A new teaching module has begun in the Coastal and Marine Management masters program with a course entitled Understanding the Coast and the Ocean. The course instructor is Sigríður Ólafsdóttir, environmental specialist and part-time teacher at the University of Iceland. Sigríður has been involved with the program for a long time, especially as a program director from 2008-2009. Understanding the Coast and the Ocean is the first core course of the semester, following an elective course on Iceland's Environment and Natural Resources that came to an end last week.

Last week was very busy for the students since it also served as an orientation week in addition to the first course. During the week students were introduced to different things in their near environment and the final point of this orientation week was a field trip to Bolungarvík and Skálavík. Students visited the maritime museum at Ósvör, the Westfjords Natural History Institute and the Natural Museum in Bolungarvík before going over to Skálavík where pancakes and coco awaited the students.

Some structural changes have been made to the CMM masters program this fall. These changes have to do with number of credits and the time frame of modules. Instead of having all courses 6 ECTS credits and 3 week long, the courses can now vary from 1 up to 8 ECTS credits with a correlating variation of teaching time. These changes do not affect the content of the program, but rather aim at giving it a more focused integration of subjects of environmental and resource management that students should have knowledge of after completing their studies.