Here’s the sixth installment of our series that profiles, in images and words, each and every resident of �ֲ���ý’ newest academic building, Bonney Science Center, as they begin to engage with their wondrous new home and the students they work with. This week’s profiles feature:

• Paula Schlax, a chemistry and biochemistry professor who deems the Lyme bacteria “pretty amazing.”
• Ryan Bavis, a biology professor whose honors thesis student has ants in their plans.
• Larissa Williams, a biology professor delivering a CURE for first-year �ֲ���ý students.

Paula Schlax

Title: Stella James Sims Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry
Joined �ֲ���ý: 1998
Date Photographed: Feb. 10, 2022
She says: “I really love working with our students.” 

There are umpteen good reasons for a �ֲ���ý student to meet one-on-one with their professor, including this example: Casey Kelemen ’22 meets with Paula Schlax in her office on Feb. 10 to prep for his thesis presentation to the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.

Senior chemistry and biochemistry majors are required to make two seminar presentations of their thesis work. Students call it a “cheminar” or “biocheminars.” (Fun fact: The clever portmanteau “cheminar” was used as far back as 1938 by Bethel College in Kansas to describe, you guessed it, presentations by senior chemistry majors.)

Kelemen’s thesis work reflects the major thrust of the Schlax lab, which is to investigate the spiral bacteria that causes Lyme disease, Borrelia burgdorferi. “It’s pretty long and ridiculously narrow,” is how Schlax describes it.

Schlax holds a grudging admiration for the tiny organism. “Really pretty amazing,” she says. While the genome of B. burgdorferi and similar spiral bacteria, known as spirochetes, were sequenced in the 1990s, even today “we still don’t know what some of their genes do.”

In nature, B. burgdorferi is found almost entirely in deer ticks. When an infected tick bites a dog, cat, squirrel, or human, the bacteria gets its meal ticket — a blood meal, that is. And when they feed, things start to happen inside the tick.

“The temperature that the bacteria experiences in the tick changes. Different nutrients are around. The acidity and salt concentration changes,” says Schlax. “All those things give the bacteria an idea that it’s time to grow up and move out.” Move out of the tick, that is, and move into the mammal.

As part of the moving-out process, the bacteria stops making certain proteins that have helped it bind to the tick host, and start making new ones — at least 100 new proteins to get ready for the new host.

“I’m interested in how this process happens,” Schlax says. “What are the molecular switches that allow that to occur?” She says the answers are probably related to messenger RNA, made famous by their use in COVID-19 vaccines. 

Schlax isn’t asking these questions alone: “My students study this with me,” she says, including Casey, who is researching novel imaging techniques to visualize the localization of mRNA within B. burgdorferi. Schlax is impressed by her seniors’ work this year. “They’ve helped the lab define the strengths and limitations for how we can monitor gene expression in real time in B. burgdorferi,” she says.

Reacting to another photo taken the same day, Schlax is asked what she was thinking at that moment. “Probably that I needed a hair tie,” she says wryly.

She was helping a student set up an observation of how specific RNA molecules spread out within bacterial cells, and how that might be related to how the RNA is used by the cell, and recycled back into its building blocks.” 

The lab’s work to better understand the workings of B. burgdorferi is helping to inform the design of better diagnostic and treatment strategies. And for Schlax, there’s joy in the work itself. 

“I really love working with our students.”

Ryan Bavis

Title: Helen A. Papaioanou Professor of Biological Sciences
Joined �ֲ���ý: 2003
Date Photographed: Nov. 9, 2021
He says: “This is a more collaborative environment.”

We learned over the winter that Bonney Science Center, the newest and most modern building at �ֲ���ý, has ants.

Specifically, there’s Lasius nearcticus, the yellow meadow ant, and Tetramorium immigrans,  the pavement ant. But we don’t need to pester the local pest services for a Bonney call just yet.

The critters are part of honors thesis research by biology major Etti Cooper ’22 of Denver, Colo., whose adviser is Ryan Bavis, Helen A. Papaioanou Professor of Biological Sciences.

Cooper has been investigating how temperature changes might differently affect pavement ants, which spend their lives above ground, and the entirely subterranean meadow ant.

Cooper didn’t have to go far to collect her specimens. The pavement ants came from, well pavement: the sidewalk outside Carnegie Science Hall. And the meadow ants came from, well, a meadowish place, around Mount David.

But because ants refuse to wear name tags, Cooper spent careful time in the lab confirming the taxonomic identification of her specimens, i.e., whether the ants actually were who Cooper thought they were. 

“It’s difficult to tell some species apart, even under the microscope,” explains Bavis. Although Bavis and Cooper were confident of their identification, Cooper sent a few specimens off to an expert at Providence College, James Waters — whose — to confirm the identification. (This spring, Waters was the outside examiner in Cooper’s thesis defense.)

Cooper compared changes in the metabolism of the two species when exposed to temperature changes. “Like other animals, they consume oxygen and produce carbon dioxide through their metabolism,” says Bavis. “So we were measuring the rate at which carbon dioxide was being produced to see how sensitive they are to changes in temperature.” 

Bavis is a respiratory physiologist whose primary research looks at how the nervous system controls breathing in mammals and birds, specifically the changes that occur in breathing around birth and how environmental conditions influence development of the respiratory control system.

“I know almost nothing about ants,” he admits. But as part of a major redesign of the college’s antiquated introductory biology curriculum (see the profile of biologist Larissa Williams, below) Bavis will teach a new, innovative intro course this fall that gives young �ֲ���ý students real research experience by exploring how insects may respond to climate change.

 “Etti’s interest in ants and my interests in all-things-physiology converged this year,” Bavis says. 

In Bonney, Bavis shares a spacious lab with two �ֲ���ý neuroscientists whose expertise range from the neural circuitry that gives us the sense of smell (Jason Castro) to how neurons speed around our bodies  telling us what to do (Martin Kruse). All of which makes the lab quite nervous in a different sense of the word.

“We used to all be isolated in our labs” back in his former digs in Carnegie Science Hall, said Bavis. “This is a more collaborative environment.”

Larissa Williams

Title: Associate Professor of Biology
Joined �ֲ���ý: 2012
Date Photographed: October 20, 2021
She says: “Literally, this is science. I have no idea how any of this is going to turn out.”

Last fall, Associate Professor of Biology Larissa Williams taught a course that was introductory in name only.

Her course, Biology 195K, represents a new type of intro science course at �ֲ���ý. It delivers a cure. Or, more correctly, a CURE, in the form of a “Course-Based Research Experience.”

Increasingly popular in STEM curriculum nationally, CURE courses have recently been introduced into the �ֲ���ý biology curriculum by Williams, who is department chair, and her colleagues. CURE courses introduce research experiences earlier than ever in a student’s college career — not to accelerate the process, but to improve how students learn science, even at the introductory level: by doing real, hands-on research.

The name of Williams’ course ends with the letter K because there’s an alphabet soup of Bio 195 variations, 195A through 195K. Each one takes on a different research project covering various topics: marine biology, forest life, host-parasite evolution, and the fluid dynamics of sponges.

Williams’ students did investigations on how poison exposure affects animals. As she said midway through the semester, “Literally, this is science. I have no idea how any of this is going to turn out.” 

Williams taught two sections of the course, on Wednesday and Friday afternoons, in the biochemistry teaching lab on the third floor of Bonney Science Center. During one session, on Oct. 20, she led her students, mostly first-years, through the process of designing primers.

“Primers are used to ‘copy’ nucleic acid in the cell,” explained Williams. “We were doing so in order to understand how lead exposure impacts developing animals” at the molecular level. 

A bit later in the class session, she explained the cycles involved in copying nucleic acid in cells, “in particular how heat can break hydrogen bonds between nucleic acids, a key step in the copying process.”

�ֲ���ý professors are teachers and scholars. When it comes to the former, Williams is an award-winner. The latter sees Williams conduct research on how toxicants affect the development of aquatic species, such as zebrafish, a powerful model organism in biological research.

The spaces in Bonney Science Center blur those two identities, a good thing, says Williams, who is now better able to “combine my research interests in developmental toxicology in a lab setting with students,” Williams says. 

The teaching lab is near her research lab, which is close to the equipment room, all of which “makes asking cutting edge questions possible even at the first-year level.”

Here’s the fifth installment of our series that profiles, in images and words, each and every resident of �ֲ���ý’ newest academic building, Bonney Science Center, as they begin to engage with their wondrous new home and the students they work with. This week’s profiles feature:

• Donna Gendron, a Facility Services custodian who enjoys being part of a clean team.
• Martin Kruse, an assistant professor of biology and neuroscience who signals his approval of Bonney’s classrooms and labs.
• Alyson Farrington, an assistant in instruction in chemistry and biochemistry who hopes to instill a love — or at least a like — of chemistry.

Donna Gendron

Title: Custodian with Facility Services
Joined �ֲ���ý: 2013
Date Photographed: Feb. 4, 2022
She says: “If anyone needs help, all we do is text each other, and we go right down and help each other.”

There’s satisfaction in creating a clean space, says Donna Gendron, one of three custodians who work in Bonney Science Center. But what if you can’t see what’s clean?

Before moving to Bonney, Gendron worked in Dana Chemistry Hall, and by the time Dana emptied out in summer 2021, the building was well worn. “You’d clean something, and you couldn’t tell you cleaned it,” she says. (Dana is now undergoing a full renovation, including a complete change of purpose, from chemistry to introductory science teaching.)

“It was hard for me to keep up, to try and make it look nice, because everything was just so old. I did the best I could, plus it was just me over there. Over here, it’s a bigger building, but I get help,” she says, mentioning her custodial colleagues David Hanscom and Paul Butler. “As long as you keep up with it, everything stays nice.”

Gendron has worked in custodial services her whole career. “I’ve done cleaning all my life.” Past jobs have been at hotels and the bygone naval base in Brunswick. �ֲ���ý suits her just fine. “I like it better, to be honest with you. Hotel work was a lot harder, making beds everyday.” And sailors, she says, alluding to her work at the naval base, aren’t the tidiest.

She’s been working at �ֲ���ý for 10 years, and she plans to work at �ֲ���ý until retiring. “It goes by fast,” she says. 

Gendron, Hanscom, and Butler team up on occasion for difficult tasks or just troubleshooting. 

Hanscom, who works mostly on the first floor, brings the industrial scrubber and vacuum to the other floors to help out. “I say, ‘If you wanna do it, that’s fine,’” says Gendron.

“And Paul’s on the third floor, and we all get along well, and we try to be team players; if anyone needs help, all we do is text each other, and we go right down and help each other.”

Of the various rooms and spaces in Bonney — labs, study rooms, classrooms, hallways, and offices — “the classrooms are busy and a little more challenging to do, especially in the winter time, because there’s so much sand. But it’s okay; there’s three of us here, so it gets done. And the building’s new, which makes it easier to clean.”

Unlike the bunker vibe in Dana Chemistry, Bonney’s interior is bright and open with lots of glass, which can be a pain to keep clean. Some folks said to Gendron, “Oh, all that glass….” “But I like it,” she says, the way it allows folks to see and feel the rattle and hum of all that teaching and research inside labs and classrooms. 

