Carnegie Science Hall’s freshly overhauled air-handling plant returned to service on Thursday, Aug. 9.

A temporary HVAC unit about as big as a shipping container filled in for Carnegie’s penthouse installation during the three-week project.

“We did some initial testing on Tuesday, and we needed Wednesday to get everything else together,â€� said Chris Streifel, project manager for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Facility Services. “Then at 6 a.m. Thursday, we turned off the temp unit, and never had to turn it back on.â€�

Complete with new fans, behind the louvers at right, and cooling coils, at left, this is the supply air chamber in the Carnegie Science Hall HVAC penthouse. (Doug Hubley/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Posing with our biggest fan, here's the future home of Campus Construction Update, pictured on Aug. 9. (Doug Hubley/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

The folding table and stack of wallboard convey a sense of the counter-like collaboration table that will run between individual workspaces in the new ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Communications Office. (Doug Hubley/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Once the door to Secretarial Services, where legions of seniors turned in their theses, this will become one of two entrances to the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Communications Office. (Doug Hubley/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Lowered from the roof and ready for removal, this construction debris was generated during the overhaul of Carnegie Science Hall's HVAC unit. (Doug Hubley/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Refitted with new fans, coils for heating and cooling air, and other things that we have a harder time explaining, the system is running “just like it should be,� Streifel said this week. Technicians from Thayer Corp. and Dynamic Air Corp. will return next week for fine tuning, aiming to refine and balance the flows of air into and out of the building.

A Cote Corp. crane removed construction debris and tools from the roof of Carnegie Science on Aug. 2. (Doug Hubley/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

“That could help control the air pressure in the building a little more tightly,� said Streifel. “Then we’ll do performance checks to confirm that we’ve hit our goals for what the system can do — how much air can we move through it, how much air can we chill, how much capacity do the new coils have?�

The two new coils, one for warming and one for cooling, use water to alter the temperature of air entering the building. The performance tests make use of instruments that measure airflow through the system, and temperatures of both air and water as they enter and leave the system. A mechanical engineer can use that data to calculate system performance. Streifel points out, though, that early testing suggests the system will meet or beat its goals.

Aside from that, the next couple of weeks will be spent training Facilities Services staff to run and maintain the system, and returning research operations that were relocated for the project to their rightful places. Somewhat later, the advent of heating season will necessitate another round of HVAC tests, as Carnegie is warmed by air from the unit. (The water for the heating and cooling coils is supplied independently of Carnegie’s tap water.)

A duct for incoming air dominates this access space to the Carnegie Science Hall HVAC unit. Photographed on Aug. 9, 2018, shortly before the unit was switched back on after a three-week overhaul. (Doug Hubley/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Over the course of three 70-hour (or more) workweeks, the workers from Thayer and the subcontractors on the HVAC job “were amazing,� says Streifel. “They nailed it — really met every one of our expectations, and more.�

Now you’re in hot water: Carnegie must be blushing from all the attention it’s gotten this summer. Even as Thayer and DAC were going hammer and tongs on the HVAC work, plumbers for Damon Mechanical were wrapping up the replacement and expansion of Carnegie’s hot water service.

As we’ve reported, the goal was to both replace deteriorating pipes and add a whole new pipe complex that would convert the system into a recirculating loop, getting hot water to users faster.

In addition, the hot water storage tank was to be relocated from the first to the fifth floor, moving it near the water boiler. Together again for the first time! And finally, that gas-fired boiler was reconfigured for year-round use, replacing campus steam for making domestic hot water in Carnegie.

Four plumbers piping in Carnegie Hall. (Doug Hubley/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

The tank-and-boiler work was completed in mid-July. Pipe installation and insulation got done during the week of July 30, making hot tap water available for the first time since early June. (Temporary hot water sources had been stationed in a few critical areas.)

Aside from cleanup, the final step here, too, was balancing the system — “adjusting valves so the water flows to the right locations,â€� explained Alan Kelley, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ manager for the project. That balancing act was performed this week.

The project was pleasantly free of surprises. The biggest challenge, if an entirely predictable one, was adjusting pipe courses to fit Carnegie’s crowded utility paths above ceilings, in closets, etc. “There’s just so much congestion with conduits, ductwork, exhaust hoods, and things like that,� Kelley explained.

Pipes and obstructions, Part II: We’ve learned more about an unexpected development in Kelley’s other large-scale summer project, the replacement of underground utilities along North Bardwell Street. We told you about the unmapped telecommunications conduit that forced a change in the routing for a section of new steam main.

As changes in plan so often do (making us dislike them all the more), this produced yet another wrinkle. In the original plan to replace the North Bardwell steam mains, all the old pipes would be abandoned in place. That’s because those pipes have asbestos insulation and removing them would require abatement.

Wouldn’t you just know it: The revised route for the new steam main between Wentworth Adams Hall and Olin Arts Center conflicts with those old pipes. So they’ll need to be yanked out and abated after all. That necessitates enclosing the street excavation with a tent, storing debris in sealed dumpsters, and other precautions. The experts of Acadia Contractors, of Turner, are at it now and should finish before school starts.

Closed since mid-June, this campus roadway providing access to Smith and Adams halls nevertheless opened for limited traffic last week, thanks to a base coat of asphalt applied early in the month. Asphalt pavements usually consist of a base coat and a top coat (which puts us in mind of the : “He’s the most tip-top / Top Coat�).

Grading North Bardwell Street on Aug. 1 prior to paving. (Doug Hubley/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

But in this case, it doesn’t make sense to place the top coat until after the steam work, when the road is buttoned up for good. That will be the most effectual top coat.

Meanwhile, crews from Granite State Curbing Setters of Pembroke, N.H., were around plying their eponymous trade . The new curbs will make a nicer impression than the old concrete parking bumpers, although those do make good paperweights. And speaking of cosmetic touches, a crew from Davis Landscape Co. came up the road from Lisbon to begin work this week.

Phases and stages: Under construction since June, the new extension on the Coram Library porch will provide a much more spacious stage for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ officials to greet the campus community as school begins, just a few weeks hence.

New sod and paving have prettied up the construction site at Coram Terrace. (Doug Hubley/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

With once-and-for-all completion of the Coram Terrace project now scheduled for later in September, as granite pavers are cut to order, the aim in the coming days is to make the porch functional and presentable for Opening Day on Aug. 27 and the Sept. 4 Convocation.

