Women Divers Hall of Fame & NAUI Leadership Grant Report

I am thankful to have had the opportunity from Women Divers Hall of Fame (WDHOF) and NAUI to complete my NAUI Divemaster here in Northern California. I started the program with Pro Scuba Dive Center, Scotts Valley, California, in early February 2018 and completed in December. I first finished a few cold-water checkouts (water is cold here in California โ€” 54 to 60 degrees Fahrenheit). Then, I worked as a teaching assistant for several months in diving classes in both confined water and open water. Despite the distance from the CW/OW site to my dorm (about a 1- to 2-hour drive each way), I enjoy diving and teaching in Northern California’s cold water.

The combination of cold water, rough surf, low visibility, high boat traffic, and kelp environment makes diving and teaching diving as a divemaster more challenging. However, this environment also made me a stronger candidate. I had to maintain good control of the students at all times, conducting pre/post dive briefings in front of a large group of 8 to 10 students, and monitoring critical safety-related skills in open water. The rigorous six-month program with Pro Scuba Dive Center made me a confident dive leader and is indeed above and beyond what I would have expected from a divemaster training program.

It was also an enriching experience to leverage the โ€œacademic freedom” that is unique in the NAUI programs to teach many topics above the minimum standard. This teaching experience in diving also makes me a better teacher in the academic classroom as an instructor for aerospace classes. Last but not least, as a female teaching-staff member, it was an inspiring experience to let many of my female students in the diving class see that women are capable of becoming dive leaders. Finally, I have passed on the WDHOF scholarship program information within the dive shop and encouraged several women students to apply.

I would like to give special thanks to Dr. Shirley Pomponi, who helped with so many administrative aspects of the scholarship usage, and the ๏ฌ‚exibility in accommodating my nine-month internship schedule at German Space Center during my divemaster training. I would also like to thank all the instructors and fellow teaching assistants at Pro Scuba Dive Center for their help. I could not have completed this training simultaneously during my Ph.D. defense without their support.

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Written By Bill Doran

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