Plus, Bonney’s residents aren’t likely to smudge the glass with noses and hands against the glass the way dogs and little kids do, she says. 

The big kids in Bonney — the students — she likes quite a bit. “They’re good kids — very clean over here. If we need to go into a room, and there are a couple of kids in there, they’re like, ‘No, no, come on in,’ they don’t mind.”

Martin Kruse

Title: Assistant Professor of Biology and Neuroscience
Joined �ֲ���ý: 2017
Date Photographed: Feb. 4, 2022
He says: “We’re not separated any more. That means more communication and collaboration.”

Among other topics, Assistant Professor of Biology and Neuroscience Martin Kruse teaches neurobiology, a field that explores how neurons transmit signals throughout our bodies, telling us to smile, jog, or pet the dog.

During a class session in February, Kruse took time to explain to his students the various factors that affect “signal propagation” in the nervous system. 

Signal propagation describes how a signal, such as a radio wave, gets to its destination. (Fun fact: In theory, an FM radio signal from the 1980s carrying a song like Wham’s “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” has now propagated way past the constellation Ursa Major.)

In neurobiology, signal propagation “basically refers to how fast our brains operate and why,” said Kruse.

Kruse appreciates how the classroom’s setup — whiteboards, extensive projection equipment, and rollable chairs and tables — lets him pursue active-learning strategies, even ones as simple as taking a seat at a table. 

A few minutes after explaining the factors involved in signal propagation, Kruse did just that, joining a tabletop discussion with Annie Li ’24 of Oslo, Norway, Chloe Huh ’23 of Highwood, Ill., and Will Brown ’23 of Newton Center, Mass. 

Kruse listened to their responses to this prompt: “What would be important properties of nerve cells to communicate in a fast and reliable way?”

Among other research interests, Kruse’s lab in Bonney Science Center looks at how phosphoinositides regulate nerve cell activity, and in 2019 he received a grant of $270,000 to study these tiny but powerful lipids. The grant was through a network of 13 Maine educational and research institutions known as INBRE.

Imagine you’re a Michelin chef, but your kitchen is suddenly spread out over two floors. Your cooking area is on one floor, and your prep station on another. Meanwhile, the service area is way down the hall. That’s about how it was for many faculty who worked in Carnegie Science Hall.

In Bonney, Kruse and others have a great kitchen: lab space, a cell culture room, and electrophysiology suite close by. “We can do experiments that weren’t possible in our old lab space,” he said.

To keep the culinary comparison going, Bonney’s layout creates better communication among all the chefs de cuisine and their chefs — that is, professors and their research students. “We’re not separated any more. That means more communication and collaboration.”

Alyson Farrington

Title: Assistant in Instruction, Chemistry and Biochemistry
Joined �ֲ���ý: 2008
Date Photographed: Feb. 8, 2022
She says: “Even if they don’t all become scientists, I hope they come out of chemistry actually enjoying it.”

Over the winter semester, Alyson Farrington taught seven lab sections for the popular introductory course “Chemistry Reactivity,” each section comprising about 20 students.

At �ֲ���ý, Farrington is one of several assistants in instruction, known as AIs. Depending on the department and the need, AIs are academic linchpins, whether providing teaching assistance, technology support, or, in the natural sciences, guiding lab sessions and making sure all the lab equipment is up to snuff. 

When it comes to her labs, Farrington finds that a bit of laughter creates good chemistry. She keeps the mood light. After one session, she and George Hawkins ’24 of Jacksonville, Fla., found humor in, well, she doesn’t quite recall — which doesn’t matter, really. “George is a funny person,” she says.

During the lab, she moved from group to group. She stopped by to help Buey Grossman ’25 of Ketchum, Idaho, and Aldair Desiderio ‘24 of Trenton, N.J. They had a question. Farrington replied with a question. “I like to ‘answer’ a question with a question to help the students think through a problem themselves,” she says. 

In the intro course, Farrington works with students with an interest — and non-interest — in chemistry. She enjoys the challenge of teaching students who are “maybe a little hesitant or they’re immediately like, ‘Chem’s not my thing, but I sort of have to take this class.’”

Of course, she hopes they all continue on in chemistry. But even if they don’t all become scientists, I hope they learn something and that they come out of chemistry actually enjoying it.”

When that happens? “It’s my favorite thing.”

Bonney also features a plethora of “peekaboo” windows and glass doors, allowing any passerby to catch a glance of the people and workings in labs, classrooms, and study rooms. For students, “it’s probably pretty neat to see their peers in a lab and actually see them working,” says Farrington.

In the fall, Farrington will move back to Dana Chemistry Hall, now undergoing a year-long renovation to focus on science teaching, with a goal of effectively welcoming new students to STEM fields. 

Looking ahead, Farrington says the new and much-more-flexible teaching and lab spaces in Dana will allow faculty and staff to “shake up” the structure of introductory labs to include more individualized and projects-based labs. While teaching specific lab skills is critical, it’s also valuable “within those parameters” to give students the opportunity “to make their own decisions, especially as they advance,” she says.

The innovations that Bonney has allowed faculty and staff to usher in keeps Farrington fascinated with her work in the sciences. “It’s always evolving. There’s something fun and interesting and new happening all the time, whether it’s guest speakers, or somebody’s research is going well.”

It’s exhilarating, too, she says, to be surrounded by discovery, the feeling that “when you develop it, then it’s happening.”

Here’s the fourth installment of our series that profiles, in images and words, each and every resident of �ֲ���ý’ newest academic building, Bonney Science Center, as they begin to engage with their wondrous new home and the students they work with. This week’s profiles feature:

• Paul Butler, a Facility Services custodian, whose job is to see more than what most of us see.
• Sonya Locke, the building’s science resource manager, whose job runs hot and cold.
• Michael Sommer, a visiting assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry, who revels in the flexible teaching space of a Bonney classroom.

Paul Butler

Title: Custodian with Facility Services
Joined �ֲ���ý: 2018
Date Photographed: Feb. 10, 2022
He says: “We tend to see things that others normally wouldn’t.”

The piece of cleaning equipment that Paul Butler was maneuvering around a Bonney Science Center lab on Feb. 10 is officially called the “Tomcat Sport V2.0 Premium Walk-Behind Scrubber.”

In simpler terms, it’s a lean, mean, cleaning machine.

Butler is one of three custodians who work in Bonney Science Center, where he and the Tomcat do regular deep cleans of the floors. Here, he’s tending to the floor in a research lab.

Work is work, but truth be told, using the Tomcat is kinda rewarding, says his colleague David Hascom. “It does all the work, like a snowblower. You just walk behind it.”

Butler says that �ֲ���ý didn’t skimp when it came to outfitting the custodial staff with the tools they need to keep Bonney clean — one Tomcat runs about $7,600.

“The college equipped us with really good, top of the line equipment,” Butler says, which makes it easier to do what he does — “make the building shine. The students and professors as well as other staff who work here have a right to be proud of the building we all call home.”

Where most people would see a floor, David and his co-workers see the tiles. Where most people see a nice shine, David and his co-workers spot the scratch or scuff. “Our workload consists of way more detailed work than most realize. So we tend to see things that others normally wouldn’t.”

The improvement that Bonney delivers to the work of faculty and staff can be measured in time saved and tasks easier to do. “We’re able to wash three to four times more supplies than compared to washing them by hand in Carnegie Science Hall,” Butler says.

Literally, it’s no sweat to work in a building with ample space for storage and a finely tuned HVAC system. “We were so cramped” in the old vivarium, which was the home of zebrafish on the fifth floor of Carnegie. (Zebrafish are a powerful model organism in biological research.) “It was very warm in the summer months. The fish were happy, but we were extremely warm.” 

Sonya Locke

Title: Science Resource Manager
Joined �ֲ���ý: 2002
Date Photographed: Feb. 2, 2022, and Feb. 23, 2022
She says: “I think about the parallels that can be drawn to the workings of our lives.””

Sonya Locke’s job as science resource manager runs hot and cold.

On the hot side of Locke’s job is overseeing the sterilization of lab equipment. Most labs sterilize by “autoclaving,” which means using pressurized steam. Bonney’s sterilizer is in a second-floor room along with a commercial dishwasher.

The unit is the Amsco 250LS sterilizer, specifically designed for life-science labs (you can pick one up for about the price of a new Ford F-150 truck.) It generates steam heat up to 285 degrees Fahrenheit.

One of Locke’s daily duties is to clean the unit’s circular drain strainer. It’s small, just an inch and a half tall and just a half-inch in diameter, but vital. Like the strainers on your washing machine, if it’s clogged, nothing gets cleaned. “The sterilizer would not function,” Locke says.

Although her office is now in Bonney, Locke still works with colleagues in Carnegie Science Hall and spends time in those spaces. (Some biology faculty have retained offices and lab spaces in Carnegie.) Which led to the cold part of Locke’s job, when she spent time at her office computer reviewing photographs of materials in the cold room, located in Carnegie, which serves the natural sciences.

Like a walk-in refrigerator, a cold room is used to store large amounts of perishable materials used in research, such as samples of lake water, and used for procedures that need to be carried out in the cold.

Rather than standing in a cold room examining what’s there, Locke takes a smart approach, snapping photos that she examines back in the comfort of her Bonney office. Here, Locke has identified some containers with old contents that need to be disposed.

Tending to small things — like that strainer — to keep bigger things running smoothly is a metaphor, says Locke. “I think about the parallels that can be drawn from this act to the day-to-day routines and workings of our lives.”

Michael Sommer

Title: Visiting Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry
Joined �ֲ���ý: 2019
Date Photographed: Feb. 2, 2022
He says: “A student can see what’s projected no matter which way they face.”

Bonney is fully equipped to support faculty and students as they collaborate to investigate and untangle scientific mysteries. And it’s set up for the newbies, too.

Michael Sommer, a visiting assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry, taught a section of Chemistry 108 over the winter. With labs and lectures, the course is as core a course can get: It looks at fundamental concepts underlying the structure and behavior of matter.

During a class session in a first-floor classroom on Feb. 2, Matthew Kijowski ’25 of New York City approached his professor, laptop in hand, to ask a question. “He was asking about a particular lecture slide that was pertinent to the problems we were working on in class.”

When Sommer taught Chem 108 last year, the lab and lectures were in Dana Chemistry Hall, whose teaching spaces were designed during the sage-on-a-stage era of the 1960s, when tiered seating and tiny arm desks, all facing forward, were the norm.

Indeed, the session that Sommer was leading in Bonney in February was a lecture in name only. He moved freely about, checking in with students working together at tables whose placement around the room is delightfully random. (All the tables and chairs have casters, so they’re easily moved.)

In a course about chemistry fundamentals, Sommer was teaching the fundamentals of thinking like a chemist. A few minutes before helping Kijowski, he stopped by a desk to help another first-year student, Molly Kelley of South Orange, N.J. 

“I was explaining the problem-solving strategy necessary for the types of questions we were working on,” he explains. “There are several steps needed to set up the solution, and I was describing the logical flow of these steps.”