On the presentability front, Davis Landscape has bandaged construction scars with new sod; the construction fence has been removed; and new asphalt has restored Coram’s connections to campus walkways.

Functionality is just about there, too. On Aug. 6, the concrete artists of Sundown Construction Inc. poured a slab that will serve as the terrace floor until granite can be laid over it. We stopped by the following day, but the concrete was already too firm to scratch “CCU� into it and besides, it was covered with burlap that was wetted down periodically.

The Coram Terrace slab shortly after it was poured, on Aug. 6. (Doug Hubley/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

After taking away the sharp stick we had planned to use for our initials, project manager Paul Farnsworth explained that the burlap helps regulate the moisture level in the concrete as it cures. As you’ll recall, maintaining the correct proportion of water relative to other ingredients is key to the chemical reaction that makes concrete strong. The prevailing hot weather made the burlap especially important.

The extension measures 70 by 15.5 feet, and is a little less than 30 inches high. Once a course of 6-inch granite blocks is laid around its perimeter, the newly embiggened porch will make an appealing perch. “It will be a nice place to sit and dangle your feet,� Farnsworth said.

Getting in on the ground floor: The ongoing creation of new quarters for the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Communications Office on Lane Hall’s ground floor has entailed the remaking of several existing spaces that serve the entire building. And those facilities, which include a break room and a lactation room, are on track to reopen by the end of the month.

Shown with our biggest fan, here’s the future home of Campus Construction Update, pictured on Aug. 9. (Doug Hubley/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Accompanied by Project Manager Shelby Burgau, we toured the worksite on Aug. 9. The common facilities were in various stages of near-completion: wallboard up and painted, flooring down, yet still awaiting ceiling tiles and such final touches as switchplates. A trash-staging room and an ADA-compliant bathroom are the other two facilities.

Getting those in-demand spaces back into service has been the top priority in the Lane project. Construction of the BCO area, meanwhile, is on schedule, with completion planned for November. In the month since our last visit, plenty of new wallboard had been hung, taped, and mudded, and there was visible progress on the utilities front that included the outdoor placement of a water chiller for BCO’s air-handling system. (We’re looking forward to hanging around the water chiller and gossiping.)

Providing ventilation for the BCO space, Burgau noted, has been one of the easy parts of dealing with subterranean Lane, which extends back under Alumni Walk and is rumored to include a former fallout shelter. As this section of basement lacks windows but does have a concrete shell insulated by earth, “we don’t have the various heating and cooling conditions that you would normally be working with.�

“That has been one of the biggest factors in this project, and it played into how we designed the HVAC system.�

Can we talk? Campus Construction Update welcomes your questions and comments about campus improvements and 1960s cartoons. Please e-mail news writer Doug Hubley, stating “Construction Updateâ€� or “Close friends get to call him T.C.” in the subject line.

Once the door to Secretarial Services, where legions of seniors turned in their theses, this will become one of two entrances to the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Communications Office. (Doug Hubley/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

“I’m smiling right now,” said Chris Streifel as he conducted Campus Construction Update on a whirlwind tour of labs and classrooms in Carnegie Science Hall. “Things are good.”

Specifically, what was good was the feel of the air in those different spaces. After a few days of fine-tuning to relieve inconsistent and sometimes uncomfortable temperature and humidity, Carnegie’s ventilation system was more or less stabilized by our visit on July 25, itself an uncomfortably muggy day.

Fine-tuning because why? Because Carnegie’s rooftop HVAC plant, which heats, cools, and moves air throughout the building, was shut down for a major overhaul on July 21 and a guest unit was subbed in.

The substitute is hard to miss: a big metal box on a flatbed trailer between Carnegie and Chase, connected to the science hall’s ventilation ductwork by huge fabric hoses that snake down from the roof like a waterfall by Christo.

In the effort to optimize Carnegie’s air since the weekend switcheroo, Facility Services staff, including project manager Streifel, have tweaked airflow controls inside the building, and technicians from the Auburn firm Thayer Corp., mechanical contractor for the overhaul project, have adjusted the temporary unit. By mid-week, conditions were pretty much right.

Climate inside Carnegie isn’t merely a matter of personal comfort: Much of the research undertaken there by ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ faculty and students, some of it representing years of work, could be disrupted by extremes of temperature and humidity.

Even more conspicuous than the big white air ducts on Carnegie’s east facade were the visits from a crane on the Historic Quad side. The Grove-built crane, sent by Auburn’s Cote Corp. and staffed by an operator and three riggers, was here on July 13 and again July 20–24.

In the first visit, the Cote crew lifted HVAC components and tools to Carnegie’s roof and removed, among other things, the three dish antennae that have distinguished the roofline for years. Installed around 1990 to pull in satellite communications such as of foreign-language TV and radio, the antennae were made obsolete by the internet.

The extreme height of the dishes helped Cote determine what size crane to send over. As explained by Dan Cote, vice president of operations, the 90-ton-capacity crane had the reach to pluck off the dishes, but was light and compact enough to leave only fond memories behind — that is, no damage to Quad turf or foliage.

During the crane’s four-day visit, old HVAC components were taken down and their replacements — notably core items like air heating and cooling coils, new intake fans, a replacement motor and blades for the exhaust fan, etc. — were hoisted up. Cote will dispatch the crane to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ one more time to remove tools and debris near the end of the overhaul.

While ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ is no stranger to cranes and rooftop work, Streifel points out that the physical extremes of this project — its height, the weight of components to be craned up, the mechanical complexity — make it a rarity for the college. “You have to think outside the box on ways to attack it,” he says.

With the Drifters crooning softly in the back of our mind, we went up on the roof on the 25th. Situated near the greenhouse, the air handler resembles a small building (albeit with a gaping hole cut one side to accommodate the overhaul). In fact, it’s often referred to as the penthouse (not to be confused with the Campus Construction Update penthouse).

Carnegie Science Hall’s rooftop in July 2018: The penthouse appears at right in this image from the 16th. Collapsible air ducts ready to connect. Cooling coils await installation on the 23rd. (Doug Hubley/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

What route does air take through the penthouse? Outside air, aka supply air, enters on the side facing Coram and Ladd libraries, and is regulated by dampers, like those things that flap in your furnace when the wind blows.

