Utah Valley University and the Loveland Living Planet Aquarium (LLPA) made it official on March 25, formalizing a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that establishes the aquarium as a premier experiential learning site for UVU students.
There’s something fitting about signing a partnership agreement inside an aquarium. The setting itself makes the point that learning happens best when students are immersed in something real.
Utah Valley University and the Loveland Living Planet Aquarium (LLPA) made it official on March 25, formalizing a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that establishes the aquarium as a premier experiential learning site for UVU students. The signing took place at the aquarium’s Sam and Aline Skaggs Science Learning Center, surrounded by students, faculty, and community leaders who have been quietly building toward this moment for years.
For UVU Provost Wayne Vaught, the partnership is a natural extension of what the university has always believed about how students learn best.
“Engaged learning is not just a single program or a single initiative,” Vaught said at the signing event. “It really is the foundation of how we believe in our students — how students learn, how we can acknowledge meaningful applications across our entire campus. This partnership helps us bring that vision to life in many, many powerful ways.”
The agreement opens the door to field-based science courses hosted at the aquarium, new coursework integrating aquaculture, aquaponics, and sustainability, and expanded opportunities in marine conservation, animal behavior, and rehabilitation. A dedicated lab space within the Skaggs Science Learning Center will serve students from across the university — not just science majors — as the partnership also supports interdisciplinary projects across all of campus.
For students already doing research at the intersection of UVU and the aquarium world, the MOU validates work that has been quietly making an impact. Angel Garfield, a UVU undergraduate studying biotechnology and pre-med, is part of a research team studying penguin genetics in collaboration with zoos and aquariums across the country — including LLPA.
“Participating in this research is more than just credit hours for me,” Garfield said. “It’s engaged learning. It’s participating in the entire scientific community, learning the scientific method, and appreciating the trial and error involved in scientific advancement.”
Garfield’s team processes blood samples sent from zoos and aquariums worldwide, extracting DNA to map genetic relatedness among penguin colonies and helping facilities make critical decisions about preserving genetic diversity. It’s the kind of real-world, high-stakes research that she hopes the new partnership will make accessible to even more students.
Garfield was among two students and one alumni at the signing whose research has been supported by UVU’s Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Works (URCW), which also funded fellow professor Jess Cussick and her dolphin research. The URCW exists precisely to make these kinds of opportunities possible—connecting students with faculty mentors, funding applied projects, and helping undergraduates contribute to knowledge that extends well beyond campus.
For LLPA Founder and CEO Brent Andersen, the signing wasn’t so much a beginning as a milestone in a relationship that stretches back to the aquarium’s earliest days. UVU students and faculty helped shape the design of the Skaggs Science Learning Center, and the penguin genetics research project — now reaching institutions around the world — was born from a question Andersen brought directly to UVU.
“This is really not the beginning,” Andersen said. “We’re just getting into our stride together. The number of students who can come here — whether it’s zoology, biology, aquaculture, engineering, marketing, business, accounting — anything is possible in this partnership. And if we can be just a small part of what UVU does to help everyone learn, that’s the point of all of this.”
The partnership also includes expanded pathways for undergraduate research, paid student learning experiences alongside aquarium professionals, and the Empowered Professionals pipeline program aimed at introducing underrepresented high school students to scientific careers before they ever set foot on a college campus.
For a university built on the belief that education should connect to purpose, profession, and community, the Loveland Living Planet Aquarium turns out to be a pretty natural partner.
To learn more about his new UVU/LLPA partnership please visit: https://www.uvu.edu/innovation/loveland-aquarium/
To watch the entirety of MOU signing, visit UVU’s YouTube channel.