The open floor plan is “the best part of the room,” he says. “The tables make it easier for students to work together. The expanse of table space created “plenty of room for papers, books, and laptops.” In turn, that means that “more students bring their laptops to class in this room than they used to in Dana. That gives them easy access to the lecture slides I post, which is very handy when they are doing worksheets because they can refer back to the notes easily.”

Classroom technology is always cool. But even better is classroom technology that gets used, like the multiple display screens. “It’s nice that you can display different things on each of the six computer screens.” And if Sommer puts the same visual on each screen, that’s great, too. “A student can see what’s projected no matter which way they face.”

After 30 months of applying to the construction of �ֲ���ý’ Bonney Science Center countless tools, from pile drivers to 3D computer models, what came to hand for finishing the job — at least symbolically — was three pairs of really big scissors.

With a champagne toast and synchronized chops from those ceremonial shears, college President Clayton Spencer and lead donors Michael Bonney ’80 and Alison Grott Bonney ’80 snipped a garnet ribbon on Aug. 23 to declare the science center open for business.

“Let’s raise our glasses to discovery and happiness,” proclaimed a smiling Spencer, “and to the Bonneys and all the other donors and contributors who have helped along the way.” (And it does make a certain kind of sense that you’d cut ribbon to wrap up a project.)

The ceremony capped months of intense focus on readying the building for its inaugural school year. And it took place just a week after the last of the faculty occupants moved in. They were biologists Lori Banks and Ryan Bavis — the latter a co-chair, with Vice President for Finance and Administration Geoff Swift, of the committee that steered the planning for the Bonney Center and related projects.

Weather sent the ribbon-cutting inside, to the foot of the so-called Monumental Stair. All masked up, dozens of people close to the project attended the event, which began with remarks in a classroom and then moved to a spiffy lounge, the Living Room, for refreshments and the ribbon ceremony.

“Five years ago, Alison and I had a view that a more science-literate society was something [the nation] had to have,” Mike Bonney told the gathering — a view now set in stone as the Bonney Science Center. “And you just have to look at the headlines every day to understand how society would benefit, in the U.S. and globally, with more science-literate members.”

He concluded with a shout-out to Bavis, who, he noted, led the faculty effort to design this building. “I had a minute to see him before we came into this room and he said, ‘Mike, it’s what we envisioned.’”

President Spencer thanked folks whose contributions helped make the Bonney Center a reality — folks such as donors; �ֲ���ý’ Swift, Director of Capital Planning and Construction Pam Wichroski, Senior Project Manager Chris Streifel, and Construction Administrator Jacob Kendall; and staff at construction management firm Consigli and building design firm Payette. In its sophistication and complexity, Spencer pointed out, “this was not an easy building to build.”

Michael Hinchcliffe, a principal at Payette and lead designer of the Bonney Center, told a nice story about some tools, gathered over the years, that his father gave him as a housewarming gift.

His father told him, “This is a set of tools that you’ll need. Whenever you try to do something, use the right tool. It will help you make the work good. It will make the work easy and it will allow you to take pride in your work.”

“For me,” Hinchcliffe said, “the Bonney Science Center today is a little bit like those tools. It is a gift that the Bonneys and the other donors are giving �ֲ���ý today to solve problems, to create things that we can only dream about.”

The center, Hinchcliffe continued, “will launch the careers of countless new scientists, starting with the spark of inspiration from the amazing faculty here. It will be a place where every student at �ֲ���ý will gain an inspiration and a foundation in knowledge and facts and science.”

Earlier in the day, Campus Construction Update asked Streifel what was left to say about the Bonney project. “Bring on the students!” he replied.

But it’s also true that, over the next year or so, “there’ll be a process of identifying what I call enhancements or sometimes ‘Day Two’ items.” As in, “We need five more stools over here. We need a bookshelf over there. These tables are great, but they don’t work.”

He said, “A lot of that kind of stuff is starting to percolate onto lists, and we’ll be absorbing it.”

A science center signboard shown on Aug. 23, a few hours before a ribbon-cutting celebrated the building’s completion. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

The Bonney Science Center seen from in front of Chase Hall on Aug. 23, 2021. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

The Bonney Science Center in rendering and reality on Aug. 23, 2021. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

With fume hoods lining the walls and a large counter for students, this biology lab on the Bonney Center’s first floor is essentially ready for action. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

The glass front of a fume hood in the Bonney Center lab of Andrew Kennedy, assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry, is the ideal place to make notes for a lab process. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Tour goers stop by the light-filled lounge on the second level of Bonney Science Center, which offers a commanding view of campus through windows of the Beacon. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

The Beacon is prominent in this image of the Bonney Science Center from August 19, 2021. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

A student’s-eye view of a Bonney Science Center classroom. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

After the ribbon-cutting ceremony on Aug. 23, 2021, Associate Professor of Biology Larissa Williams gives a tour of her new laboratory space in the Bonney Science Center. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Suddenly we’re hungry for pie: A look down through the Bonney Center’s Monumental Stair reveals a variety of wedge-shaped views. The bright green is a visual hallmark of building designer Payette. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

The Bonney Center’s first-floor Living Room is shown a few hours before an Aug. 23 ribbon-cutting ceremony that filled the space with stakeholders in the years-long Bonney construction project. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

The chemistry instrumentation room in the Bonney Science Center. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Looking toward Nichols Street down a third-floor Bonney Center hallway. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

It wouldn’t be a Campus Construction Update without at least one image of workers in manlifts. In this July 22 photo, roofers are working on trim at the edge of the Bonney Center’s lid. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

And here’s where it all began: the future Bonney Center site, seen from a point in front of Chase Hall, in early March 2019 — just prior to the start of construction. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Demolition derby: Meanwhile, if Streifel is still busy with Bonney, what’s brighter on his radar screen these days is the repurposing of Dana Chemistry Hall. Interior demolition began there in July — at which time, moreover, a construction zone was established that blocks foot traffic between Dana and Hedge, and along the service road behind Ladd Library. (Don’t say we didn’t warn you!)

As we’ve written before, the Bonney Center resulted from a strategic process, begun in 2016, in which �ֲ���ý engaged Payette to help reconfigure campus science facilities to better meet evolving needs. The rebuilding of Dana is a second result of that process. (And a third will be a variety of upgrades to Carnegie Science Hall. The three projects together are budgeted at some $75 million.)

Overall, Payette’s goals with the Dana overhaul are, first, simply to make it a friendlier building; and second, to transform it into a teaching center with an emphasis on introductory science. The first floor will be dedicated to intro chemistry, and the third will house biology labs and a general-purpose teaching lab. The second floor, Streifel explained, “becomes three beautiful, large, general-purpose classrooms.” 

“One reason that Dana was a good candidate for this renovation is that [classroom locations are] not chopped up by structural elements” such as load-bearing columns. “So classrooms can be sizable. And there are good windows all around the perimeter, so they’ll be well-lit,” he continued. “And it’s right in the corner of the Historic Quad, with all the students coming through, right where we want classrooms.”

Structurally, the project entails the removal of some central interior masonry walls and other partitions to improve sight lines and traffic flow. As Streifel explained, “The core right now is a maze of small spaces.”

So while two load-bearing masonry walls and some other features will stay put, “almost everything else is removed. And that’s a lot of masonry and old partitions. The goal is to free up that core for a more transparent building,” in keeping with the openness imparted by glass and open space inside Bonney.

Payette’s aesthetic touch will be evident in other ways, too, in the new Dana. “You’ll see a lot of the same design themes and materials, and a lot of the equipment will be the same,” said Streifel.

As of this week, what was destined for removal has been removed from Dana’s basement and the attic, more or less. That’s especially true for the attic, which for decades was filled with air-handling machinery and storage spaces but at the moment resembles, as much as anything, the inside of a barn — a lot of bare boards.

“Just a few months ago, faculty were still working in that building, and now it’s barely recognizable,” said Streifel. “When I go in the attic, I’m blown away by it — ‘This is the same building?’”

Happening next is the placement of new insulation and wallboards over the old naked wood of the roof and walls, and then, in time, the installation of new HVAC machinery.

The basement, meanwhile, is where building-wide electrical infrastructure will live. But first, floor drains need to be installed and that’s going on now: Neat trenches have been cut into the concrete floors into which the drain fittings and the pipes will be set.

And what of levels One through Three? Demolition continues, followed by hazardous-material abatement. Demolition in progress looks like hell — ceiling tiles on the floor, wall fixtures and furnishings yanked out of place, ripped-out cables and other debris strewn around — but actually performing the work must be a cathartic kind of fun, at least for the first 30 minutes.

Lakeside Concrete Cutting and Abatement of Newport, Maine, “is doing all of the demo and abatement, which is a pretty sizable package,” said Streifel. “They’ve got another a month and a half roughly of demo and abatement before the building is truly done with that and we’re fully engaged in the rebuilding process.”

This halyard ground: Knocked noticeably out of plumb by a falling tree years ago, the old flagpole in front of Hathorn was replaced in July.

�ֲ���ý’ longtime flag supplier, locally owned TriState Flag, provided and installed the new pole. Strong and lightweight, at least compared with the old metal pole, the new pole is a fiberglass “Zeus” model made by PLP Composites in Fitzwilliam, N.H. Like the pole it replaced, the Zeus is about 60 feet high.

As we’ve previously noted, sand is a sort of Swiss Army Knife of construction materials (another metaphor that never should have left the factory!), and it plays a crucial role in the world of flagpole installation. A pole is set into the ground within a cylinder that’s just a little wider (do they call it a pole vault?), and the gap is filled with sand.

While some workers ensure that the pole is kept plumb, others thump the pole with a rubber mallet to compact the sand with the vibrations. To finish, the circumference of the pole at ground level is tightly sealed against moisture.

Later, if you need to remove the pole, you can just vacuum out the sand.

Another familiar firm, Carrier Landscaping, tended to new land- and hardscaping around the pole. “We also had support from the grounds crew, electricians, carpenters, and others in Facility Services, so the project has been a real team effort,” said Jay Phillips, director of facility services operations.

The original flagpole was presented by the College Club and the Alumni Fund in June 1931, accompanied by a plaque inscribed “One Flag, One Land, One Heart, One Hand, Our Nation Evermore.” Ninety years later, the Class of 1967 has made the funding for the flag pole part of its 55th Reunion giving effort.

Summer projects redux: Finally, updates on summer projects that we told you about last time, or should have:

Two updates to Hathorn Hall are more or less complete. Inside, new chalkboards have been installed in a few classrooms, a process that exposed older blackboards that still bore faculty scribblings from who knows when. That work also entailed the replacement of ceiling tile and refinishing of walls and trim.

On Hathorn’s roof, new slate, copper, and rubber coverings are in place. “The existing roof decking is in amazing condition after many years under the old slate,” noted project manager Bob Leavitt.

In the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, Deblois Electric has replaced all the old incandescent lighting fixtures above the audience seats with energy-efficient LED units. An early concern was the potential high cost of erecting conventional scaffolding to elevate the electricians to ceiling level, but project manager Paul Farnsworth found a reasonably priced provider of structures specifically for lamp replacement projects in awkward spaces like churches and auditoriums: LightbulbScaffold.com of Shreveport, La.