Then the air travels through a series of components for treatment: filters to remove dust, etc., coils that use hot or cold water to adjust the air temperature, and supply-air fans that push it down into the building’s labyrinth of ductwork. Ducts then circulate air back up to the penthouse for expulsion outside by the exhaust, or return-air, fan.

Inside the penthouse, airtight doors isolate the structure’s two working “rooms.” The first air chamber you enter is the supply room. This is where the filters and the heating and cooling coils live, as well as the supply-air fans. Six new fans have replaced the old singleton and are covered with metal louvers, forming a sort of wall.

Behind that wall is where treated supply air enters building ductwork. Right now that space is sealed off with sheet plastic while it serves the rental HVAC machine. If you press your hand on the plastic you can feel the air pressure stiffening it.

At left is the return-air fan; at right is the supply-air chamber in the Carnegie penthouse. Air-heating apparatus is located at right. (Doug Hubley/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

The chamber at the rear of the penthouse is the return room. Here, along with pipes and valves installed at just the right height to gouge a careless visitor’s scalp, lurks the return air fan. Resembling a jet engine from the front, this machine is formidable and deeply embedded in the air handler’s structure. As its housing is still usable, replacing the motor and blades was sufficient for the overhaul.

When we visited, the new filters and heating coil were in place and the cooling coils sat outside on the roof waiting their turn. They are squat heavy units and we didn’t envy the workers who, later in the day, would be using lift tables and a lot of elbow grease to wrestle them into place.

Replacement of the major components is certainly timely — the originals were 28 years old, and a failure of any of them, as Streifel puts it, would have been “catastrophic,” as the building has no backup HVAC. But the immediate impetus for the entire Carnegie HVAC project involved the old cooling coils.

These condense lots of moisture out of the air, and the pan installed to capture and drain that moisture was failing. This led to water leaking into offices and labs below — including a lab we visited where, in a slightly more evolved version of stockpot-under-the-roof-leak technology, a plastic tube ran from a ceiling tile to a sink.

“The pan was replaced as much as possible at one point,” Streifel explained. “But the leaks we couldn’t address were underneath the old cooling coil. To take the coil out is a major operation, and so once you start with that — you’re not going to go in and do that level of work and not replace other aging components.”

With a dozen or two workers on the site up to 12 hours a day, every day, throughout the project, Streifel anticipates that the rooftop work itself will be complete by mid-August. Then will follow a couple of weeks of system-wide testing and tweaking, as well as moving stuff back into the fifth floor that was deranged for the overhaul.

“We’ve gotten through a lot of the hard stuff,” he said. While he’s loathe to rule out surprises that could slow things down, “I feel good about where we’re at and where we’re heading.”

Things to Come, Places to Go: A July 26 directional-drilling project on Campus Avenue provided a portent of the new science building that’s coming to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in 2021.

Consigli Construction, who is managing the science-building project for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, was working with electricians and a drilling crew to tunnel under the pavement. This was the construction equivalent of laparoscopic surgery: Enterprise Trenchless Technologies of Lisbon Falls sent a remote-control drill under and across the street, and pulled a plastic conduit through the tunnel.

Meanwhile, workers from Consigli and Enterprise Electric, also of Lisbon Falls, planted an electrical vault in the vicinity of Chase Hall. The vault and conduit will ultimately route power to the science building.

As we’ve reported, the science building will be located, more or less, where Campus Construction Update is sitting and writing these words. The CCU penthouse on Nichols Street is too small to accommodate the science building, so we’ll be moving to Lane Hall, along with the rest of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Communications Office staff.

A mid-July visit to Lane’s ground floor revealed an expanse of shiny metal wall studs that mapped the intriguing layout of BCO’s future home.

Since 2002, BCO has been divided between two wooden houses on Nichols, with the design and digital ops teams in one and the editorial and photographic teams in the other. So the Lane Hall offices will return the communications team to a unified space — and, in fact, has been designed not just to make cross-function collaborations more likely, but to encourage them.

The emphasis on fruitful collaboration was “one of the main drivers behind the design and something we hope will set the BCO project apart,” says Shelby Burgau, who’s managing the project for Facility Services.

“We recognize the varying work styles and the need to meet with folks outside of one’s office, so a number of different spaces will be provided.”

In fact, the layout will make it all but impossible for BCO staff to avoid each other.

Priority has gone to completing three rooms — a lactation room, break area, and trash-staging room — that serve the whole building and had been taken out of service for the start of the project. Demolition and asbestos abatement began June 4, and the project reached a turning point roughly a month later as framing-in began.

As of July 26, framing was complete, utilities rough-ins were done for the three early-completion spaces, and sheetrocking of those spaces was in progress. They are expected to open to the public at the end of August. BCO will move in mid-to-late fall.

Can we talk? Send your questions and comments about past, current, and future construction at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ to Doug Hubley. Please put “Construction Updateâ€� or “Fine-tuning because why?â€� in the subject line.

“There’s really an art to concrete,â€� said Paul Farnsworth, a project manager for Facility Services, as a mess of the stuff oozed like cake batter out of a truck, down a chute, and into forms in front of Coram Library on July 18.

A crew from Sundown Construction Inc., a local firm specializing in concrete work, was pouring a frost wall to support a slab that will, in turn, support an extension to the Coram Library porch, facing the Historic Quad. The truck discharging the concrete was one of three that day scheduled to deliver, in total, 30 cubic yards.

Although cakes have been served that might suggest otherwise, concrete and cake batter are not exactly the same thing. Still, success for both depends on a precisely executed recipe. In the case of the building material, the ingredients are gravel, sand, water, and cement.

Cake can turn hard because it dries out. But not concrete: Instead, through a chemical process called hydration, the water actually bonds with the cement to create concrete’s rock-like durability.

In front of Coram Library in March 2018, an engineer for S.W. Cole uses a drill rig to collect soil samples for testing. The work was done in preparation for this summer's extension of the Coram porch. (Doug Hubley/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

This mockup of replacement bricks and weatherproofing on Ladd Library shows how metal flashing will protect the wall base all around the Ladd plaza. The duct tape indicates different colors of mortar being considered for the work. The wood blocks to either side keep the brick veneer from cracking. (Doug Hubley/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

As part of applying a new waterproof membrane to the Ladd Plaza deck on July 18, workers for the Massachusetts firm Contracting Specialists Inc. cover a seam in the concrete with fabric. The hot asphalt membrane will go right over the seam. (Doug Hubley/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Concrete masons for Sundown Construction of Auburn, Maine, work fresh concrete into place in front of Coram Library on July 18. (Doug Hubley/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

A view through a waiting area into the testing suite in ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½' new Accessible Education office. (Doug Hubley/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

We watched as the Sundown crew inserted a vibrating rod into the batter — sorry, concrete — to dispel air bubbles that would weaken it. That’s something that needs to be done but can’t be overdone: If you vibrate your concrete too much, you could force water out of the mixture to the surface, compromising the chemical bonding and thus the quality of the finished material.

