What do you get when a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ biology professor joins a paleobotanist, hydrologist, plant physiologist, and plant anatomist in a research project?

You get the answer to a question that has long vexed scientists: How did ancient aquatic plants adapt to dry-land living?

Co-authored by Professor of Biology Brett Huggett, a paper published recently in the prestigious journal Science explains how one physiological adaptation sparked a major evolutionary shift in plant life on Earth. 

Hundreds of millions of years ago, the earliest land plants developed an internal plumbing system — roots and vascular conduits made of xylem — needed to pull water from soil and then distribute it, along with nutrients, throughout their bodies. 

Still highly vulnerable to drought, these plants, just a few inches tall, had to stick close to water: on the shore, on river banks, and in swamps. Then around 400 million years ago, something happened that allowed their expansion to much drier habitats. “It was a major transition,� says Huggett. “From being completely restricted to wet habitats to being able to colonize drier environments.�

For a century, scientists have known that as plants expanded to dry land, their vascular network of xylem conduits evolved and became more complex. But scientists could never “pinpoint an environmental driver for why that happened,â€� says Huggett, whose research was supported by a competitive Phillips Fellowship from ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. 

Left with assumptions, scientists leaned on coincidence, figuring that as plants got taller, “they became more complex in their growth form: more branches, more leaves, and in turn more complex in their vascular systems.�

But it was no coincidence, as , whose lead author is Martin Bouda of the Institute of Botany of the Czech Academy of Sciences. In fact, plants developed their complex vascular network because of evolutionary pressure, from drought, which in turn allowed them to live and thrive on dry land.

Huggett’s expertise is specifically “how plant vascular systems function under drought,� he explains. To understand that, here’s a primer on how water moves through a plant.

In humans, the heart pushes blood into arteries and then to the far reaches of the body. That’s positive pressure. In a plant, as water exits the plant through its leaves, more water is pulled from the ground through its roots. That’s negative pressure, like a siphon. “Imagine sucking a soda through a straw,� says Huggett.

When a plant dries out during drought, their xylem conduits can develop an air bubble, a blockage — an embolism — that can be just as damaging as an embolism in a human artery. The conduit, which is “essentially a hydraulic rope, snaps. It becomes blocked and rendered dysfunctional.â€� This is known as hydraulic failure. 

If drought conditions intensify, “air bubbles can spread from one conduit to the next, and it can become systemic and deadly to the plant,â€� he says. (There are other ways a plant or tree’s xylem network can be damaged, “like when you see a woodpecker hammering away on a tree, they’re puncturing holes into the xylem network,â€� says Huggett, who maintains, with his students, the Canopy, a comprehensive resource about campus trees.)

In early land plants, specifically seedless vascular plants, the xylem strands were tightly grouped in a cylinder, like a bunch of straws bound by a rubber band. “The conduits were packed right up against one another,� Huggett says. “If you got an air bubble in one conduit, it can then go to several more. Under increasing drought pressure, the embolism can spread exponentially.�

But over time, the plants’ cylindrical strands became “more bifurcated and spread out, and in some species, star shaped,� he explains. This change was helpful: an air bubble couldn’t easily spread systemically because “there’s a restricted amount of conduits adjacent to one another.� In other words, the plants had protection from hydraulic failure during drought.

To test whether this change was driven by evolutionary pressure, the researchers used their expansive understanding of plant life on earth, from hundreds of millions of years ago to today, to examine the anatomy of both extinct land plants and their living relatives.

Huggett and his fellow researchers found that changes had to be driven by evolutionary pressure — specifically a plant trying to protect itself from drought. 

Using microscopy and anatomical analyses of fossils and living plants, tied with measurements of drought resistance in living plants, Huggett and his fellow researchers found that changes in the arrangement, size, and complexity of xylem strands had to be driven by evolutionary pressure — specifically a plant trying to protect itself from drought. 

“Any change in the vascular architecture from that ancestral cylindrical form — any change in getting more complex — led to greater ability to avoid the negative impacts of drought,� says Huggett. With that protection came the ability to live and thrive in dry ground, the previously unknown environmental driver that “allowed plants to then colonize even drier and drier habitats.�

In addition to Huggett and Bouda, the paper’s authors are Craig Brodersen and Kyra Prats of the Yale School of the Environment; Jay Wason of the School of Forest Resources, University of Maine; and Jonathan Wilson of the Department of Environmental Studies, Haverford College.

On a Monday in early November, Associate Professor of Biology Brett Huggett was listening in on the state’s daily COVID-19 briefing, when a term used by Dr. Nirav Shah, director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, caught his attention: ultra-cold storage. 

That day, Nov. 9, Pfizer had just announced extremely positive findings from its early analysis of its coronavirus vaccine. And already, Shah was planning, in what Mainers had come to know as his cautiously optimistic way, to be ready if the vaccine was authorized for use.

“As you note,â€� Shah said to one reporter during the briefing. “It does require ultra-cold storage.â€� Minus 80 degrees Celsius, to be precise, or minus 112 degrees Fahrenheit. 

Many of the other vaccines coming down the pike required cold storage as well, so Shah and his colleagues at Maine CDC and at the Maine Department of Health and Human Services had already been in touch with Maine hospitals small and large, done an inventory, and found that the grand total in the state was five hospitals with such ultra cold freezers. 

