The Marine Education Center (MEC) is the education and outreach arm of The University of Southern Mississippi’s Gulf Coast Research Laboratory. The MEC endeavors to enlighten the citizenry to produce a cadre of well informed and knowledgeable stewards of our coastal ecosystems. The Center supports a career based working environment utilizing formal, non-formal, free-choice learning and higher education strategies focusing on the coastal ecosystems of the north-central Gulf of Mexico to promote careers in marine sciences and foster community involvement.