A representative of the regional engineering firm S.W. Cole also had concrete quality in mind. He took core samples of the mixture to be tested as it cures, which is a relatively gradual process. Cole will strength-test the cores at seven, 14, 21, and 28 days. In this case, “strong� means capable of withstanding at least 4,000 pounds of pressure per square inch.

Concrete masons for Sundown Construction of Auburn, Maine, work fresh concrete into place in front of Coram Library on July 18. (Doug Hubley/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Cole will also break some of the cores: In what sounds like a Victorian criterion of moral character, the way concrete breaks signifies how good a batch it is. The Cole analysts, Farnsworth said, “are my eyes and the architect’s eyes on the concrete.�

Cole is no stranger to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. The company’s tracked, self-propelled drill rigs have appeared on campus a few times during the past year, taking test cores of soil at both the Coram site and, closer to home (ours), here on the outskirts of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Communications Plaza, where a science building is slated for construction.

Something else we took away from the concrete pour was a possibly surprising instance of concrete industry jargon. Farnsworth pointed out panels of stiff foam insulation whose role was sculptural, not thermal. Placing the panels around the tops of the plywood forms served to mold ledges into the frost wall inside and out.

As part of applying a new waterproof membrane to the Ladd Plaza deck on July 18, workers for the Massachusetts firm Contracting Specialists Inc. cover a seam in the concrete with fabric. The hot asphalt membrane will go right over the seam. (Doug Hubley/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

The outside ledge will support a decorative sheath of granite pavers, and the inside one will support the slab. The ledges are called “haunches.�

While, acting on its haunches, Sundown was placing new concrete in front of Coram, a half-dozen or so workers for Contracting Specialists Inc. were around back finishing up the new waterproof membrane on the 45-year-old concrete deck between Coram and Ladd libraries. This is the centerpiece of the entire Ladd Plaza renovation taking place this summer, as the original waterproofing was worn out and water was leaking into the library spaces under the terrace.

Begun last week, the process resembled sealcoating a driveway: pouring hot asphalt (a special rubberized product) out of 5-gallon buckets and spreading it with brooms and squeegees. It looked like hot, heavy, and fumey work.

Peeling up the old waterproof membrane on the Ladd Library plaza on June 25, 2018. (Doug Hubley/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

In the completed areas, a second layer of material had been laid, thick sheets of a protective asphalt fabric. The next step, Farnsworth explained, will be the installation of another waterproofing measure, metal flashing, around all the ground-level brickwork. That will even entail the removal of exterior doors so that flashing can be run right into the entryways.

Water-tightness being the °ù²¹¾±²õ´Ç²Ô-»å’êt°ù±ð of hot-applied rubberized asphalt, how do you test it, short of waiting for rain? One key to quality control is the discerning gaze of the project manager while the membrane is being placed.

More quantifiable is a process is called vector-field mapping, which capitalizes on water’s electrical conductivity: The waterproof surface is moistened, sensors carefully strewn around, a pulsating electrical field created — and wherever pulses are detected where they shouldn’t be, you have a leak.

This fitting is used for pressure-testing new hot-water pipes in Carnegie Science Hall. (Doug Hubley/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Pipe Dreams: The replacement and expansion of the hot-water system in Carnegie Science Hall has resumed after a brief scheduled pause.

The building’s original source-to-spigot arrangement is being replaced with a circulating loop that will deliver hot water to users much more quickly. At the same time, all the original supply pipes, which are becoming leaky, are being replaced.

In the capable hands of Damon Mechanical, the work was completed from the basement up through the third floor. At that point, a time-out was called so that ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ scientists and their students on floors four and five could bring their research to a good stopping point, explains Alan Kelley, who is managing the project for Facility Services.

That’s because the installation comes with ruckus, which doesn’t mix well with scientific research involving delicate equipment, test animals, and mental focus. “We really had to be careful around the fourth and fifth floors from the startâ€� of the project in mid-June, says Kelley, manager of electrical and mechanical services at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½.

Getting ready to place a trench box on North Bardwell Street on July 10. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

But last Friday “we were able to start on the upper floors and really get moving on finishing up the project.�

Kelley is also overseeing the overhaul of underground utilities serving Smith and Adams halls and the Olin Arts Center. As this is written, the water mains have been replaced and new fiberglass liners inserted into old clay sewer pipes, so those of you following along at home can check those off your list.

The third phase of the surgery on North Bardwell Street is the replacement of pipes that conduct steam from the central steam plant around campus to heat buildings — but that undertaking has hit a glitch.

Gone with the flow: With their replacements installed underground, water pipes from North Bardwell Street await removal and recycling on July 10. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

In front of Wentworth Adams Hall, Kelley explains, “we ran into a conflict with a communications duct bank� — a bundle of conduits for phone and data lines — “that’s in the way of where the steam line was going to go.

“As a result, we are actually redesigning the direction of the pipe. We were planning to go straight up the street and then turn and connect to a steam vault� near Olin. In the new alignment, the pipeline will zig under Adams’ front lawn, zag along Adams’ foundation, and thence head to the vault (a concrete box providing access to crucial underground junctures).

“It’s not a huge problem,� Kelley notes. “This duct bank wasn’t identified on our plan, so we didn’t know it was there until we dug it up.�

Steam pipes at North Bardwell Street awaiting installation on July 5. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

The pipe manufacturer will need at least two months to fabricate new elbows for the steam line. (For this kind of pipe, it turns out, an elbow joint that turns left can’t just be flipped over to turn right, as Kelley explains. The joints are designed to flex a specific way under heat and pressure, and are prone to failure if installed upside-down.)

So while North Bardwell will be open by start of school — with a base coat of pavement — and steam will be flowing by start of winter, one more excavation will be needed to finish the steam work. That could push the final paving of North Bardwell into fall or even into next spring.