The doctor didn’t say it, but that’s five hospitals spread out across a state of 35,385 square miles. The math wasn’t great. Central Maine Medical Center had one of them in its research department but it was small. “Small is a kind word,� said Bruce Campbell ’76, director of pharmacy at the Lewiston hospital. “It was tiny. Two cubic feet.�

As Shah spoke, Huggett thought about his plant samples, nestled in a So-Low ultra-cold freezer in Carnegie Science Hall, The freezers aren’t cheap, usually $10,000 or more, Huggett says, but at colleges and universities where scientific research is a core component, they’re “ubiquitous.� 

COVID-19 vaccines arrive at St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center on Dec. 15, 2020. Bruce Campbell ’76 (in gray suite and tie), director of the pharmacy at Central Maine Medical Center, helps out. The two hospitals are coordinating on the vaccination effort.

Shah told another reporter a tricky thing about the Pfizer vaccine. If it came — that is, if the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved it — the vaccine would arrive in big batches, 975 doses in all.

“Now we have an additional question,â€� Shah said. “Not just whether you have an ultra-cold freezer, but how much space do you have in it? How much can you free up and so forth.â€� 

“Basically I said, ‘Geoff, there’s a need for negative-80 freezers, and I have one that could be freed up completely.’�

Huggett had just in the journal Trees. He and five other scientists, including one of his former students, Emma Dunn ‘17, had been studying the impacts of a fungal pathogen on the Eastern white pine, specifically needle damage and chronic defoliation that already had slowed growth rates in this classic Maine tree.

But what the researchers were focusing on was the impact the defoliation had on the trees’ ability to store non-structural carbohydrates in stems, root, and foliar tissues, and they’d discovered that the trees had prioritized storage over secondary growth.

That’s where the freezers were essential. Whisking samples into an ultra-cold freezer preserves a plant until samples could undergo chemical analyses. And by November 2020, any excess sample material Huggett still had stashed in the freezer was ready to be relocated to a smaller freezer. 

Moreover, Huggett wasn’t using ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ only freezer, there were others in biology as well as some in the chemistry and neuroscience departments.

Huggett emailed Geoff Swift, vice president for finance and administration. “Basically I said, ‘Geoff, there’s a need for negative-80 freezers within the state of Maine and I have one that could be freed up completely,’� Huggett recalls.

“It might have taken me a full 30 seconds to say, after Geoff said, ‘Can you use one of those things?’ for me to say, ‘I’m in the car.’�

Swift took that idea and reached out to the natural science faculty and staff. After assessing what was available, he invited representatives from neighboring Central Maine Medical Center and St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center to come see what ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ could share, five freezers in all — and assess what would be suitable. 

At Central Maine Medical Center, Bruce Campbell had been presuming he’d have to make do with the two cubic foot ultra-cold freezer he had on hand. Nationally, demand for new units has outstripped supply. “If we couldn’t prove that we had the storage ability, then the vaccine would, appropriately, go elsewhere.

“It might have taken me a full 30 seconds to say, after Geoff said, ‘Can you use one of those things?’ for me to say, ‘I’m in the car.’�

Ultimately Campbell asked for two ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ units, a 19-cubic-foot upright from the chemistry department and a 5-cubic-foot chest-style freezer from biology. They were moved from the campus to the medical center earlier this month. 

The freezer Huggett had been using for those white pine tree samples went to St. Mary’s early last week. By this week, the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ units were already being put to use when the two hospitals split a shipment of the Pfizer vaccine. And on Wednesday, Dr. Imad Durra became the first Central Maine Healthcare team member to get the vaccine.

“I love this effort,” says Swift. “The best of quick action by faculty and staff, plus college and community connectivity.” Even the legal part — drafting documents regarding the loan — went smoothly. “All the conversations were, ‘This is easy —we are friendly parties working for what’s best. It’s a small town, and we’re all working together.”

(Also involved in the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ cooperative effort have been faculty members Don Dearborn, Matt Côté, and Nancy Koven, and staff members Sonya Locke and Jonathan Witt.)

Campbell was there as a relieved and grateful witness to the first, extremely welcome vaccinations of Central Maine staff. “It is palpable, when you are standing here, when you are looking at people standing in line and they are just so happy.â€� 

“This partnership is one of the things I have been most proud of,â€� Campbell says. 

After the vaccine injection, there’s a 15-minutes precautionary wait to check for any negative response. As the newly vaccinated staff waited their 15 minutes, Campbell could tell that they were “just sort of reflecting. Their eyes well up.� An anesthesiologist asked Campbell to take a photo of him getting his shot. “Because this is life changing for me,� the anesthesiologist told him.

Campbell is reflecting on the “thoughtfulnessâ€� of the science faculty at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ who were so willing to share, as well as his long relationship with ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, dating back to middle school, when ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ education students came to his classroom to mentor students. “This partnership is one of the things I have been most proud of,â€� Campbell says. 

Across the state, colleges and universities are helping with vaccine storage. Southern Maine Community College, the University of New England, and Colby have all loaned freezers, and Bowdoin, Unity College and the University of Maine system have freezers on standby. 

This is the way institutions and people can step up, Huggett says, reflecting on how, early in the pandemic, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ and other Maine colleges helped with the PPE shortage. 

“It was actually last week on the CDC briefing that Dr. Shah was saying that if we want to get through this pandemic, we really need to think about our community and within our community, and act with best practices and concern for those around us.

