Froeschke, then an undergraduate at Cal State San Bernardino, was taking part in the California State University's Marine Biology Semester offered by Northridge on the island. Froeschke had spent the entire semester living, studying and doing research on island and in its surrounding waters. She was looking for a research subject for the end-of-the-semester, independent project that culminated her Catalina studies when she noticed some black perch fighting.

"I did my independent project on black perch. My project caught the attention of Dr. Larry Allen, who invited me to work with him at CSUN, and I am now doing my graduate thesis on the reproductive behavior of black perch," Froeschke said. "On a scale of one to 10, I would definitely call the semester I spent at Santa Catalina Island a 10."

The CSU's Marine Biology Semester is offered by a consortium of seven local CSU campuses, including Northridge, who alternate taking responsibility for the courses. It is an intense 15-week program that offers undergraduate students exposure to marine biology and is designed for students with a serious commitment to environmental and marine science.

The students live, study and conduct research at the Wrigley Marine Science Center in the Two Harbors area of the island. During that time, the students take four upper-division classes, completing each in four-week blocks. Their weekday mornings are dedicated to class work. The afternoons, and some evenings and Saturdays, are for research in laboratories or in the ocean. The semester culminates with an independent research project that the students present at a professional symposium.

"The idea is that their project papers could be published, and some of them are. Some of the students start out with an idea for an independent project and it becomes their master's thesis when they go to graduate school," said marine biology professor Larry Allen, chair of CSUN's Department of Biology.

Allen and his CSUN marine biology colleagues Steve R. Dudgeon, Peter J. Edmunds and Mark A. Steele will be taking another group of students out to Santa Catalina Island this fall. They will be offering courses on marine invertebrate zoology, the ecology of marine fishes and the marine biological process as well as the independent research project.

Kylla Benes, who took the course four years ago while a CSUN undergraduate, called her semester on Santa Catalina Island intense but "invaluable."

"We were working all the time, but it didn't seem like it. It was so much fun and we were learning so much," Benes said.

"The group of students who spend the semester on Catalina Island is not that large," she said. "You spend so much time with these people that you make really good friendships. You have an opportunity to work one-on-one with your professors. You're learning not just about the classroom subjects but about their experiences in graduate school and doing research. You can get ideas about how you want to spend your future."

Benes earned her bachelor's degree in 2003 but remained at CSUN to get her master's in marine biology. She has spent the past couple of years working with marine biology professor Robert Carpenter, an internationally recognized expert on reef ecosystems. She will be teaching marine biology at Pierce College this fall.

She and Froeschke used the same word to describe their time on Santa Catalina Island as part of the marine biology semester: "awesome."

California State University, Northridge has 33,000 full- and part-time students and offers 63 bachelor's and 48 master's degrees as well as 28 education credential programs. Founded in 1958, CSUN is among the largest single-campus universities in the nation and the only four-year public university in the San Fernando Valley. The university serves as the intellectual, economic and cultural heart of the Valley and beyond.