Done and (Nearly) Done: The installation of a railing across the front of the Alumni Gym stage was the final touch in the renewal of the 1926 gym’s floor and seating. That took place in late June, around the same time the gym was seeing its first hoops action after the rehab — a summer basketball camp featuring a number of alumni standouts as coaches.

The first basketball players to enjoy Alumni Gym’s new floor and seating were participants in a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ basketball camp in late June. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

The gym is being used into early August by the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Dance Festival, which has laid two layers of protection atop the shiny new floor: a rubber mat and a so-called Marley floor, a roll-up vinyl covering commonly used to create temporary dance surfaces.

Designers in the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Communications Office created the wall treatment for the Accessible Education suite. (Doug Hubley/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Meanwhile, back in Ladd Library, the new home of Accessible Education and Student Support is all but ready for occupancy. The last construction was the installation of doors and other finish items early this month. Red Thread brought in the furniture last week. In fact, AESS director Abigail Nelson has moved in, with her two colleagues to join her by September.

So what’s left to be done in this snug warren of offices on Ladd’s ground floor? Touching up the white-and-blue paintwork, carpeting an access ramp, and putting railings across window openings that, when this was the ground floor of the 1949 Coram Library addition, admitted daylight.

Now they afford a view of the stacks and study areas on the ground floor of Ladd.

Can we talk? Send your questions and comments about past, current, and future construction at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ to Doug Hubley. Good cake recipes are welcome, too — and in turn, may we recommend King Arthur Flour’s ?

Please put “Construction Update� or “Cake Recipe� in the subject line. Campus Construction Update returns on July 27.

Active renovation is bringing two Carnegie Science Hall classrooms closer to their new role as settings for the teaching approach called active learning.

The heavier lift has been the makeover of Carnegie 339. Structural demolition that took place during July left the room barely recognizable in early August. Gone are the tiered floor and two partition walls that enclosed a storeroom and projection booth — and yet the curious effect of this volumetric enlargement was to make the room seem smaller.

Room 339 in Carnegie Science Hall is shown on Aug. 9, midway through its renovation. The classroom is being made over to support active learning. (Doug Hubley/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Perhaps that’s because the room was lit only by work lights during our visit. Gone with the floor and wall was the original plaster ceiling, so the permanent room lighting was on hiatus. A suspended ceiling will replace the original.

Speaking of that plaster ceiling, workers found “a lot of stuff” — abandoned materials — concealed by the old ceiling, says Paul Farnsworth. The stuff included wiring for two previous sets of lights, notes Farnsworth, the Facility Services project manager for this and several other room makeovers this summer.

Other evidence of past civilizations was revealed by removing the wooden tiered floor, which had covered a concrete subfloor. Farnsworth and the renovation team had expected to find a disused HVAC opening, which they plugged with concrete. But there was another artifact that came as a surprise.

And here’s Carnegie 339 about a week earlier. (Doug Hubley/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

That was a fire suppression system designed to flood the space under the raised floor in case of a blaze. The component pipes and sprinkler heads — still hooked up — were a surprise to the construction team, as they didn’t appear on any plans and a hatch providing access to them had been blocked off by earlier renovations.

“Fortunately we didn’t damage them when we took the tiered floor out,” Farnsworth says. He adds, “It took a little detective work” to trace back the plumbing that fed the system.

Another vestige of the past will remain in Room 339, albeit concealed. An I-beam is mounted above the space where the instructor’s counter used to be, presumably to hang heavy apparatus from. The beam will stay when the drop ceiling is installed.

Awaiting “node chairs” and whiteboards is Carnegie 225, one of two refitted active-learning classrooms in the science building. The room is seen from a corridor through a new window intended to impart a sense of spaciousness. (Doug Hubley/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

If anyone needs to use it, Farnsworth says, it will be easy to push aside a couple of ceiling tiles to expose and make use of it. “They went to a lot of effort to put it there.”

The structural reconfiguration included the creation of a new main entrance. That doorway is now aligned with the corridor wall, in contrast to the wacky angle of its previous orientation. Because the room’s seating capacity has been reduced, from 53 to 36, the building code also permitted the walling-over of a secondary side entrance.

Farnsworth notes that the wallboard has been hung and primed, and the wiring rough-ins are complete. Finish painting is underway this week, and the new ceiling will be hung soon.

A faculty office in the new neuroscience center in Hathorn Hall. (Doug Hubley/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Completion of the other active-learning classroom, Room 225, is on hold until late this month, at which point whiteboards will be placed around the walls and furniture moved in. In July, a window was cut in a wall to make the room seem more spacious; college designers are now working on a translucent film to stick on the glass and minimize visual distractions from the corridor.

Hathorn Hall is also on Farnsworth’s summer chore list. Essentially complete is the conversion of a large common space for emeriti faculty on the ground floor to a center for neuroscience. Enjoying serene, big-windowed offices in Hathorn since Aug. 1 are neuroscience professors Jason Castro, Nancy Koven, and a new member of the neuro faculty, Michelle Greene.

A fourth room has been remade as Greene’s lab, which includes two isolation booths, and christened the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Computational Vision Lab. (Martin Kruse, another new hire and a joint appointment between bio and neuro, is quartered in Carnegie.)

Christened the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Computational Vision Lab, neuroscientist Michelle Greene’s new neuroscience lab in Hathorn Hall includes two isolation rooms. (Doug Hubley/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Finally in Hathorn, the math computer lab in Room 207 has been upgraded to meet the burgeoning campus demand for desktop computers. Along with new paint, furniture, audiovisual gear, and ceiling, the room was outfitted with 21 new Dells — an increase of six from the previous allotment.

As in Carnegie 339, here too the renovators found a surprise above the old ceiling, which in this case was a suspended one. The surprise was soot that had flaked off a wooden beam scorched in some long-ago fire — perhaps the 1881 belfry fire that threatened ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ library, which was housed in Hathorn at the time. (Students living in Parker Hall got the books out of harm’s way.)

The lab was also upgraded to CAT 6, or Category 6, computer networking cable, which puts the facility on a par with any computer lab at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. The old cabling, says Farnsworth, “was kind of slow for math.”

Can we talk? Campus Construction Update welcomes your questions, reminiscences, and comments about facility improvements. Please email newswriter Doug Hubley, stating “Construction Updateâ€� or “Are you, too, kind of slow for math?” in the subject line.