Over at the campus heating plant, the conversion of Boiler No. 3 to burn carbon-neutral LR-100 vegetable oil has been briefly paused due to delayed delivery of the inline fuel heater. That should arrive by the end of September, and testing is slated for early October.

Finally, project manager Shelby Burgau reports that the installation of new MODAL flooring and new batting cages in the Gray Athletic Building is complete. “There were no surprises and everything looks great.”

Can we talk? Campus Construction Update welcomes queries and comments about current, past, future, timeless, and “that never happened — or did it?” construction at �ֲ���ý. Write to dhubley@bates.edu, putting “Campus Construction” in the subject line. And Fran K. for reading this month’s CCU!

This summer at �ֲ���ý, one filled with moments and meaning, has whizzed by, and we suddenly realize that students return to campus in less than a fortnight. 

As a new chapter unfolds, we take a mid-August pause for a look at �ֲ���ý summer days in the rearview mirror. Please enjoy some scenes from the last seven weeks as we begin anew, with hopes and dreams intact.

The Sweet Life

“It’s a book about slowing down and enjoying the sweet life with family and friends,” says Abbey Ende ’23, seated on the Historic Quad reading Dispatches from the Sweet Life: One Family, Five Acres, and a Community’s Quest to Reinvent the World, by William Powers.

A psychology major from Asheville, N.C., Ende will use her Spanish skills as a community health worker with the Maine Mobile Health Program, an outreach service for migrant farmworkers in Maine, during the summer and fall harvest season. 

Bronzed Beauty

Summer facility projects have included replacing Hathorn Hall’s 100-year-old slate roof, which includes adding a new weather barrier and copper flashing.

Birdwatchers

Christine Murray (left) and Caitlin Lampman take a closer look at the nest of a merlin, a small species of falcon, in a pine tree between the Muskie Archives and Chase Hall. Folks agree that the nest has five babies ready to fledge. 

Murray is Ladd Library’s social science librarian, and Lampman is outreach archivist with Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library.

Moving Ahead

Admission tour guide Ava Petrin ’24 of nearby Leeds, Maine, keeps things moving ahead while walking backward, sharing what she loves about �ֲ���ý with prospective students and families from around the world.

Velvet Elvis

Elvis has left the building…and is heading to another. For years, this Velvet Elvis has been something of a mascot of Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Paula Schlax’s lab in Dana Chemistry Hall. In July, Schlax marched VE across campus to her new lab in Bonney Science Center, a state-of-the-art environment that, like Dana, will reflect the people and personalities of those who teach, learn, and research there. 

Pride Inspired Barbeque

Kyle Larry ’21 enjoys a TGIF moment with Fai Saejeam ’24 of Chiang, Thailand, during a barbeque that Larry hosted celebrating LGBTQ+ Pride in June. Larry was a post-baccalaureate fellow for residence life and �ֲ���ý Health Services over the summer, and “one of my jobs involves creating welcoming and proud spaces for summer residents,” Larry says.

Street Art

Jamari Amrham ’22 of Fontana, Calif., a Purposeful Work intern with the �ֲ���ý Dance Festival, escorts a dancer swathed in quilts through traffic on Pine Street in Lewiston in July. The scene unfolded during a tech rehearsal for Processions Toward, Being Future Being, a site-specific work in development by choreographer Emily Johnson and her company, Catalyst, that evokes themes of Indigenous power and place.

In Rain or Shine

Admission intern Margaret Horvat ’23, a rhetoric, film, and screen studies major from Philadelphia, leads a rainy-day campus tour in front of the new Bonney Science Center on Campus Avenue.

What We Saw

A reflection of the exhaust stacks on the roof of Carnegie Science appears as a reflection on the Campus Avenue–facing windows of the new Bonney Science Center.

Flowers, Pollen…and Ticks

Protected from ticks and other insects with mesh shirts and insect repellent, student researchers Henry Hardy ’22 of Gloucester, Mass., and Sebastián León Fallas ’24 of Pérez Zeledón, Costa Rica, spent the summer analyzing pollen and nectar environments in a meadow at Thorncrag Nature Sanctuary near campus. The pair worked in the lab of Assistant Professor of Biology Carla Essenberg, who studies plant-pollinator interactions. 

‘Pyramid of Strains’

The nine paper-towel stickies taped to a lab window in Bonney Science Center each have the name of a different strain of bacteria tested by students in the lab of Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Colleen O’Loughlin.

Each strain responded to each experiment in a reproducibly different way. And after each experiment, O’Loughlin’s students rearranged the pyramid to reflect the strain “that got to wear the crown that day,” she says. “It ended up being a beautiful visualization.” 

A Passion for Percussion

Nicola Chin and son Rajan, age 4, keep the beat with hands and sticks during the annual �ֲ���ý Dance Festival music concert at Lewiston’s Simard Payne Park Amphitheater. Rajan’s father is Timothy Chin ’07.

Shaker Village

Psychology major Sophie Nahriny ’22 of Chestnut Hill, Mass., walks with a coneflower she picked in an herb garden at the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village in New Gloucester, Maine, where she had a Purposeful Work internship. The village was established by Shaker missionaries in 1782 and declared a National Historic Landmark in 1974.

Better in Bonney

Surrounded by a sea of scientific glassware, Nick Gajarski ’24 of Dublin, Ohio, prepares samples for analysis in the Bonney Science Center.

Funded by an , he worked in the lab of Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Colleen O’Loughlin to analyze molecules synthesized by bacteria that reside on human skin.

Lady Landing

An American lady butterfly lands on a purple coneflower outside Pettengill Hall.

Pop Up Boot Camp

Workout buddies Vanessa Williamson ’05, associate head coach of swimming and diving, and Meagan Pomeroy, assistant director of annual giving, use workout ropes at the fitness park next to Wallach Tennis Center.

Beer Bitterness

Purposeful Work intern Emily Tamkin ’23, a biology major from Lafayette, Calif., poses outside Lewiston’s Baxter Brewing Co. with beer samples that she analyzed in a �ֲ���ý laboratory. Working with Baxter’s quality director, Merritt Waldron, Tamkin used her lab skills to precisely measure the beer’s bitter-tasting iso-alpha acids, which result when the beer’s hops are heated.

Scholar-Athlete

Several times a week, Joanna Atwater ’23 of Short Hills, N.J., heads to Merrill Gym for a 50-minute workout to get ready for the fall tennis season.

Funded by an , Atwater worked in the lab of Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Colleen O’Loughlin to analyze molecules synthesized by bacteria that reside on human skin.

Georgia on His Mind

Associate Professor of German Jakub Kazecki enjoys a moment on Alumni Walk with George, an 8-month-old chihuahua-dachshund mix his family adopted from the Augusta Humane Society.

Kazecki’s 8-year-old daughter named the dog for his home state of Georgia. Also, the animal’s curiosity reminded her of the children’s picture book hero Curious George.

Shaker Herbs

Environmental studies major Caleb Ireland ’23 of Amherst, Mass., tends to harvested flowers in the herb building at the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village in New Gloucester, Maine, where he had a Purposeful Work internship.

New Roots Cooperative Farmers

After spending the morning weeding in the fields, Kehinde “Kenny” Aruwajoye ’22, a politics major from of Owo, Nigeria, and Maya Castiblanco ’23, a psychology major from Irvington, N.Y., pose for a portrait. They both have Purposeful Work internships with the New Roots Cooperative Farm, a 30-acre enterprise located at 954 College St. 
Since 2016, New Roots farmers have been developing and farming land in Lewiston, Maine. In 2021, they hope to purchase this land to continue developing it.

Pettigrew Projections

An audience seated on College Street (which was closed to vehicles) watches choreographer Janessa Clark’s Communion, which was projected on a screen mounted on the porch of the Schaeffer Theatre.  Clark created the screendance Communion in response to the isolation and uncertainty that artists have faced during the pandemic

All Together Now

A group of �ֲ���ý students working on campus for the summer gather at lunchtime for another delicious meal at Commons. “We should look for someone to eat and drink with before looking for something to eat and drink,” said the Greek philosopher Epicurus.

Here to Help

The staff of Residence Life and Health Education gather for a portrait on the steps of Hacker House on Frye Street.

Hot Quad, summer on campus: Back of our neck getting dirty and…say, what rhymes with “campus,” anyway?

Without the Lovin’ Spoonful’s John Sebastian to help with that couplet, we’ll just have to skip the tuneage and tell you, instead, about some construction projects in progress at �ֲ���ý this summer.

The biggest news is that faculty, their summer-research students, and staff began moving into the Bonney Science Center on June 7.

“People are in that moment of euphoria, to some degree, where they’re just so excited to finally move in after all this thinking and stressing about it,” says Chris Streifel, the Facility Services project manager for both the science center and a larger reconfiguration of science facilities at �ֲ���ý. “Everybody’s just so happy to have that relief.”

Professors and staff quartered till now in Dana Chemistry Hall completed their transition to Bonney this week. Clearing Dana was the priority because that building is about to begin a comprehensive, yearlong reconfiguration into a center for teaching introductory science.

“The real story of the last few weeks has been getting Bonney done in the nick of time and getting Dana empty,” Streifel says. “That’s a pretty monumental accomplishment. And it’s something we’ve been thinking about for a long time, how we’re going to do that and setting that up” — in fact, since 2018.

Meanwhile, the faculty who’ll be crossing Campus Avenue from �ֲ���ý’ third science building, Carnegie, to new digs in Bonney will start moving next week. But the bigger part of the Carnegie contingent will relocate in August.

The moving of people and material from Dana Chemistry to the Bonney Science Center began on June 8. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Summer research students put away supplies and equipment in a second-floor Bonney Center lab on June 28. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

As he settles into his new Bonney Center lab, Andrew Kennedy, assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry, makes sure that credit goes where it’s due. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Jars and bottles for chemicals in a second-floor lab. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

The south face of the Bonney Center with Chu Hall in the background. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Biologist Ryan Bavis, biologist-neuroscientist Martin Kruse, and neuroscientist Jason Castro share this second-floor lab. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

There’s plenty of unpacking to do in this chemistry instrumentation room. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Bonney Center office furniture seen from Bardwell Street. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

The Bonney Science Center seen from the junction of Campus Avenue and Nichols Street on June 28, 2021. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Two specialized firms handled the transfer of �ֲ���ý assets from Dana to Bonney. Tobin Scientific of Beverly, Mass., shifted the science equipment, and Environmental Projects Inc. of Auburn, Maine, conveyed the chemical supplies. They have “done a fantastic job,” says Streifel.

Also deserving applause, says Streifel, is �ֲ���ý construction administrator Jacob Kendall, a constant presence as the new building came together. “Jacob has been absolutely a monster in this move, just keeping everybody going. He’s got a real knack for this kind of thing.”

Bonney construction has largely dwindled down to the building-trades equivalents of crossing t’s and dotting i’s. Aside from an exterior pass still outstanding, primary punch-list inspections are finished and the project team has embarked on what’s called “back punch.”

Not the gesture of affection remembered so fondly from grammar school, this, instead, is making sure that corrections generated by the first round of inspections were done right.

Commissioning of the building’s mechanical, electrical, and plumbing machinery is likewise well-along, although, as Streifel points out, that barrage of inspections and tests won’t really be done till next spring: HVAC equipment, in particular, needs to be tested again with each change of season.