“Many of us have been constantly thinking about how we can help out through this pandemic,â€� he added.“This really seemed like an obvious way in which ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ could help.â€�

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ has announced five faculty promotions, including tenure awards, effective for the 2020–21 academic year.

Promoted from assistant to associate professor with tenure are Brett Huggett of the Department of Biology and Geneviève Robert of the Department of Earth and Climate Sciences.

Promoted from associate to full professor are Meredith Greer of the Department of Mathematics, Therí Pickens of the Department of English, and Sonja Pieck of the Program in Environmental Studies.

The promotions were recommended by the faculty’s Committee on Personnel and approved by the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Board of Trustees.

“The words shared by each of these five superb scholars tell a collectively compelling story — of full and intense engagement with the world, with their students, and with the life of the mind, all underscored by great devotion to our college community,â€� says Malcolm Hill, vice president for academic affairs and dean of the faculty. “The cycle of their creativity — teaching energized by scholarship, and scholarship energized by teaching — is displayed in their myriad contributions to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College.â€�

Meet the five newly promoted faculty members, and learn a bit about what being a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ professor means to them.

Associate Professor of Biology Brett Huggett

Appointment year: 2014
Doctoral institution: Harvard University
Fields of research: Physiological and morphological adaptations and/or responses among tree species to stress, plant physiology, plant water relations, carbon allocation, xylem structure and function.

What it means to me to be a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ professor:

From my early years as a jazz musician, to a naturalist for Massachusetts Audubon Society, and now as a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ professor, I have always found immense joy in teaching and inspiring curiosity in others.

In the community of faculty, staff, and students at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, I have found an incredible place to incorporate my passion for plant biology into teaching and research. Working closely with the talented students at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ — in the classroom, lab, and field — I am continually inspired to innovate my teaching and to pursue new questions in biology. The natural surroundings of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ have allowed me to center many of my courses in field-based learning. When not in the classroom or lab, you will find me out and about in the beautiful woods of Maine.

Associate Professor of Earth and Climate Sciences Geneviève Robert

Appointment year: 2014
Doctoral institution: University of Missouri
Fields of research: Rheology, viscosity, silicate melts, experimental petrology, volcanology.

What it means to me be a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ professor:

It’s about empowering students to view themselves as scientists. It’s about learning from my colleagues. And it’s about working towards a common goal.

I love that students come to class with an open mind, ready for a challenge. Working with ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students in the classroom and the lab has made me a better teacher and mentor, and I am constantly challenged, surprised, and impressed by them. ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students have helped me build my experimental petrology research program every step of the way. Together, we’ve assembled and calibrated specialized instruments. We’ve synthesized lava at 3000 degrees Fahrenheit. We’ve measured how fast lava can flow and have co-authored papers. I could not do what I do without ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students, and I feel lucky to be a part of their journey.

I’m lucky to work alongside and learn from brilliant colleagues —in my own academic unit, through research collaborations, and in every single committee I’ve been a member of. There is such a strong culture of support, of sharing resources and expertise, and of community at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. And what I’ve learned from day one is that staff make this place possible for all of us. I’m grateful everyday for their expertise, help, and support.

Professor of Mathematics Meredith Greer

Appointment year: 2002
Doctoral institution: Vanderbilt University
Fields of research: Applied mathematics, mathematical biology, mathematical ecology, mathematical epidemiology.

What it means to me be a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ professor:

It has always been about the people. I chose to work at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ because of the people I met when interviewing here — every single one was friendly, intellectually curious, helpful, and excited about what we could learn together. That has stayed true throughout.

Students regularly go above and beyond the call. On projects, they bring in experiences, coursework, and interests that form combinations only they could have developed. When challenged by new math topics, they inspire me by their engagement, time invested, willingness to try new study strategies, and overall devotion to learning. They build communities and support each other, in the classroom and beyond.

Faculty and staff here are also amazing. There are so many examples of dedication to excellence, solving complicated issues, and taking care of each other. Being surrounded by such enthusiasm and commitment helps my teaching every day. It really is all about the people.

Professor of English Therí Pickens

Appointment year: 2011
Doctoral institution: University of California, Los Angeles
Fields of research: 20th- and 21st-century African American / Arab American literature, African American literature and cultural studies, Arab American literature and cultural studies, Black feminism, cognitive impairment, disability, disability studies, gender studies, literary theory, mental health, physical impairment, spectacular fiction.

What it means to me to be a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ professor:

In the scholarly community, we often wrongly pit research and teaching against each other. I firmly believe that the two are synergistic. In my career, I find that being an engaged scholar allows me to be a better teacher.

In the years between receiving tenure, in 2016, and promotion to full professor, I wrote a book called Black Madness :: Mad Blackness (Duke University Press, 2019); edited a collection, Arab American Aesthetics (Routledge, 2018); edited a special issue of African American Review, “Blackness & Disability� (2017); wrote five articles; and gave dozens of presentations at academic conferences and at colleges and universities the world over. All of that work — centering the theories, ideas, and creative endeavors of Black people, Arab Americans, disabled people — pressed me and others to think more explicitly about how to make a just world.

In doing this work and listening to people in various settings, I became even more convinced that the study of literature, and the humanities writ large, is vitally necessary to our world. These are lessons that we need desperately as we seek to tell better stories about, and do better work in, our current global situation and for what lies ahead.