Fresh concrete plugs a disused HVAC opening in the subfloor of Carnegie 339. The sign covered the hole while the concrete was soft. (Doug Hubley/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Looming large in the facility improvements of summer 2017 is a wave of classroom renovation and office creation across campus.

Much of the work is driven by material considerations, such as a need for more office space.

But two classrooms in Carnegie Science Hall are being made over for a purely academic reason: ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ interest in exploring classroom environments that support so-called active learning. Carnegie 225 and 339 are being used to pilot ideas that might inform the design of the college’s new STEM facility a few years hence, not to mention renovation of existing spaces.

Active learning is an approach to pedagogy that encourages students to participate, er, actively in the acquisition of knowledge, rather than passively absorbing facts from a lecturer — the “sage on the stage.”

The tiered floor, the projection booth at left, and the white wall enclosing a storeroom will be removed in a renovation of Carnegie 339. (Doug Hubley/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Active-learning tactics can be as minimal as questioning students during a lecture and as complex as assigning hands-on projects or role-playing exercises. “It’s a continuum, like many things,” says Lynn Mandeltort, a visiting assistant professor of chemistry with a particular expertise in active learning. (Her methods include asking students to build models of crystalline structures from gumdrops and toothpicks.)

The most extensive makeover is in Carnegie 339, a medium-sized lecture hall. Structural changes are forthcoming (described below), but the updates most relevant to active learning involve furniture and communications technology — high and low.

Previously equipped with 53 plain old tablet-arm desks, the reborn Room 339 will seat 36 at new dual-mode tables: Each table consists of two trapezoidal halves that can be used separately or latched together into a hexagon.

Carnegie 225 on June 14, 2017. To make the room more suitable for active-learning pedagogy, whiteboards will be installed around the walls and the tablet-arm desks will be replaced with node chairs. A window will be placed to the right of the pillar, too, but that’s to make the room seem bigger. (Doug Hubley/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

This flexible design accommodates a variety of classroom activities. With the hexagon form, six students face each other, supporting collaboration. And hexagons fit together neatly to form larger surfaces.

The trapezoids seat three and can be arranged, say, in a big circle to promote group discussions, or in rows to face an instructor or projector screen (or in rows facing away from each other in case the class is grumpy).

“It’s no longer always the traditional lecture style, so we’re trying not to have a front to the classroom,” says Paul Farnsworth, the Facility Services project manager for the Carnegie renovations. So in lieu of one big writing board that everyone’s supposed to focus on, whiteboards will be mounted on each wall, giving every working group a place to sketch and calculate.

While one projection screen will be big enough for the whole room to view, each hexagon table will have its own computer monitor — and, again with the emphasis on flexibility and collaboration, material from any computer in the room can be displayed on any monitor, including the big screen.

Part of a science-technology array in a storeroom next to Carnegie 339, this Hampden direct-current distributor sends DC — of the voltage of your choice! — to outlets in several classrooms to power lab instruments. (Doug Hubley/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

What about that structural work, which began with demolition during the week of June 26?

A Lewiston firm, Randall Swan Building and Remodeling, will level the floor of Room 339, which was originally tiered to afford good views of the sage on the stage. The room entrance, now at an awkward angle in the corridor wall, will be set flush and widened.

Overall square footage will be increased by removing two walls, one that encloses a projection booth (that vanishing species) and a second that sets off a long skinny storeroom.

(When we visited in mid-June, the storeroom housed an intriguing assortment of 20th-century lab technology, such as a Hampden rheostat board that can feed direct current, of variable voltages, to outlets around the third floor to power lab equipment.)

A wooden spectroscope in a storeroom adjacent to Carnegie 339. (Doug Hubley/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Downstairs in Room 225, most of the structural work was done last year, including leveling the raked floor. However, this summer a new window will be installed — not to provide a view, since it’s an interior classroom and the window will overlook the corridor — but simply to make the room seem bigger. Translucent film on the glass will minimize distractions from passers-by.

But the furnishings in 225 will change this summer in support of active learning. Forty “node chairs,” wheeled tablet-arm chairs that permit easy rearrangement of the room, will replace 49 standard tablet-arms.

“We’re adding whiteboards all the way around the walls,” Farnsworth notes. “And adding power outlets all the way around the room because, inevitably, students have to plug in.”

A grant of $150,000 from the George I. Alden Trust is supporting the active-learning renovations in Carnegie. The two rooms will represent, for purposes of contrast and comparison, slightly different approaches to accommodating active learning.

“The project is kind of a test bed,” says Farnsworth, “because we know we’re going to do this again” when ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ builds the new STEM facility and upgrades existing STEM spaces in the not-too-distant future. Faculty and students will be surveyed after the 2017–18 academic year to assess the rooms’ performance.

The built environment, says Mandeltort, is “hugely important” to the efficacy of active learning. “When you have students facing each other around a round table, for instance, you’re changing the dynamic of the room and of the learning experience.

“It’s about them, it’s student-centered, they’re looking at each other. This table is where their ideas will come out, instead of them looking at me as the owner of knowledge.”

This ground floor space in Hathorn Hall is being renovated into offices for the neuroscience program. (Doug Hubley/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Rooms for improvement: ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ needs more office space, thanks to the establishment of the Program in Digital and Computational Studies and the appointments of several postdoctoral fellows supporting faculty and curriculum development.

Accordingly, the first floor of Hathorn Hall is becoming a center for neuroscience with the creation of offices for faculty, who are moving over from Pettengill Hall, and lab spaces.

But even with the neuroscience faculty moving out, Pettengill is still short of offices. So on the first and second floors, departmental lounges are being converted to that use, and other spaces will be remade as replacement lounges.

Finally, in other renovation news, it’s about to become easier to get from Point A to Point B in a big marine biology lab on the fourth floor of Carnegie. Three “peninsulas” — really, really long counters that project into the room — will be replaced with six “islands.”

The peninsulas make navigating the room a tedious proposition. “Everyone’s forced to travel the same long path,” says Farnsworth. “It’s difficult for the instructors to get around” to check in with students.

Can we talk? Campus Construction Update welcomes your questions and comments about current, past, and future construction at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. Write to dhubley@bates.edu, putting “Campus Constructionâ€� or “Which voltage would you recommend?” in the subject line. Or use the 21st-century commenting system below.

Project Manager Paul Farnsworth holds a relic of 20th-century communications media, depicting a physics experiment and discovered in a Kodak carousel in the Carnegie 339 projection booth. (Doug Hubley/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

We’re in Carnegie Science Hall, peering into a vintage display case of stuffed birds.