As for the few remaining chores at Bonney, there are finishing touches to apply inside and out, such as the installation of protective grates over the building’s sunken air intake, now concealed by a wall lettered with “Bonney Science Center.” And there’s plenty of landscaping to do, an undertaking made challenging by the persistent lack of rain.

One of the three massive air handlers in the Bonney Center basement. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Water pumps, at center, and pipes in the Bonney Center penthouse. The liquids in this system are used to regulate interior air temperatures — “GHWR” stands for “glycol hot water.” (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Chemical storage on the first floor of the Bonney Center. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

The distinctive green is a hallmark of the firm that designed the Bonney Science Center, Payette. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Acid lockers on the Bonney Center’s first floor. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

White and Payette-green paint, glass walls, infrastructure doubling as decorative treatment — these are some of the visual characteristics of the Bonney Center interior. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Totes and cartons awaiting unpacking by a member of the chemistry faculty. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

These grates will cover the opening to the Bonney Center’s subterranean air intake. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

In fact, it won’t be for another year or so that the science center really settles into its final appearance. That’s because the far end of the parking lot (an area formerly occupied by the two houses of the �ֲ���ý Communications Office) will continue to house storage containers and other facilities supporting the Dana Hall makeover.

Oil’s well that ends well: Starting this winter, carbon-neutral �ֲ���ý will use even less fossil fuel thanks to fried-food enthusiasts around the Northeast. (We’re happy to do our part!)

With two of the three boilers that steam-heat the central campus already burning a product called Renewable Fuel Oil, the college is converting the third unit for a different climate-friendly fuel: vegetable oil recovered from the food-service industry.

Lifecycle Renewables of Tewksbury, Mass., will supply the fuel, known as LR-100.

�ֲ���ý’ use of LR-100 will be limited. Boiler No. 3 is a back-up boiler, operated when one of the others is out of service. Renewable Fuel Oil, made from waste wood products by the Canadian firm Ensyn, will remain the primary fuel for the campus steam plant’s two workhorse boilers.

“We prefer to burn RFO because it’s a wood-based product, and that helps our forest industry here in Maine and the Northeast,” says �ֲ���ý energy manager John Rasmussen. “They’re in desperate need of a market for low-quality wood, pulpwood basically. The market has been reduced by 2 million tons a year” as the paper industry has contracted in recent years.

But “whenever there’s some supply disruption [with RFO], instead of using natural gas as backup, we can now use LR-100.” Lifecycle Renewables runs a sizable cooking oil collection network in Massachusetts and beyond — even cleaning grease traps for its clients and recovering that oil.

The initial conversion to RFO, in 2016, was no trivial matter, entailing the erection of a 20,000-gallon tank, installation of various equipment to make the oil burnable, and the refitting of Boiler No. 1 with an injector that can stand up to the acidic fuel. With the fuel-handling system in place, Boiler No. 2 just needed the retrofitted combustion components.

The No. 3 conversion for LR-100, though, is the simplest of all. The tanks once used for petroleum-based fuel oil just need cleaning prior to filling with LR-100, and the boiler’s burner gun is fine as is. So the only additions needed for the conversion are an inline heater to promote fuel flow and a system for measuring the efficiency of all three boilers. That’s all happening this month. (LR-100 will also work with boilers 1 and 2 with no modification — and all three boilers will remain dual-fuel, with natural gas as an alternative.)

That metering system, by the way, is a requirement of the state program that is making this conversion possible. As part of Gov. Janet Mills’ drive to curtail fossil fuel use, it offers a mechanism of “thermal RECs” — renewable energy certificates — to offset the cost of sustainable fuels, making them competitive with natural gas.

What prompted this project, Rasmussen says, was the desire to diversify �ֲ���ý’ sources of heating fuel. Gallon for gallon, LR-100 is quite close to petroleum-based oil in heat content, and provides substantially more energy than RFO — some 128,000 BTUs per gallon vs. 80,000.

But RFO costs less. And either way, says Rasmussen, “it’s nice to know that we can basically eliminate fossil fuel use” in heating the central campus.

Better slate than never: Slate seems to be a theme for Hathorn Hall upgrades this summer.

For starters, the building’s slate roof is being replaced. G&E Roofing, of Augusta, Maine, is handling the project, which also includes new copper gutters and downspouts, as well as a new rubber-like membrane on the top of the belfry. Facility Services carpenters are pitching in by fabricating some massive new moldings for the Hathorn roof.

How old is the slate being replaced? “The jury is still out on that,” says Bob Leavitt, assistant director of maintenance and operations for Facility Services. “The best guess is pushing 100 years.”

He adds, “We’re very pleased to find that the majority of the roof structure itself is in excellent condition — very few places showing deterioration. So it was installed probably as well as you can imagine back in the day.”

A 2017 roofing assessment anticipated the slate replacement, which was scheduled originally for 2020 but delayed by COVID-19. In progress since early June, the job will be wrapped up by mid- to late August.

Leavitt estimates that 6,000 square feet of slate will be replaced. New England Slate Co. of Poultney, Vt., is supplying the product, which has been quarried to order — “North Country Black” at the Glendyne Quarry in Saint-Marc-du-Lac-Long, Québec, and “Vermont Purple” at the John Maslack Slate Quarry in Poultney. The colors match the original roof of the building, in keeping with its listing on the National Register of Historic Sites.

Meanwhile, a differently used variety of Hathorn slate is being superseded. “We’re replacing some of the chalkboards in Hathorn, old slate chalkboards,” says project manager Paul Farnsworth. “The faculty don’t like them. They’re small and they’re not at the right height. Some are cracked. Some are easy to write on but some of them are too smooth.

“Well, on June 21, we took down the first of what we thought were the original slate chalkboards.” And what did they find behind it? Another slate chalkboard — complete with math problems from some long-ago class session.

Farnsworth reckons that the surprise discovery must be one of the boards installed when Hathorn was built, in 1857. In all, Farnsworth’s crew found original chalkboards behind the existing units in two rooms, 303 and 305. (The cryptic inscription “Thank You” / “May 16—1892” appears on wallpaper uncovered in a different classroom.)

In the photo above, the white stuff slathered on the original slate is plaster of Paris or something similar, applied to prevent the newer board from bowing inward under pressure.

Farnsworth is replacing nine of the old boards and adding two boards to Hathorn’s total because, as he says, “everyone always wants more writing surface.” (Hence this 1,900-word Campus Construction Update.) The replacements are unframed porcelain-on-steel units. “They’re nice.”

“You can’t buy natural slate chalkboards anymore,” he adds. “We received positive feedback from the man-made sample we had for faculty and staff to try writing on.”

Supplying the boards is New York Blackboard of Hillside, N.J. “They are the people, as far as I can tell, that know chalkboards,” Farnsworth explains. “And they delivered them, instead of shipping them — two of the people that drove them up were the grandfather that started the company ages ago and his grandson.”

That delivery was in March. “They thought I was going to install them as soon as I got them, and they were all ready to help. And I was like, ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you. I’m just going to put them in storage.’”

Originally slated (sorry!) for 2020, the chalkboard work finally began a couple weeks ago and should wrap up early this month.

New cages for the Cage: With one complete and the second in progress, summer 2021 is bringing significant improvements to the Gray Athletic Building.

Complete is the installation of two new batting cages for baseball and softball. As Facility Services project manager Shelby Burgau explains, they replace units that weren’t quite spacious enough for their intended use, yet were so bulky as to create some concern about building egress.

Those old cages folded up against the interior walls at the Alumni Gym and Muskie Archives ends of the space, but when in use they were aligned along the wall adjacent to the Library Quad — a wall with three main entrances.

In contrast, when in use, the new cages are tucked in at the Muskie end. When not, they are collapsed and then hoisted up, up, and away into the rafters of the Gray Cage. “So they’re completely out of the way,” Burgau says. “They look a lot nicer, a lot cleaner, and you can put one down or both down. So now you can have a cage down, but still use the basketball courts.”

Consisting of nylon mesh and a metal frame, each cage is 12 by 72 feet. They were manufactured by Seaway Plastics, which has operations in Quebec and in New York state.

Meanwhile, in progress is the placement of a new floor in Gray, for which preparation began this week. The new surface will be a rubber multipurpose flooring manufactured by MONDO and installed by FJ Roberts–AASG Sports Surfaces of Wilmington, Mass. Installed directly atop the old floor, a urethane surface that in turn sits atop asphalt, the new 8mm product will be laid in 6-foot wide strips and fused together.

The new floor should be ready for action by mid-August.

Can we talk? Campus Construction Update welcomes queries and comments about current, past, future, timeless, and “that never happened — or did it?” construction at �ֲ���ý. Write to dhubley@bates.edu, putting “Campus Construction” or “’Pampas’ rhymes with ‘campus’! Do I get royalties?” in the subject line.

Doug Hubley is a writer and musician living in Portland, Maine.

For Campus Construction Update, whose physique has been chiseled by years of lugging stepladders across campus so as to peep over construction-site fences, it’s something to celebrate when the fence comes down.

So we’ve been looking forward to a bourbon and Moxie float since we saw, this week, that much of the fence around the Bonney Science Center site had disappeared: specifically, along parts of Nichols and Bardwell streets, and all of the Campus Avenue section.

Losing the latter is especially significant because the building’s north facade is its visual calling card. It incorporates the center’s main entrance and two signature design features, a two-story glass-walled lounge called the Beacon and a come-hither staircase, also showcased in glass, billed as the Monumental Stair.

The Bonney Science Center shown from the Historic Quad on May 17, 2021. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

A worker power-washes brickwork at the Nichols Street entrance to the Bonney Science Center on May 19. (Jay Burns/�ֲ���ý College)

This May 19 view shows sitework at Bonney Science Center along Campus Avenue, including contractor Gendron & Gendron setting curbs at the entrance plaza that will be paved with asphalt blocks. (Jay Burns/�ֲ���ý College)

Only finishing touches remain to be done on the exterior of the Bonney Science Center, shown from the south on May 17. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Look, Ma — no fence! A May 17 view of the science center from the intersection of Bardwell Street and Campus Avenue. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Carnegie Science Hall’s rooftop exhaust stacks are reflected in the Bonney Center’s Monumental Stair curtain wall. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

These concrete benches will be placed on the Bonney Science Center grounds. They resemble the benches found on Alumni Walk. At right are pallets of asphalt pavers; at rear is a charging station for electric vehicles. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

The freshly contoured runoff basin at the back of the Bonney Center lot. Storm runoff will be routed through the basin to slow surges of water into the municipal stormwater system. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

A Consigli Construction employee at work on steps at the Bonney building’s Nichols Street entrance on May 17. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

What’s missing from this Bonney Science Center photo taken May 17 at the corner of Campus Avenue, at left, and Nichols Street? The site fence has been removed, making way for subcontractor Gendron & Gendron to do site work around the front of the building. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Site work in progress on May 17 near the main entrance (at left) of the science center. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Shown from a third-floor window, an excavator spreads subsoil in front of the science center. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

The building’s exterior structure, as a matter of fact, is fundamentally done, although work continues on tricky bits like rain gutters, entryway fittings, and window housings. The outdoor emphasis has shifted to the site at large, notably that Campus Avenue frontage and the large service and parking area behind the building, on the south side.