Professor of Environmental Studies Sonja Pieck

Appointment year: 2007
Doctoral institution: Clark University
Fields of research: Biodiversity conservation, ecological restoration, environmental history, environmental movements, environmental politics, human geography, international development, memory studies.

What it means to me to be a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ professor:

The interdisciplinary spaces of the liberal arts are deeply appealing to me because I love drawing connections between different perspectives, theories, scales, places, interests, groups, and species. I believe environmental problems at their core derive from uneven power relations — among humans but also between human and non-human communities — and we need multifaceted and synergistic approaches to understand them and develop effective solutions.

And my students make some of the most interesting and creative connections of all. They bring curiosity and compassion to the classroom, along with a desire to do good in the world. It is an honor to partner with them in class and on thesis projects and help them become more informed, critically engaged people.

As an interdisciplinary scholar, I’ve long been interested in international and transnational environmental politics. I’ve worked in Latin America exploring environmental activism, especially in Peru and Ecuador, where I spent formative years of my life, and am now focusing my research on Germany, my country of origin. Throughout, I’ve felt supported in my work by the college and by smart, kind, and generous colleagues.

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ continues to be an energizing and inspiring community of students, staff, and faculty.

The students’ assignment: Write an op-ed about lead poisoning in Lewiston-Auburn. Or write a caption for a photo, or text about a campus tree. Write about how strange quantum theory is, or write a competitive book review in Japanese.

Their professors’ goal: Through solid writing, get students to persuade or inform. Help them understand the course material, whether it’s mathematics, environmental studies, or history. Get them to consider their own writing mistakes, or build up to a larger project.

Your assignment: Read about these 10 professors’ all-time favorite writing assignments, which they presented to their colleagues in the fall. What’s your favorite?

Biblio Battle Project

Instructor: Keiko Konoeda, Lecturer in Japanese

Course: “Advanced Japanese II”

Lecturer in Japanese Keiko Konoeda teaches a section of Beginning Japanese I. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Assignment: Each student writes a book review in Japanese, then turns that review into an oral presentation for the class. After each presentation, students discuss the book, and at the end, the participants vote for the book they most want to read. The assignment was inspired by Biblio Battles, a popular form of competition created by researchers at Kyoto University in Japan.

Why she likes the assignment: “I believe in combining writing and speaking, especially in the context of language courses, I also like to make writing assignments not only to develop writing expertise, but as a stepping stone to developing speaking. Many adult learners who learn a language in the classroom tend to develop writing before they become more comfortable in speaking.�

Op-Ed on Lead in Lewiston

Instructor: William Wallace, Lecturer in Education

Course: “The Environment and Social Justice,” First-Year Seminar

Assignment: First, write a two-page essay comparing and contrasting the issue of lead paint in Lewiston-Auburn neighborhoods with the drinking water crisis in Flint, Mich. Then, write a newspaper-style op-ed about the lead paint issue, using an op-ed about the Flint water crisis as an example. 

As they geared up to turn in their final op-eds, Wallace’s students received help from, among others, Karyn Butts of the Maine Center for Disease Control & Prevention; former American Cultural Studies lecturer Christopher Petrella, and Lewiston Sun Journal reporter Lindsay Tice. 

Why he likes the assignment: In their course evaluations, the students “said it was one of the highlights of the semester for them, because they felt like they were learning a new skill they didn’t know before. They knew how to write, but this was a type of persuasive writing that was politically active and important to them.�

Faulty Sentence

Instructor: Myra Wright, Lecturer in English

Course: “Reading Cats & Dogs,” First-Year Seminar

Lecturer in English Myra Wright teaches a section of “The Literary Insect,” her 2017 First-Year Seminar. This fall, she taught “Reading Cats and Dogs” to first-year students. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Assignment: Students submitted a one-sentence analysis of the John Keats poem “To Mrs. Reynolds’ Cat� — but made sure the sentence contained one writing error the professor corrected in previous coursework. The class then discussed each sentence, complimenting each other’s writing, identifying the error, and discussing solutions.

Wright was inspired by Associate Professor of Politics Leslie Hill, who had told her about a similar process of identifying errors with her students.

Why she likes the assignment: “It allows me to be a real stickler but also make more friendly the work of doing excellent editing at an investigative, imaginative, and critical level.�

What Makes an Expert?

Instructor: Adriana Salerno, Associate Professor of Mathematics

Course: “Calculus I” (largely taken by non-math majors)

Assignment: Read “What Makes an Expert?� from Ken Bain’s What the Best College Students Do, then write an essay connecting the reading to your experience of taking the midterm exam. Address which example of an expert from Bain’s chapter resonated with you, the approaches to learning you take, and how you can improve your performance in the class.

Why she likes the assignment: I have so many students who are like, ‘I’m so bad at math, I’m not very good at this, I’m just here because I have to be.’ There’s a lot of that anxiety coming into a class like Calc I. This helps them think of how these experiences can be transferred to other things.  … This kind of work, understanding that writing is also thinking and processing, gets them to do certain things that are really helpful in math.â€�

Natural History of a Tree

Instructor: Brett Huggett, Assistant Professor of Biology

Course: “Dendrology and the Natural History of Trees”

In 2015, Julia Fisher ’16 (right) of Philadelphia and Samantha Purnell ’18 of Portland, Ore., measure a tree on the Historic Quad. Their data was part of a webpage documenting the various species of campus trees. (Josh Kuckens/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Assignment: Photograph and write a short essay about one campus tree species. Then, tag each tree with a small plate indicating the species name, family, and a QR code linking to a webpage with the student’s pictures and natural history essay.