The nameplate says it’s the Waterman Collection. That would be Willard H. Waterman of Auburn, an avid birder of the early 20th century and a longtime director of the local , which gave the collection to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ many years ago.

The Waterman Collection is in Carnegie Science Hall. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

The bird club is named for legendary ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ professor Johnny Stanton (1834–1918), a polymath who taught ornithology, among other topics, and had a tradition of taking students on

Stanton assembled his own prodigious collection of stuffed birds, and in the photograph below he poses with his birds in Carnegie Science Hall shortly before his 1918 death.

Jonathan Stanton poses with his bird collection in Carnegie Science Hall in this circa 1918 photograph. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)

Most of Stanton’s collection went from ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ to the Maine State Museum around 1980 but a few specimens stayed behind, and they share the Carnegie display case along with Waterman’s birds.

The style of the tag on this common bullfinch, Pyrrhula pyrrhula europoea, indicates that it was part of Stanton’s collection.

This preserved common bullfinch, Pyrrhula pyrrhula europoea, was part of Stanton’s collection. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Though preserved birds are used in ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ classrooms and research today, these older birds aren’t — arsenic was likely used to preserve them.

And while Stanton collected a lot of specimens from around the world (ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ publications of his era say he netted the kestrel in his collection while tramping about the ruins of the Parthenon), his collection never was particularly useful to later researchers. Besides the poison problem, the tags on his specimens all lack dates and locations.

The tag on this Atlantic puffin, Fratercula arctica, is of a different and, perhaps, better style, telling that the bird was taken on July 10, 1949, on Herring Island, famous for its puffins, off Labrador.

Atlantic puffin, Fratercula arctica. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ does maintain a varied collection of bird specimens that are safe for teaching and research, including this snowy owl, Bubo scandiacus

Its tag says that the bird was found dead in 1991 in Rangeley, Maine, and also gives the bird’s weight (1,110 grams) and says that starvation was the cause of death.

Snowy owl, Bubo scandiacus. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

As a healthy snowy owl weighs between 1,400 and 3,000 grams, explains ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Professor of Biology Don Dearborn, finding a bird weighing just 1,100 grams would be a clue that starvation did it in.

Other clues would be a “lack of subcutaneous fat and, more extreme, reduced size of major muscles due to catabolism, when an organism meets its metabolic needs by breaking down its own muscle.”

Catabolism can happen when an animal is badly injured and unable to obtain food.

“A broken wing would do that,” Dearborn suggests. “If the bird could get to a safe perch, it would then slowly starve. A rotten way to go.”

Here’s a red-winged blackbird, Agelaius phoeniceus, native to North and Central America. Like the osprey, red-winged blackbirds can be seen around Lake Andrews, where they nest in the cattails.

Red-winged blackbird, Agelaius phoeniceus. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

In his research, Dearborn and colleagues have used museum specimens to make a discovery about red-wing blackbird feather colors.

They found low levels of the hormone corticosterone in their feathers correlates with brighter red epaulets.

Since bright epaulets attract females, and since birds release corticosterone when they are stressed, it might follow that a stressed male with less-bright epaulets will have trouble finding a mate — which is sad for the male but, under Darwinian thinking, the way it goes.

Here are a few more images of birds in the Woodman display case:

Eastern rosella, Platycercus eximius, native to Australia. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Ending our avian meet-and-greet is this resplendent quetzal, Pharomachrus mocinno, found from southern Mexico to western Panama. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Spruce grouse, Falcipennis canadensis, native to North America. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Common snipe, Capella gallinago, native to northern Europe and northern Asia. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Osprey, Pandion haliaetus, a species that can be found on all continents except Antarctica. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Daylilies frame the 2003 ivy stone on Carnegie Science Hall. In a new tradition, the Class of 2008 stone, designed by Stephanie Higgins ’08 of Beaverton, Ore., will be installed well after its graduation, on Commencement eve 2009, as part of One-Year Reunion festivities for the class. With all spaces on Carnegie Science filled, Pettengill Hall will be the site for the 2008 and future ivy stones.

Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen.

In Kongsfjorden on the west side of Svalbard, Will Ambrose (facing) and Kelton McMahon ’05 haul a dredge to collect Serripes groenlandicus and other clam species for McMahon’s thesis in 2004. Photograph by Glenn Lopez, SUNY–Stony Brook.

Professor Will Ambrose, a bearded biologist specializing in Arctic sea-floor ecology, is a pioneer in the science of deciphering the past — including past climates — by studying the annual hard-tissue accretions of organisms such as mollusks.

As an expert in sclerochronology, Ambrose has discovered a link between Arctic clam growth and regular shifts in the region’s climate. In short, Arctic clams grow more rapidly during regimes of warm and wet weather and less during cold and dry regimes. This sensitivity to climate change, says Ambrose, makes the humble bivalve a “sentinel of climate change.�

While Ambrose is collaborating on no fewer than five clamshell research projects at the moment, the scientific paper that detailed the initial findings of a correlation between climate change and Arctic clamshells appeared in Global Change Biology in September 2006.

Seen here is the cross section of a small portion of aSerripes groenlandicus shell, near the umbo, or hinge. The lines indicate annual growth: dark lines for slow winter growth; light areas indicate fast summer growth. For an image showing the complete shell, click the image above. Will Ambrose has discovered a correlation between growth and climate shifts. This image is a composite of 18 images produced by the College’s new Imaging and Computing Center using a Nikon SMZ 1500 stereo microscope. Collected in 1926, the shell’s actual length is 2.5 inches.

The paper emerged from work done three years earlier, when Ambrose dispatched divers to the bottom of a high Arctic fjord in the Svalbard archipelago, a popular Arctic research site about halfway between the Norwegian mainland and the North Pole. From the ocean bottom, the divers returned with four Greenland cockles (Serripes groenlandicus).

After encasing the shells in epoxy and slicing them apart, Ambrose and a team of scientists, including Kelton McMahon ’05, analyzed the growth bands. First, the team found that growth bands were indeed deposited annually. Then the team was able to correlate annual differences in shell growth with a measurement of Arctic weather oscillations known as the Arctic Climate Regime Index.

