Campus Recreation is offering scuba diving clinics at the ARC for anyone looking to gain new skills in underwater exploration, brush up on forgotten aquatic talents or put their swimming expertise to practical use.

There are three instructional sessions this semester, Feb. 11-20, March 4-13 and April 8-17, which take place each Monday and Wednesday from 6-8 p.m. The clinics follow the PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) system, and they are open to anyone, not only University students.

“In the past, it used to take 16 weeks to get somebody certified,” said Rami Dass, PADI assistant instructor. “But over time, PADI improved and the teaching methods improved.”

The $245 cost for members ($270 for nonmembers) covers rental equipment, a dive book and use of the ARC’s pool and instructional facilities. Each session can accommodate about 10 students.

“We’re shifting to a new system that’s based on PADI e-Learning,” Dass said. “So the classroom (session) is going to be all done via the Internet, where students will do all the coursework … Once they go over all that, then we just go through working with them in the pool session, where we help them master the skills, and they also get familiar with the equipment and get more hands-on experience.”

Before taking the course, students must demonstrate some proficiency with swimming and treading water. Participants should be capable of swimming 200-300 yards, floating in deep water for 10 minutes and using a snorkel.

Brad Knop, course director at the Midwest Scuba Center in Champaign and the ARC, has been teaching scuba classes for 32 years. He and Dass cover the basic science of scuba diving and several “what if” situations.

Anna Sherman, sophomore in LAS, took the class with Knop and Dass last school year. She said that her mom and her mom’s friends would travel around the world to dive, and she wanted to be able to join them.

“You learn how to breathe underwater, you learn how to not pop your lungs open when you’re surfacing, you learn how to clear your mask in case it gets full of water, you learn how to continue breathing underwater in case your regulator falls out or gets kicked off,” she said.

The clinic also teaches the treatment of aquatic life, use of a compass, sticking with the buddy system and working with the gear and equipment.

“The course that’s in the ARC only covers confined water,” Dass said. “In order to get fully certified, (participants) either continue through Brad, at Midwest Scuba Center, or they could go with any other PADI operation; they can do their open-water certification.”

The open-water certification is a two-day excursion involving all the skills that the instructors went over in class. It requires an extra fee of $165, and the certification is good for life. Certified divers are recommended to take a refresher course if they do not dive every six months or so. 

“We usually go up to a quarry — Haigh Quarry in Kankakee — and we do four open-water training dives,” Knop said. “It’s still … what we already trained you at the pool to do. You just show us in an open water environment that you can do the skills.”

There are several other, more advanced scuba certifications that a diver can receive if he or she chooses to continue in the skill of scuba diving.

“After people get their basic water certification … they could do other specialties like rescue diver, rec diver, night diver, (etc.),” Dass said. “Brad and I work towards getting basic open-water certification. The ARC basically covers the pool-confined water portion of that training.”

Anyone interested in taking the course should attend the scuba clinic information meeting tonight at  6 p.m. in the ARC Meeting Room 3. 

Reema can be reached at [email protected].