Why he likes the assignment: “Writing is heavily emphasized in biology. Students are well-trained in the structure of scientific writing and the format of abstract, introduction, methods, results, and discussion. I felt there was a niche to create a writing assignment that asked students to write for the general public and step out of the framework of the rigid scientific structure.�

Toward a Philosophy of Nonviolence

Instructor: Stacy Smith, Lecturer in the Humanities

Course: “The Roots of Nonviolence,” First-Year Seminar

Assignment: Having read three texts that influenced Martin Luther King Jr. at the time of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, write a letter to King about these texts, asking King what you want to ask him and saying what you want to say. Use King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jailâ€� or James Baldwin’s “Letter to My Nephewâ€� as a model. Alternatively, write a prose essay using as a model King’s chapter entitled “My Pilgrimage to Nonviolence” from his book Stride Toward Freedom.

Why she likes the assignment: “I am really interested in cultivating student voice. I feel like I was quite successful as a student, and throughout my academic career, writing in a way where I wasn’t really there. What I’m interested in at this stage of my teaching career is cultivating the ‘alive’ human being, within the student and the teacher, in an academic setting. The personal is intellectual, and the intellectual is personal. This assignment is capturing that.â€�

Thinking About a Research Paper

Instructor: Joe Hall, Associate Professor of History

Course: “Maine Environment and History”

Associate Professor of History Joe Hall delivers the 2018 Convocation address in August. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Assignment: In no more than four pages, explain how two works are helping you think about your 20-page research paper. Put the works in dialogue with each other. The grade on the final research paper replaces the grade on this preliminary assignment, if the final paper is better. 

Why he likes the assignment: “The most useful element of the paper as a writing assignment was that it enabled me to tell all of them, because all of them needed to do this, how to use transitions to make an argument that consists of more than one piece. For a research paper, that is absolutely fundamental. Often, the single piece of advice I give my students for all of their papers is, ‘You have a really good summary of this piece and a really good summary of that piece. Tell me why they’re part of the same paper.’ That transition is where your argument is, and now you have an essay.�

Reflective Writing in Quantum Chemistry

Instructor: Lynn Mandeltort, Visiting Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry

Course: “Quantum Chemistry” (mostly upper-level chemistry majors)

Assignment: Write two responses — a paragraph at the beginning of the semester, several pages at the end — to the strangeness of quantum theory, but also accurately describe quantum theory. “Construct concise, specific, logical prose connecting the ideas we have discussed thus far, while tying in your own experience.�

Why she likes the assignment: “In these technically based courses, students can go through the motions and give you an answer and not tell you why it matters or if that answer makes sense. What good is science then? … Writing is something you to do communicate broadly and make sure you understand something in a course like chemistry.�

Lewiston Triptych

Instructor: Jane Costlow, Clark A. Griffith Professor of Environmental Studies

Course: “Lives in Place” (mostly first-year and sophomore non-majors)

Assignment: Read an essay on how nature is embedded in urban spaces, even if we don’t recognize it as nature. Draw or photograph a material object at Museum L-A in downtown Lewiston, and take a picture of “nature� in Lewiston. Caption the photograph with a quote from the essay, and write a 300-word essay that connects the museum object and the photograph, offering a reflection on nature in L-A.

Why she likes the assignment: “These are wonderful essays about Lewiston-Auburn. If there’s not enough writing about Lewiston-Auburn, maybe my students can be doing some of that writing.�

Podcast Guest Profile

Instructor: Michael Sargent, Associate Professor of Psychology

Course: “Searching for the Good Life,” First-Year Seminar

Pictured in 2014, Associate Professor of Psychology Michael Sargent hosts a storytelling event he founded. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Assignment: To prepare for a group project involving making a podcast about an interesting person’s work, write a profile of your subject — focusing not on broad biographical details, but on specific aspects of their work. Develop one or two questions the work raises for you.

For example, students in the group interviewing a former deputy chief of staff to the U.S. Secretary of Defense wrote about such topics as a documentary film the deputy produced, women in the Department of Defense, and artificial intelligence.

Why he likes the assignment: Full disclosure, “this is not my favorite assignment,� Sargent says. “I used to have them write their own eulogy, and I’m really lucky that did not blow up in my face, at least to the best of my knowledge. I’ve dropped that assignment. I’m not taking any more chances.�

This assignment, however, was “writing in the service of some other purpose, and that made it come to life for them. They weren’t just writing for the sake of writing, valuable as it is. They were writing because they saw this as essential to help them get ready for these interviews.�

Way up in a tree on the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ campus, a bird hammered away at the wood on a recent afternoon.

Mindful of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ birding history, I was curious: What species was this rat-a-tapping bird? The possible pecking order, I figured, included two familiar Maine species: the downy woodpecker and hairy woodpecker.

Professor of Biology Don Dearborn, an expert in avian biology, cheerfully ID’d the bird after I showed him a video clip and still image.