When we stopped by, on Monday, a crew from sitework contractor Gendron & Gendron was using an excavator and shovels to spread rough subsoil over what you might call the center’s front yard. This will soon be topped by landscaping and a triangular entrance plaza paved with charcoal-gray asphalt blocks identical to those laid on Alumni Walk 13 years ago.

Meanwhile, on the south side, landscaping has commenced at the back of the lot. The stormwater diversion basin has been contoured and ringed with a few bushes and trees (no diving board yet), and a line of saplings now runs from east to west. According to construction administrator Jacob Kendall, tree species in the back lot include quaking or trembling aspen (Populus tremuloides) and the showy evergreen known as weeping Alaskan cedar (Chamaecyparis nootkatensis or Xanthocyparis nootkatensis).

The south side remains the place to stage supplies, so the dance between storage and production in these tight quarters — a dance familiar nearly from the start of the Bonney project — will continue just a bit longer. Among the pallets loaded with lamp bases and paving blocks, we were interested to see long blocky concrete benches that will be placed around the science center. It’s another visual echo of Alumni Walk, a project as transformative to the campus culture as Bonney will be to the practice of life sciences at �ֲ���ý.

Other than a third glass wall, this one providing serious distraction potential to inhabitants of a third-floor classroom, the Bardwell Street view won’t offer much to passers-by besides sidewalk and a grassy esplanade (also known in the no-punches-pulled parlance of public works as a snow shelf, because that’s where the street plows heap up the snow).

At the opposite end of the building, the Nichols street side features an entrance and a bench that’s built into the hardscape. Still shady in the late morning, that area was occupied Monday by a couple of concrete workers finishing up the steps and the bench in preparation for the final placement of subsoil.

The science center interior was no ghost town on Monday, but neither was it the beehive of March and April. And the work the workers were doing signaled the end game: painters brushing final coats onto handrails, cleaners polishing glass on a research lab door, the lead technician for Cornerstone Commissioning checking machinery in the fourth-story penthouse.

“If we’re scrambling anywhere, it’s at the building entrances, just to make sure that those are done to support the move-in and occupancy,” which begin in June, says Chris Streifel, Bonney Center project manager for �ֲ���ý.

A view of Carnegie Science from a second-story lab in the Bonney Center. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

�ֲ���ý construction administrator Jacob Kendall demonstrates an emergency eye-wash station in a Bonney Center chemistry lab. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Fume hoods in a chemistry teaching lab on the Bonney Center’s third floor. The unit at center can be moved up and down for use by people with physical impairments. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Employees of General Contracting Services of Woburn, Mass., clean a third-floor door. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

A chemistry teaching lab. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Painting in progress and polished (but dusty) concrete in the Monumental Stair. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Cleaned and punch-listed, this biology lab is ready to be supplied and equipped. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

The south side of the Bonney Science Center seen from Nichols Street on May 17, 2021. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Site subcontractor Gendron & Gendron sets curbing along the Bonney Science Center’s Campus Avenue frontage on May 19. (Jay Burns/�ֲ���ý College)

Another portent of finality was the “Room final cleaned / Ready for punchlist” signs taped up all over the place. (When you enter such a room, you step first onto a tacky mat that pulls all the dirt from your shoe soles.)

“We’re close to two-thirds of the way through” punch-listing, Streifel says. The third and second floors, the basement vivarium, and parts of the first floor are done. It’s a bit paradoxical that the last areas for punch-listing will be those that are either the least or the most important — examples of the latter being mechanical spaces, corridors, and stairways.

Greater Dana

It’s also true that, in yet another emotional roller-coaster ride, the glow from those celebratory bourbon and Moxie floats won’t last long.

That’s because soon after the Bonney site fence goes away, a new one will spring up halfway across campus.

This time the object of attention won’t be a brand-new building, but rather a brand-new role for an old one: 56-year-old Dana Chemistry Hall, soon to undergo a yearlong gut renovation.

As we’ve reported, the building of Bonney and the Dana makeover belong to the same greater project: nothing less than a comprehensive reconfiguration of �ֲ���ý science facilities, also including Carnegie Science Hall. This is the result of a review of �ֲ���ý STEM facilities (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) conducted in 2016 under the direction of Payette, the Boston-area firm that, in partnership with faculty and staff, subsequently designed the Bonney Center.

Dana will be rebuilt to focus on science teaching, with a goal of effectively welcoming new students to STEM fields. Bonney, of course, will be a campus hub for faculty and programs in biology, chemistry, and neuroscience with overlapping research interests and technical needs. Carnegie, whose original structure is more than 100 years old and has been twice expanded, will be updated to better serve programs in concomitant STEM fields such as physics, and earth and climate sciences, formerly geology.

At Dana, says Chris Streifel, “everything comes out and a lot of the building’s central core is reconfigured to open up space and provide a sense of transparency. It’ll be less of a warren of small dark hallways and dark rooms.

“So we realign some of the main corridors to give better sight lines and a more logical flow through the building. And then we’re moving away from research to focus on teaching, so we’ll have chemistry teaching labs on the first floor, biology teaching labs on the third floor. And there will be three big general-purpose classrooms on the second floor. Much needed, much desirable spaces, centrally located on campus.”

At the same time, all building systems will be brought up to date. “Much of it is vintage, for sure,” says Streifel. “These are sorely needed improvements, addressing deferred maintenance, addressing energy-inefficient equipment.”

But, as we like to remind you whenever the opportunity arises (and it’s the last time for this metaphor, we promise!), you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs. The breakage here involves getting across campus, which will be less convenient during the year of Dana reconstruction.

The latest construction fence will enclose not just the chemistry building and adjoining land, but the busy walkway between Dana and Hedge Hall — a Hedge wall (as opposed to an herbaceous border) will actually form part of the site perimeter — and an entire lane of Alumni Walk across Dana’s frontage. (At least we won’t have so far to haul the Campus Construction Update stepladder, which lives in Lane Hall.)

An additional length of fence will extend from the Dana perimeter to the brick wall where Ladd Library Plaza overlooks Dana, Hedge, and a service road. This will bar shortcuts past the work site.

So if you want to get from the Bonney Science Center, say, to the Puddle, your quickest routes will go between Hathorn and Dana or via the Library Quad. The ramp to Ladd Library will remain accessible.

Consigli Construction, the regional firm that has managed the building of Bonney and other �ֲ���ý landmarks, remains as construction manager for Dana. Site work starts around July 1, and interior work will commence soon thereafter — general demolition and the removal of old mechanical and other systems.

But as Streifel explains, the Dana project has actually been underway for many months, in the form of an inventory and dispersal of supplies and equipment, some of which soon will be moved over to Bonney. More recently, the construction team has been conducting so-called coordination modeling: the creation of a detailed three-D virtual model of the building.

In conjunction with GPS and wireless technology, this gives surveyors working in the physical building the information needed to mark, with impressive accuracy, the spots where pipes, ducts, and other utilities infrastructure and other features will be placed.

Post renovation, by the way, the building will be known simply as Dana Hall.

Can we talk? Campus Construction Update welcomes your questions and comments (as long as they’re not mean) about current, past, future, and phantasmagorical improvements. Please e-mail Doug Hubley, with “Construction Update” or “If you wore stilts, you could lose the stinkin’ ladder” in the subject line.

Doug Hubley is a musician and writer living in Portland, Maine.

As construction of �ֲ���ý’ Bonney Science Center nears completion, there’s a new development that’s not obvious but is highly significant: The building is now wearing its name.

The first of what will be three BSC signs is on the south side, facing the parking lot near the Bardwell Street gate, and only from Bardwell can you get a good look. The name appears on a new concrete wall in a sort of sunken-relief style — that is, the letters are recessed deeply into the concrete. (The wall, surfaced with a rustic “barnboard” texture, conceals the building’s primary HVAC air intake, a shaft leading down to the basement and the air handlers.)

Right now, the words “Bonney Science Center” appear on the wall in yellow letters. But that won’t last. What’s yellow is the plastic foam that formed the letters when the wall was cast, and that foam will be removed, leaving the contrast between light and shadow to distinguish the lettering.

Ultimately the building name, honoring lead project donors Alison Grott Bonney ’80 and Michael Bonney ’80, will also appear on the center’s north and east sides in so-called dimensional lettering, the raised lettering seen on nearby Chu and Kalperis halls.

Proclaiming the name: Placed earlier this month, a concrete wall near the Bardwell Street entrance to the construction site is the first instance of the Bonney Center’s name appearing on the building itself. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Roofers in a lift are about to apply trim to a section of the Bonney Science Center roof overlooking Campus Avenue on April 26, 2021. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

New asphalt behind the science center on April 21, 2021. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Supplies for site work, including lamppost bases (foreground), drain tiles, and curbstones, are stockpiled on the south side of the Bonney Center. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

The Bonney Science Center seen from the junction of Campus Avenue and Bardwell Street on April 21. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

One of three air handlers in the Bonney Center basement. (Courtesy of Logan Ouellette/Consigli Construction)

This organic chemistry lab on the first floor of the Bonney Center appears ready for action. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

This concrete bed at the Bonney Center’s main entrance will be topped with asphalt paving blocks. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

If a symbolic fanfare accompanies the arrival of the building name, other indications of Bonney progress make up in practical value what they lack in glory. For instance, if you’re looking at the new sign, you’re also seeing part of the first coat of asphalt paving, aka the binder coat, on the parking lot. That was placed last week, along with a section of sidewalk bordering Nichols Street. There’s a second coat, or the topcoat, still to come.

Stockpiled on that parking lot are supplies for additional site work, things like concrete drain tiles and cylindrical bases for lampposts, as well as granite curbing whose placement began this week. Similarly, a concrete bed has been poured for the building’s main entrance, on Campus Avenue. Asphalt paving blocks to top off that entrance plaza are waiting on pallets around the corner on Nichols Street, where they aren’t in anyone’s way.

In short, “there’s so much of the building that’s now on the cusp” of completion, says �ֲ���ý project manager Chris Streifel. He notes that sometimes in construction projects, as in so much of life, the going gets slower the further you go — “but then, suddenly, you flip a switch” and huzzah, you’re done. 

“There’s a lot of that going on” now, he says.

The building’s roof is another example. Between technical problem-solving and winter weather, notably icing, it took months to get half of the dark-gray copper roof covering in place. “It was a long road,” Streifel says.

But the rest of the copper, on the side facing Campus Avenue, was finished just weeks after that first side. The roof has been essentially complete since early April, with only a few snow guards and some sheet metal for gutters and trim left to install.

Streifel has been eager for this week to come, for with it arrives the process of punch-listing — the inspections, and consequential tweaks, that finish a building project. That process just began on the second floor, following preparatory chores like paint touch-ups, shelf placement, cleaning — and the locking-off of completed spaces to forestall any backsliding. 

Third-floor punch-listing will follow, and then the remainder of the building. Streifel expects all punch-listing to be done by the end of May, with most interior spaces punched by mid-month. In a similar but different process, the commissioning of the center’s mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems, already underway, could extend into early June. (Some systems, notably the building-wide air intake system, are already in limited service.) 

