m being productive or I can’t focus, I just go for a quick surf. It’s really refreshing, and then I can get back to work.”

Growing up surfing, Miller inherited the sense that just as the ocean nurtures her, she has a responsibility to return the favor. That’s why she selected environmental management as her major at Cal Poly — a school she chose for the opportunity for a change of scenery without losing that connection to the waves.

“Choosing what I was going to do for college was an easy choice,” she says. “Obviously I was going to do something that let me give back to the environment and help care for nature.”

In high school, Miller founded an environmental activism club, organizing beach cleanups and encouraging her classmates to live more sustainably. Here at Cal Poly, she’s continuing her advocacy. She works with Green Campus Cal Poly, a student-driven group responsible for developing ways to promote ecological awareness on campus, and is an active member of the local chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, an international community of surfers who work to preserve the ocean.

“As someone who surfs and uses the water as a resource to clear my mind and have fun and feel connected, it’s my responsibility to protect it and save it for future generations,” she says. “The Earth provides for us, so we have to provide for the Earth. You can’t just take and take — it’s a reciprocal relationship.”

In the ever-changing spot where the ocean meets the land, biology grad student and teaching associate Kali Horn is examining how some of the toughest creatures on Earth survive in a highly-volatile habitat.

Every few weeks Horn, visits the tide pools near the Cal Poly Pier, the university’s marine research facility at Avila Beach, to collect data from temperature loggers glued inside the shells of mussels and barnacles. She’s hoping to discover new information about how these hardy organisms cope with the stresses of living in a constantly-changing environment.

But while she’s learning how animals in the intertidal zone adapt to shifting conditions — no small question in the face of a changing climate — she’s also discovering something about herself.

“I’ve done research in the past throughout my undergraduate career, but this is the biggest opportunity I’ve had to take the work into my own hands and run with it,” she said. “I’m learning how to be a better scientist.”