It’s neither of those woodpeckers, he said. “It’s a yellow-bellied sapsucker,� he explained, pointing to the black and white mottling on its back “rather than a block of solid white, as with the downy or hairy.�

And, he added, its red throat makes it a male. “Male and female sapsuckers both have a red forehead — though not visible in your photo — but only the males have a red throat.�

You can tell the species and gender of this bird by the red patch on its throat.

The species’ eponymous yellow belly can be “quite variable,â€� he said. “This one appears to have at least a tiny bit, low on its flanks.â€�

The sapsucker’s chosen tree, located in a small stand of mixed conifers at the corner of Nichols Street and Campus Avenue across from the Historic Quad, is clearly a spruce.

I asked Brett Huggett, assistant professor of biology and architect of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Canopy website, which species. “Are its branches hanging down?â€� he asked me. (Yup.) “Then it’s a Norway spruce.â€�

The sapsucker is a migratory bird, so it can seem a bit more rare in Maine than the year-round downy or hairy woodpeckers. As its name suggests, the and feeds on the sap that oozes out.

The yellow-bellied sapsucker was doing his thing in a Norway spruce (center), a species characterized by drooping branches. On left and right are red pines. This stand of conifers is at the corner of Nichols Street and Campus Avenue.

On Dec. 7, Andrew Sheffield, director of brewing at Baxter Brewing Co. in Lewiston, told a group of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students how beer is made.

As he spoke, the processes he described went on around them. The smells of fermenting barley and hops wafted through the brewery. Forklifts and other machinery roared in the background. A conveyor belt deposited cans of Stowaway IPA onto pallets.

The students already knew a thing or two about how beer is made — the brewery tour capped “Plants and Human Affairs,� a 100-level lab course that, according to the course description, shows students how people throughout history have used plants to make “perfumes, spices, medicines, hallucinogens, fermentation products, oils, rubber, textiles, wood, sugar, cereals, legumes� — and intoxicants like beer.

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students taste malted barley as Andrew Sheffield, director of brewing at Baxter Brewing Co., prepares to pass around hops, which he warns are too bitter to eat. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

“We discussed the production of beverages that intoxicate, what plants are used to make those beverages, and the history behind it,� said Assistant Professor of Biology Brett Huggett, who taught the course.

“We learned about hops and the cultivation and processing of barley,” one of the first crops domesticated in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East. The class also discussed human uses of fungi, including yeast.

“The brewery tour seemed like a great end to the semester, a way to tie a lot of the course components together.â€�

At Baxter, they got to see those processes in action. The class took the tour in two groups, each starting in Baxter’s bar, where taproom manager Andrew Bielecki explained the history of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Mill complex in which the brewery is located, the history of Baxter Brewing itself, and the craft beer market in Maine and New England.

Sheffield then told the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ groups about the science behind brewing — how barley is malted, mixed with hops, and fermented with yeast to create beers of innumerable flavors and colors. He passed around a cup of malted barley, which he encouraged the students to taste, and a cup of hops, which he recommended they not taste.

Andrew Sheffield, director of brewing at Baxter Brewing Co., explains the beer-making process and takes questions from students in Brett Huggett’s biology lab course, “Plants and Human Affairs.” (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Around the tour groups, Baxter employees worked, once forklifting a nearly floor-to-ceiling stack of palleted beer cans into the loading bay.

Most of the students taking “Plants and Human Affairs� are not science majors — they took the course as a lab requirement. But the class, with its scientific, social, historical, and economic dimensions, offered something for everyone.

“Learning about the lineages of plants from the ancient world to modern medicine was interesting and not something I ever would have learned about without this course,� said Oliver Farnum ’19 of Marshfield, Mass., a politics and philosophy major. “I also like learning about plants or plant products that I consume now, like coffee, wine, chocolate, and beer, and how they are produced.�

Students pass a stack of beer cans at Baxter Brewing Co. during their tour of the brewery. Baxter taproom manager Andrew Bielecki explained that Baxter brews its beer in cans to protect its product from UV light and air. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Likewise, the brewery tour catered to a variety of interests.

“One of my takeaways was the complex process brewers underwent to get their signature beer,� said politics major Alyssa Alexander ’18 of Lambertville, N.J. “I was really interested in how much thought they put in, from the chemical perspective of ingredients and technique, to the operations of how to get the freshest product to consumers.

“Especially because I know how popular and trendy it is to brew beer right now, it was fun to see people passionate about something make a business and talk about what drives them to do their work daily.�

As ginkgo trees do, the one outside Carnegie Science Hall, across from Chase Hall, shed all its leaves within a few hours on Nov. 9. “It is beautiful,” said Assistant Professor of Biology Brett Huggett, who alerted us.

The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ ginkgo was planted in 2003, and it’s the only one on campus. Bill Bergevin, the college’s landscape architect, chose the species with the faculty of Carnegie Science Hall in mind.

Video of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ ginkgo shedding its leaves on the morning of Nov. 9.

“By my limited knowledge and research, Ginkgo biloba is one of the few species living today of which fossilized records exist,” Bergevin says. In other words, the ginkgo is a “living fossil,” a phrase coined by Charles Darwin, with fossilized examples of the plant dating back some 270 million years.

Thanks to a recent story in The Atlantic, we can say that due to climate change, the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ ginkgo is probably shedding its leaves later and later each year.

that a favorite ginkgo tree at the University of New Hampshire is dropping its leaves around two weeks later than it did in the 1970s. The UNH ginkgo also dropped its leaves on Nov. 9, the morning after a hard freeze in New England (it got down to 19 degrees on the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ campus), and it’s believed that temperature has something to do with the ginkgo’s leaf drop.