Winding back to mid-May, that most-springlike time of the Maine spring will likely be majorly transitional for Bonney. Creative Office Pavilion of Portland, Maine, will start delivering furniture then. (The science center’s furniture will also include a few pieces custom-made by the Maine firm Thos. Moser, .)

Deliveries of all manner of equipment will commence too. “There are tons of AV equipment going throughout the building,” says Streifel, along with the predictable printers and copiers, network gizmos, paper towel dispensers, trash and recycling bins, and of course the scientific equipment that directly supports the building mission.

By mid-May, too, the technical outdoor site work alluded to above — curbs, outdoor lighting, etc. — will be well along. And a bit later in the month, the landscapers will show up with their shrubs, flowers, and the loam to plant them in. (We were interested to learn that landscaping lingo includes the pronunciation of “loaming,” the placing of loam, as “looming.” Does this mean that after a hard day of work under the hot sun, landscapers like to enjoy an ice-cold foomy beer?)  

Flooring it: We’ve written a lot about the Beacon, the two-story, glass-walled gathering place that affords a fabulous perspective on the Historic Quad. But this time, instead of complaining about the staging that’s blocking that view, we can report that the staging is gone, the view is viewable, and the Beacon interior is close to completion, including snazzy lighting treatments on the third-floor overlook and elsewhere. 

A view of Carnegie Science Hall and the Historic Quad from the upper level of the Beacon. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

A Pavilion Floors employee is shown from the third-story overlook in the Beacon. Note the light fixture across the front of the overlook. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Called a cable tray, this mesh trough running along the second-floor ceiling carries more than 260 cables serving controls, communications, and IT. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

A Bonney Center chemistry teaching lab. The chem labs tend to be smaller than the biology labs because, as construction administrator Jacob Kendall says, different chemistry processes don’t always play nicely together. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

The head of the Monumental Stair, accessed from the third floor. The workers on the lift outside are applying trim to the roof edge. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

This area at the rear of the science center lot will serve as a catchment basin for stormwater runoff. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

The south and east sides of the Bonney Science Center on April 21. Note the base coat of new paving behind the building. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

The Bonney Science Center, in rendering and reality on April 21. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

This “is one of my favorite places just to stand and stare out,” Streifel says. “I’m waiting for days when there’s a thunderstorm or a snowstorm, just to watch that move past.”

Meanwhile, concrete specialists are now about halfway through the creation of the polished concrete floors on the building’s first level. Entailing sophisticated formulations and many applications of progressively finer grinding implements, it results in a beautiful, lustrous, and durable surface.

Every omelette involves breaking eggs, though, and you can’t polish concrete without generating a lot of dust that, as we’ve noted, can damage delicate machinery and electronics (to say nothing of spoiling your omelette). Moreover, the floor work also affects overall progress because folks in the other trades have to take a lot of detours. But all that’s soon to be over: The first floor is the last to receive that treatment, ending a process that has loamed large in the minds of the Bonney project team. (See what we did there?)

Speaking of lighting treatments, a spectacular example will be coming to the Monumental Stair one of these days. We’ve told you before about this stairway that, terminating at the main Bonney entrance and showcased behind three and a half stories of glass, joins the Beacon as standout visual features of the science center.

As we’ve noted previously, the Monumental Stair will be one of the last areas in the building to be completed. And one of the last steps (see what we did there?) will be the hanging of its main light source: a cylindrical fixture that’s more than 25 feet long and glowing with some 30,000 LEDs. Huzzah!

Can we talk? Campus Construction Update welcomes queries and comments about current, past, future, timeless, and aspirational construction at �ֲ���ý. Write to dhubley@bates.edu, putting “Campus Construction” or “Huzzah!” in the subject line.

Doug Hubley is a writer and musician living in Portland, Maine.

During spring and summer 2019, as crews excavated for the foundation of the new Bonney Science Center, they removed a stunning amount of ancient blue-gray marine clay — more than 10,000 cubic yards, according to an estimate from subcontractor Gendron & Gendron.

We watched captivated as excavating machines scooped and scraped the clay, all clingy, sculptural, and glistening like unappetizing Jell-O. For weeks on end, a procession of G&G dump trucks arrived empty at the Campus Avenue site, across from Carnegie Science, and drove away full of clay.

We found it remarkable, but for G&G, as for earthwork contractors in much of Maine, it was no big whoop.

Likewise unsurprising to the construction team was the behavior of the clay left behind in the ground, which complicated preparations for laying the science center’s foundation — in what was just another installment of the complications clay has caused for the people who build and maintain facilities at �ֲ���ý.

Still, in an ode to the transformative power of a 2,000-degree kiln, clay will soon find redemption at �ֲ���ý. When it’s time to start covering the science center’s concrete walls, the college will look to Morin Brick Co., which will make the bricks for the job from its very own clay, mined across the river in Auburn.

The Morin mine and the Bonney site are parts of the glaciomarine clay layer that geologists call the Presumpscot Formation. Thousands of years old, the formation extends from Maine’s coast well inland, as far north as Millinocket.

(The formation was named in 1959 by a Yale doctoral student. Hurrying to finish his geology dissertation, he chose the clay-banked Presumpscot River, in southern Maine, for the formation’s namesake after his first choice, “Portland,” was rejected by his professors as being overused.)

Along with Maine’s many ponds and its rounded-off mountains, the Presumpscot Formation is a product of the Pleistocene Ice Age. About 35,000 years ago, according to the Maine Geological Survey, the Laurentide ice sheet began expanding into New England. At its largest, the sheet covered all of Canada and parts of the U.S. It grew thick enough to conceal Maine’s highest mountain, Katahdin, which stands nearly a mile above sea level.

So how does a glacier make clay? Friction is part of the answer. As the ice sheet advanced and retreated over time, it ground up and carried away whatever got in its path, even bedrock, which included feldspars, micas, and quartz. The smallest bedrock particles were fated to become clay. (The U.S. Geological Survey categorizes as clay those particles smaller than .002 millimeters, which are too small to see without a strong microscope.)

And the other clay-making thing the glacier did was melt. In our region, the ice sheet reached its maximum extension near today’s Georges Bank fishing ground about 20,000 years ago. Then, as the climate warmed, the retreat began, a slo-o-o-w melting back over thousands of years.

Glacial meltwater washed away the rock particles the ice had picked up during its advance. Over the centuries, these and other detritus liberated from the ice sheet flowed into the sea and settled on the seafloor — which was far inland from the present coastline. That’s because the unimaginable weight of the glacier, in a process called isostatic depression, smushed the land beneath it down to levels that were hundreds of feet well below current elevations.

Around 14,000 years ago, explains �ֲ���ý geologist Mike Retelle, the meltwater was entering the sea at a delta at the south end of today’s Lake Auburn. (Retelle and UMaine geologist Thomas Weddle co-edited a book on Maine’s postglacial history.)

“Gracelawn Cemetery is the top of that delta, so if you’d been able to stand on the shoreline there, you’d be looking at kind of a fiord environment,” with water surrounded by sharply higher land, Retelle explains.

Much of the region otherwise was submerged, including the low-lying portions of �ֲ���ý — that is, virtually all of campus — and the neighborhood. At the sea’s highest stand, Retelle estimates, the Bonney site was under 100 feet of seawater. And all the while, sand, silt, and clay were washing in with the meltwater and settling right where �ֲ���ý and other institutions would later want to build things. (The nerve!)

One indication that Presumpscot Formation clay is sited on an ancient seabed, as opposed to some lake bottom, is the presence of preserved sea animals, including marine mollusk shells from the genus Yoldia, specimens of which turned up at the Bonney site during a June visit by Retelle, Beverly Johnson, and other geology faculty (a shell will be carbon-dated). In Augusta, the Maine State Museum has remains of a walrus and a mammoth found elsewhere in Maine clay.

The dynamics of this whole business get confusing. Being depressed in an isostatic sort of way, the land surface was much lower during the glacier’s reign — but so was sea level, because so much water was captive in glaciers around the world. As that water was released, sea levels rose. But so did land elevations — rebounding as the weight of the ice sheet went away. Today, the science center site is about 250 feet above sea level.

Maine has a longstanding love-hate relationship with Presumpscot Formation clay. In the “I Love PF Clay” column, Maine ceramicists make plates and pots from it. In addition, its cohesiveness makes it useful for capping defunct landfills. (And for water retention in Lake Andrews, whose floor, beneath the duck deposits, is marine clay.)

Of course, as mentioned above and below, Maine clay generally makes good bricks. (Morin adds a bit of sand to stabilize its formula.) In the 19th century, brickyards abounded in Maine. According to the Bangor Daily News, the town of Brewer alone had 18 brickyards in the 1870s.

And the “Hate” column? While Presumpscot clay goes into bricks that are good to build with, it’s not so swell as a substance to build upon. Compressed by the weight of a building, highway overpass pier, etc., a clay layer is prone to settling, and unpredictably so. While adding a frisson of adventure to your building project, these qualities often necessitate time-consuming and expensive “soil improvements.”

Prior to the construction of Lane Hall, in 1963, President Charles Franklin Phillips reported to the trustees that “[W]e swallowed hard when informed that the earth formation on the proposed site is such that 144 piles” were needed to support the building’s foundation. Phillips doesn’t say “clay,” but we’re thinking he meant clay.

During site preparation for Kalperis Hall, a couple blocks down the clay deposit from Bonney Science, an initial round of injected soil reinforcements, each resembling a stack of doughnuts, proved inadequate. A second round used a different approach, known as GeoConcrete Columns, which created underground piers with a bulbous, onion-shaped base.

Bonney Science itself, being constructed on clay that’s 50 feet or so thick (thicknesses of 200 feet have been documented in the Presumpscot Formation) required more than 200 so-called pipe piles to stabilize the soil.

“Without that layer of clay, we likely wouldn’t have needed to drive piles,” says Chris Streifel, the Facility Services project manager overseeing the Bonney and previously the Kalperis–Chu Hall projects. “It’s definitely made life more challenging. It’s mucky, messy, and slippery. It’s not a fun substance to work with in general, but that’s the nature of the business.”

Clay is the font of other dubious blessings. It makes a poor bed for parking lots, steam vaults, etc., which necessitates replacing it with more stable soils as part of infrastructure makeovers. Plants don’t thrive in clay, so grounds crews planting a tree or shrub in a new spot will generally “want to put in some good organics and soil in place of clay to get things to root,” says Jay Phillips, director of Facility Services operations.

Then there’s drainage (not). Spring rain and snowmelt can collect in long-lasting puddles on campus that are big enough for the ducks to enjoy. Garcelon Field was infamously damp and mucky until drainage infrastructure was installed, in 1986. “Only the muddy condition of the field, which made it impossible to kick a goal from a touchdown, gave the victory” to the University of Maine, The �ֲ���ý Student griped after a 7-6 Bobcats loss in 1912.