Here are then-and-now photos of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ ginkgo, on Nov. 9 and again the next morning:

With the maple now gone, there's a hole in the canopy where the sun comes in. (Jay Burns / ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Lead groundskeeper Mike Adams takes a minute to watch the tree removal on July 29. (Jay Burns / ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

The northern tooth fungus likely created the sugar maple's craggy "hobbit-ness." (Jay Burns / ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Bill Bergevin, the college's landscape architect, takes a look at the final, 20-foot section of trunk that was felled on July 29. (Jay Burns / ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

After sawing through its base, workers from Whitney Tree Service push over the final 20 feet of the sugar maple that toppled on the evening of July 28, 2016. (Josh Kuckens / ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

“The hobbit-ness of it — so gorgeous,� said Professor Emerita of Biology Sharon Kinsman as she watched a local tree service remove a huge, old sugar maple that had toppled over the previous evening, July 28, during a thundershower.

The tree, about 20 feet of which was left standing, was famously gnarled and craggy, with a crack up its side “that you could put your hand all the way into,� said Kinsman, explaining its hobbit quality.

It stood tall about 40 paces from the Quad-side door of Carnegie Science Hall and was about a century old, give or take 20 years, judging from a ring count, though counting was hard due to the aforementioned cragginess.

Call the kids and your inner kid: Log loader, chipper, and chain saws in action, plus a final “TIMBER!”

“That tree had a life…and it supported a lot of life,â€� Kinsman said. One responder to a called the tree an “owl condo.” And when workers toppled the final 20-foot section, not hobbits but bumblebees emerged from its craggy interior.

The bees were “Bombus impatiens, the common Eastern bumblebee, the kind we have in my lab,� says Assistant Professor of Biology Carla Essenberg, who studies the mutually beneficial relationship between  plants and bee pollinators.

So in this relationship, the bees have probably lost a good friend.

The northern tooth fungus likely created the sugar maple’s craggy “hobbit-ness.” (Jay Burns / ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Any number of fungi can rot and weaken a tree, explains Assistant Professor of Biology Brett Huggett, whose research looks at how trees respond to stress.

The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ hobbit tree, he says, was likely infected with the northern tooth fungus. “Its days were numbered.â€�

Another sign of fungus was the large burls on its trunk, “very sought-after by bowl turners because they have beautiful wood grain,� says Huggett, who recalls in Jamaica Plain, Mass., a few years ago.

Lead groundskeeper Mike Adams takes a minute to watch the tree removal on July 29. (Jay Burns / ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

While a wood chipper chewed up the smaller branches (and even some of the larger ones — wow!) right there on the Quad, the huge trunk and branches went away with Whitney Tree Service of New Gloucester.

Some trees that Whitney Tree takes away can be used for lumber, explains company owner David MacDonald, but the poor quality of the fungus-infected tree meant that it will likely be broken up into a biomass product that can be used for erosion control, among other purposes.

Now there’s a big hole in the tree canopy over the Historic Quad, and if the Quad were the deep woods, one tree falling would open the door for new growth.

Bill Bergevin, the college’s landscape architect, takes a look at the final, 20-foot section of trunk that was felled on July 29. (Jay Burns / ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

“That’s forest succession,â€� explains Huggett, who created, with his students, the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Canopy tree resource, featuring a clickable map of the Quad’s trees.

“A fallen tree allows seedlings that couldn’t grow in dense shade to get a foothold and possibly rise up. Or smaller, suppressed trees might have rapid growth when exposed to light and rise up to fill the spot.�

The Quad canopy, however, is a human creation, dating to when founder Oren Cheney and others would plant saplings on the open field that was the early Quad.

With the maple now gone, there’s a hole in the canopy where the sun comes in. (Jay Burns / ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

And the Quad’s tree succession remains in human hands, mostly those of Bill Bergevin, the college’s landscape architect, who chooses a tree for the annual ceremony, right after Convocation, to honor faculty and staff who died the prior year.

Tree succession is about the cycle of life, as is the post-Convocation memorial, which partly explains why Bergevin said what he said as he watched the Whitney guys do their thing. “I know where the memorial tree will go this year.�

Finding an invasive and destructive insect in the woods of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€“Morse Mountain Conservation Area is no one’s idea of good news.

How the insect was found, however, does hit better notes.

Emma Katz ’17 of Holmdel, N.J., records hemlock observations at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€“Morse Mountain on May 14. (Josh Kuckens/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

The invasive insect is the (uh-DELL’-jihd), and it was observed by Assistant Professor of Biology Brett Huggett and his Short Term students on May 14 as they did fieldwork at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€“Morse Mountain, located along the coast in Phippsburg.

“We saw it within about four minutes of entering the area,” says Huggett.

“I strive…to create useful experiences.”

Huggett is leading “The North Woods” this Short Term, a course that reflects his teaching and research interests, “all related to studying how forest trees respond to long- and short-term stress.”

So far during the course, he and his students have tromped all over New England to look at forested habitats from sea level to mountains. “All the forest types we can possibly find,” he says. The only thing he wasn’t able to schedule was a trip to alpine environments. “I was a little worried about snow melt after a long winter!”

In addition to the fieldwork, the course has given his students myriad chances to work with alumni and other experts as well as state agencies and organizations, all of which fits with his idea of what it means to be a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ teacher and scholar.

“I strive to make every effort, on behalf of my students, to create useful experiences,” he says. That approach fits nicely with key ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ initiatives, including Purposeful Work, and the college’s robust culture of community-engaged learning.

At right, Monata Song ’17 of Saratoga Springs, N.Y., observes hemlock trees at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€“Morse Mountain with Alison Ricciardi ’17 of New Vernon, N.J. (Josh Kuckens/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Accidentally brought to the U.S. from Japan in the 1950s, HWA has moved north ever since. It stalled along the Massachusetts–New Hampshire border for a while — cold winters limiting its spread north — but began creeping into coastal counties in the early 2000s.

“There are two hypotheses” about why it keeps moving, says Huggett.  “One, it could be rising winter temps. Or, it could be that as it moves north, the HWA could be becoming more cold-hardy and able to survive.”

The insects are spread by wind. A few years ago, when Huggett was starting his career, in Massachusetts, he noticed that HWA was concentrated along commuter rail lines. “When the trains went by, they’d blow the adelgids down the rail line. They became like infected veins.”

By 2014, HWA in Maine had been observed further Down East than ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€“Morse Mountain, so it was really just a matter of time before it was seen at the conservation area.

The loss of hemlocks to HWA would affect coast ecosystems in a few ways, Huggett explains.

This hemlock branch shows the presence of woolly adelgid. Note the tell-tale white woolly masses on the undersides of the twigs. (Josh Kuckens/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

While hemlock trees are often interspersed with other conifers and hardwood trees, they’re sometimes found in entire groves. At ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½-Morse Mountain, their dense, broad canopies keep the soil below at moderate temperatures. “All kind of habitats depend on hemlock stands,” he says, including vernal pools and season-long habitats for salamanders.

“It would be sad to lose these hemlocks, in many ways.”

This is Huggett’s first year on the faculty, and his very first thesis student, Erica Gagnon ’15 of Weymouth, Mass., did her research on HWA and addressed the tree’s ecological importance. “The hemlock is a foundation species, aiding in the creation of stable conditions on which other species depend,” she writes, including more than 90 species of birds and 40 species of mammals.

“It would be sad to lose these hemlocks, in many ways,” says Huggett, who notes that there’s

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½-Morse Mountain is a remarkably intact and healthy ecological system, notably free of invasive plant species, says ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½-Morse Mountain director Laura Sewall. “But the HWA reveals its inevitable exposure and vulnerability.”

As Huggett planned his North Woods course over the winter, he and Sewall talked about her program needs, two of which were to update a 2002 self-guided nature walk and to look for HWA within the conservation area.

The pest feeds on the base of hemlock needles, “on the stored carbohydrate reserves,” Huggett says. “It depletes the reserves, leading to needle loss, which compromises the photosynthetic capacity of the tree.”

An infected tree can die within 10 years.

Huggett and his group have reported their HWA observations to the state through , an initiative of the Gulf of Maine Research Institute that empowers citizen-scientists to report and share critical environmental information with scientists and managers. (.)

“This is the community-engaged learning part of the course,” Huggett explains, nodding to the college’s tradition of helping faculty partner with local, state, and regional agencies on real-world issues, a tradition fueled today by the Harward Center.

Holding a hemlock branch infested with woolly adeljid, Brett Huggett looks through a telescope at tree canopies at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€“Morse Mountain on May 14. (Josh Kuckens/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Vital Signs has been a key part of the Short Term fieldwork throughout Maine, says Huggett, as he and his students have created so-called Species ID cards to bolster the site’s database. Like baseball trading cards, the online Species IDs cards feature photos of plants or trees plus text that gives key facts and observations.

By working on the Species ID cards, Huggett’s students got a dose of Purposeful Work, the college priority that draws connections between what a student learns in class with post-ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ work and career ideas.

“Community-engaged work isn’t a one-way process.”

This concept was personified by Scott McAuliffe ’99, a member of the Vital Signs team at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute. From McAuliffe, the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students learned how a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ bio major, armed with a master’s in marine resource management and training in multimedia production, now works to communicate and educate the public about research science in Maine.

After ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students contribute their Species ID card to Vital Signs, and after the Vital Signs team curates and posts them, it’s time for various species experts, such as foresters and scientists like Huggett himself, to add value by checking facts.

“There are interactions between students and the experts,” he says. “Student learn how community-engaged work isn’t a one-way process.”

On another occasion, during fieldwork in Grafton Notch State Park, the students got more Purposeful Work insights by meeting Andrew Cutko and Justin Schlawin ’05, ecologists with the .

“They introduced the students to a state forester, who gave us a tour of a timber-harvested site, explaining its importance, how timber harvesting can be done the right and wrong ways,” explains Huggett.

The group also hiked part of the Appalachian Trail with Cutko and Schlawin, who “talked about an incredible project they have going on: fieldwork to improve an aerial image analysis of vegetation types on the entire AT.�

The students got a hands-on taste of what it is like do fieldwork, “but also how a small amount of fieldwork ties into a big picture, like measuring vegetation habitats on the entire AT, which ties to an even larger project to monitor the trail in relation to global climate change.

“Now that’s really cool,” Huggett says.