But once water permeates clay, the clay wants to keep it. So Presumpscot Formation clay tends to be wet. Wet clay is plastic (hence the instability) and it’s also, weirdly, both slippery and sticky, depending on which condition will cause the most inconvenience, especially to the people who work closely with it on a job site every day. A Google search on “removing clay from clothes” generated 35,500,000 results.

A smaller but more meaningful number is the estimated count of brick — brick professionals don’t pluralize with “s” — needed to sheathe the walls of the Bonney Science Center: 180,000, project manager Streifel estimates.

The clay for those bricks (sorry, we need the “s”) is coming out of a mine in a field near a stand of trees in Auburn’s Danville neighborhood. And not far from the field is the Morin Brick Company plant.

On a July morning we met Morin’s director of sales and marketing, Jason Lachance, whose family once owned the company and who started in the brickyard when he was 17. Our visit included a drive past the lot where freshly mined clay is rototilled, dried, and stored in heaps; and a distant look at the mine itself.

We couldn’t get close because the dirt road was paved with rejected bricks that keep heavy machinery from bogging down but are too jagged for passenger vehicles.

Two employees of Shaw Brothers Construction, an earthworks contractor in Gorham, Maine, work the open-pit clay mine for Morin. “It’s about 86 acres,” Lachance said. “We’ve been mining there now for approaching 30 years,” with perhaps another five to 10 years of life left in the deposit. Given the need to find clay matching its established processes and customer interests, Morin is already taking steps to secure its next clay source. (The National Brick Research Center, at Clemson University, assays prospective clays for Morin.)

Founded in 1912 and now Maine’s last maker of clay brick, Morin also bills itself as North America’s last manufacturer of “waterstruck” brick. Where most brick is extruded, like dough from a pasta machine, waterstruck is made with the age-old technique of pressing soft wet clay into wooden molds. (“Waterstruck” refers specifically to the use of a jet of water to knock bricks out of the molds. Morin makes extruded as well as waterstruck.)

The many �ֲ���ý buildings cloaked in Morin waterstruck include the 2008 Commons and, on Campus Avenue, Chu and Kalperis halls, for which the company devised an extra-long brick.

“No two waterstruck brick are exactly alike,” Lachance explained. “That irregularity and random event, if you will, combined with a manipulation of flash in the kiln” — extra-hot flare-ups — “yield some wonderful ranges of colors. The �ֲ���ý campus is a perfect example of what can be accomplished with waterstruck brick.”

Not to mention what can be accomplished with waterlogged clay.

“Mid-April will be here before we know it,” says Chris Streifel — and by then it’s likely that �ֲ���ý will have a temporary certificate of occupancy for the Bonney Science Center, which started rising on the south side of Campus Avenue 23 months ago. 

“And then it’ll be mid-June, and we’ll be in the midst of a move-in,” adds Streifel, the Facility Services project manager in charge of the Bonney project. “It’s going to come fast and furious here over the next few months: lots to do to get ready and put all the final plans in place.”

One such plan involves the open space behind the science center. Currently an expanse of mud well-churned by feet and construction equipment, this area is destined for the humble but vital role of parking lot.

To make way for the resumption of site work there, Consigli Construction, the firm managing the building project for �ֲ���ý, will move its team into Bonney Center offices for the remainder of their time on the project. Their portable field office, resembling a manufactured home, will disappear. That could happen by early March.

Most of the glass curtain wall showcasing the Bonney building’s Monumental Stair is in place in this Feb. 4 image. (Geoff Swift/�ֲ���ý College)

On Feb. 1, a crew from O&P Glass has uncrated a piece of glass for the Monumental Stair curtain wall and fastened the yellow vacuum lifter to it. Next, a glassworker will guide the pane as a lift carries it around the corner to its destination. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

With the help of a vacuum lifter that keeps a tight grip on the heavy pane, workers from O&P Glass maneuver a section of glass into place on the Monumental Stair curtain wall on Feb. 1. To the right of the manlift, pieces installed earlier are reflecting nearby blueskin weather barrier.(Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

The foot of the Monumental Stair on Feb. 15, 2021. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Level two of the Monumental Stair. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

The main entrance to Carnegie Science seen from the third level of the Bonney Center’s Monumental Stair. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Known as “gang boxes,” rolling cabinets like the one at right serve as portable offices for subcontractors. A first-floor Bonney Center classroom houses this Enterprise Electric gear. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

A view into a first-floor Bonney Center classroom. The blue membrane protects dry-erase whiteboards. This room will serve as a shared office for subcontractors as the Bonney project enters its final months. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Don’t block the box: Along the ceiling of the Bonney Center penthouse, plumbers routed two copper pipes so as to maintain access to the gray electrical junction box at center. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

An electrican tends to a winch that’s pulling a heavy electrical cable up four stories, from the Bonney Center’s basement to the rooftop mechanical well, where an emergency generator is situated. Thus far the winch is still winding in the rope leader that’s attached to the cable. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Pumps in the Bonney Science Center penthouse will provide cold and warm water to the HVAC system to control air temperatures throughout the building. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

The Bonney Center’s glassy Beacon is a signature feature. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

A view along the north wall of the Bonney building on Feb. 15. The “notch,” aka the building’s main entrance and adjacent glass wall, appears at center. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

With a collapsible bucket and an electrician’s rubber gloves as centerpiece, this view of the Bonney Center’s rooftop mechanical well also shows newly placed metal wall covering, at right. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Removing the portable office “does a few things. One, it frees up space and provides more room to work” in what have been tight quarters around the new building, says Streifel. “It also just sends a signal that we are close to the end of the project — it’s time to start finishing things up.”

Moreover, moving their headquarters into the science center will put Consigli staff right on the front lines at a crucial phase of the project, which is “tough to do in the earlier stages of a project when you don’t have enough interior space” for everybody, Streifel adds. And, of course, it also saves money on the rental fee for the portable office.

Storage containers, supply stockpiles, and other resources now dispersed around the site will also start to vanish soon, as the subcontractors concentrate their resources within the building for the final phase of work. (Perhaps at last we’ll be able to return to the former �ֲ���ý Communications Office location and look for that set of false teeth we left behind.)

While the exact timing of the site work is still being determined, the chores to be done are clear. Notably, the extraction of the field office will clear the way for reconstruction of the pond-like catchment basin in the back corner of the site next to Bardwell Street. That pond will detain storm runoff, thereby preventing surges into the city storm drains. 

In addition, the land behind the science center building needs some excavation and the placement of soils that will serve as a stable subgrade for pavement. 

In addition, Streifel explains, electrical conduits will be implanted to serve exterior fixtures like lights and security equipment. Finally, the manholes that give access to underground catch basins have to be set at their final elevations. “But all of the other stormwater work, the basins, pipes, drains and everything else, that’s all in place at this point.”

MEP–up operations: In the realm of systems Mechanical, Electrical, and Plumbing, “March will be the turn-on date for many things,” Streifel says. 

Coming into view in the basement is the end of erecting and connecting MEP infrastructure, the air handlers, pumps, filtration systems, controls, wires, pipes, and myriad other things that will make Bonney a productive human environment. (One of the most striking things about touring the building the past several months, and not just the basement, has been seeing the sheer amount of hardware shoehorned into ceilings and other spaces.)

But, says Streifel, “practically speaking, we’ve still got a ways to go to get all this fully operational. It will take a couple of months, at least, before we’re feeling like there’s a clean, complete mechanical space in the basement,” not to mention the fourth-floor penthouse, which is likewise crammed with generators, pumps, boilers, chillers, etc.

In fact, while virtually no processes in the world of construction are one-and-done, getting building-scale MEP installations ready for service requires a strict routine of inspections, detailed tests, and trial runs that’s nearly as complex as the machinery itself.

That routine begins with the firm overseeing a construction project — in this case, Consigli. When all the trades involved in a given system have finished their work, Consigli will examine it and test both individual parts and the whole works. Next they’ll bring in the design team, from the Boston architecture firm Payette and the national engineering company BR+A, to take a look. For some systems, Streifel adds, the manufacturer will send a rep to “witness the start-up as part of the warranty procedures.”

Finally, there’s so-called commissioning, the round of examinations that provides ultimate quality control. Provided for the Bonney project by Cornerstone Commissioning of Boxford, Mass., commissioning agents will both witness the preliminary system run-ups and then, themselves, put the machines through their paces.

“In a building like this, it’s a very substantial effort,” Streifel says. “Once everything’s put together, it’ll take a couple of months to work through entirely. And it has already started — there’s already background work that’s being done. They’re gathering information. They’re inspecting things that they can see.”

He continues, “Once construction is fully complete, they’ll come in and do a full wring-out of everything, both individual components and complete systems.” Though fine tuning could continue through the summer or even past the building’s grand opening, in September, the bulk of commissioning will likely be complete by May. 

Sharing the basement with all that technology is the vivarium. Though finishing touches such as data connections and a heavy cleaning are yet to come, construction of the vivarium is essentially complete — even to the point of dumping water on the floors to ensure that the drains work. (Now that’s the kind of technical test that even Campus Construction Update can understand.)

Elsewhere inside Bonney, the first and second floors are about on a par — light fixtures appearing, lots of finished wall paint and flooring (and cardboard protecting the flooring), casework such as counters and cabinets in place, doors and glass panels being installed. Soon, Streifel says, classrooms and offices will be ready to close off as they await final punch-list inspections. “Over the next six to eight weeks, we should see a lot” of such closures. 

And as trades wrap up their work on the lower floors, they’re converging on the third floor. With the entire science center workforce likely at its peak of around 130 per day, the busyness on the third floor alone creates a certain chaotic impression. “But there’s a method to the madness,” as Streifel says.

North face: With three sides of the building looking about done, the Campus Avenue side remains something of a work in progress. And the Monumental Stair, the three-story creation at the main building entrance that will show its face to the world through a wall of glass, remains a focus of attention.

All but six of the 47 panes comprising this so-called curtain wall were installed during early February. But because of limited space around the stairway, those remaining panes, as well as the structure of the building entrance itself, won’t be installed for a while.

“There are things in there that will be hard to get to once that glass goes in,” Streifel explains. “Between the stair and the glass, there’s lighting and some final details to do, and then the final cleanup and painting of the guard rail.” In turn, the last sections of brick on that north exterior wall won’t be laid until the stairway and glass are done.

Meanwhile, at the Nichols Street end of the building, the Beacon curtain wall has been done for weeks — and seen from the street, it’s a beaut — but on the inside looking out, at the moment there’s little evidence of the swell campus views that Bonney inhabitants will eventually enjoy. Instead, all you can see is staging. (Which seems to make some sort of larger statement about the life and times of a campus-construction reporter.) 

Staging dominates the Monumental Stair airspace too (although that didn’t stop us from making our first full descent of the steps during a recent visit — dude descending a staircase, in a sense, but warmly dressed). In both cases, “they’re working on all the stuff that you won’t be able to get to” thereafter, says Streifel. “All the mechanical, electrical, plumbing, fire protection systems that go in the ceiling, and the high walls and all the finishes along the top of the window.”

Can we talk? Campus Construction Update welcomes queries and comments about current, past, future, and aspirational construction at �ֲ���ý. Write to dhubley@bates.edu, putting “Campus Construction” or “Realtors have that ‘staging’ issue too, you know” in the subject line.