“What makes the work exciting,� says Ambrose, interviewed in his cluttered office on Carnegie’s third floor, “is that this is the first time in the Arctic that we’ve been able to track a large-scale climatic oscillation and see that large-scale regional event reflected in animals living on the bottom.�

While scientists have for decades analyzed growth lines in shells (Ambrose and others call them “trees of the sea�) in order to reconstruct past environments, the intensity around climate-change research has “really made the field of sclerochronology take off,� he says.

In this hot field, Ambrose’s research is distinctive for its location, on the Arctic continental shelf. “A lot of the work has been done at lower latitudes, mostly because it’s harder to get clams in the Arctic and there are simply fewer people available to help,� he says. “That’s why we’re ahead of the ball.�

If it’s true that Arctic clams grow faster in warmer weather (and grow faster when there’s less of a seasonal ice pack, another signal that Ambrose saw hints of), a simplistic response might be, “Great — fatter clams for walruses to munch on.� But, explains Ambrose, fat clams won’t offset the problems walruses are having due to less pack ice to rest on. And less ice will also affect tiny creatures inside the ice that are the first link in a food chain for polar cod, seabirds, and seals. And so on, throughout the Arctic food web.

These Serripes groenlandicus clams were collected in Storfjord at a site last visited by 19th-century Russian explorers. Photograph by Greg Henkes '08.

In the end, changes in water temperature and salinity (due to runoff from melting glaciers) and increased sea levels, leading to erosion and turbidity, will all take their toll on the Arctic ecology. “Ecosystems operate at the interface of physics, chemistry, and biology, with both complementary and contradictory interactions,� Ambrose writes in a forthcoming article predicting that “regional, and perhaps global, biodiversity will suffer.�

Until recently, Ambrose researched other organisms of the benthic community, such as bloodworms along Maine’s coast. A simple matter of funding helped bring bivalves into focus, as a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ grant (from the Philip J. Otis Endowment) and an external one (from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute) helped purchase a pricey Isomet low-speed saw for preparing shell cross-sections. “Very expensive,â€� Ambrose says.

In researching the biological response of Arctic bivalves to climate change, Ambrose has depended on the interests and expertise of colleagues and students at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ and abroad.

Geology professor Beverly Johnson, for example, has been invaluable in co-advising biology students so they can learn to use the College’s stable isotope ratio mass spectrometer, a tool to help identify the age and origins of molecules in various materials. Johnson herself has used the instrument to look at amino acids in dinosaur eggs, and it can likewise be used to tease out the chemical components of clamshells.

“I work with Will to understand how modern systems work,� says Johnson, “and then go back to old shells, using the geochemistry of shells from 125,000 years ago to reconstruct the environment.�

Ambrose also depends on Matt Duvall, who directs ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ new Imaging Center, to create elegant microscopic images of his clamshell sections that Ambrose calls “just incredible.â€�

Geology professor Mike Retelle, another Svalbard regular who specializes in reconstructing climates from lake sediments, has collaborated with Ambrose on researching climate-change information from fossilized Ice Age clams.

Beyond the sciences, Ambrose, Johnson, and Retelle belong to an informal North Atlantic Study Group on campus that also includes archeologists Gerald Bigelow and Bruce Bourque, historian Michael Jones, and political scientist Ã�slaug Ã�sgeirsdóttir. What started informal — an interdisciplinary coffee klatsch — has given rise to “North Atlantic Studies,â€� a thematic grouping of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ courses, known as a concentration, under the College’s new general education requirements. “We represent an area of study, rather than just a bunch of us sitting around having coffee,â€� Ambrose says.

“It’s a truly special group,� Retelle adds. “The richness of discussion is such that the boundaries between disciplines disappear. The walls of the box dissolve. Will is a big part of that. As a model for an undergraduate institution, Will has really raised the bar.�

Ambrose himself is quick to point out that “students here are the ones driving the bus in terms of getting the work done.� As he speaks, Greg Henkes ’08 of Chapel Hill, N.C., is downstairs in the environmental geochemistry lab cutting shells and extracting organic material. Henkes’ senior thesis involves a study of 130 years of climate change in the Barents Sea and Svalbard using a historic Russian collection of Serripes groenlandicus. He will present his findings to an American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco.

Greg Henkes ’08, one of Will Ambrose’s thesis students, took this photograph at 3 a.m. on June 3, 2007, as the research shipLance heads through sea ice in Storfjord in the Svalbard archipelago, about halfway between the North Pole and Norway.

“It’s pretty incredible to be able to do this at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½,â€� says Henkes. “It’s the way science is going,â€� says Ambrose of the collaborative nature of scientific enquiry, noting his international partnerships with colleagues at the Norwegian Polar Institute and the research firm Akvaplan-niva. “People aren’t doing their own little thing anymore.â€�

“That’s the way science should be done,â€� emphasizes Kelton McMahon, co-author of the Serripes groenlandicus paper. “In certain circles, it is. But a lot of people come from departments that don’t share data because they feel funding is in direct competition. ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ takes a very progressive approach to interdisciplinary research.â€�

McMahon is now working on his Ph.D. in a program co-sponsored by MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. His contribution to the clamshell research has been to use two gizmos — a New Wave Research UP213 laser ablation system coupled to a Thermo Finnigan Element 2 single collector field inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer — to measure the chemical components of shell samples. Ambrose et al. used changes in the ratio of strontium to calcium to establish that the external lines of the Greenland cockleshells were, in fact, annual growth lines. “If it wasn’t for Kelton getting us access to those machines,� says Ambrose, “the paper wouldn’t have been anywhere near as good.�

As he sits in his Carnegie office discussing his work — Ambrose also hopes to extend his sclerochronology research to coral in part because “they live much longer than clams� — he is eagerly awaiting a new shipment of Svalbard shells that he hopes will solve a quirk in his findings. Until recent years, Ambrose found that annual clam growth was high in years when the extent of Arctic ice pack, as measured each March, was low. But over the last several years, “growth didn’t track ice cover the way it did before. Something happened, but we’re not sure what,� he says. “Are the last four years unnatural? That’s why I want those new clams. It’s another four years of data that will help establish some baselines.� And baselines will help provide more answers, which will probably just beget more questions. It’s the wayscientific inquiry works. “People like simple answers,� Ambrose says. “Nature doesn’t.�

By Edgar Allen Beem

Freelance writer Edgar Allen Beem wrote about the in the Fall 2007 issue of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Magazine.

Professor Lee Rybeck Lynd ’79, a pioneer in the sustainable production of ethanol fuels from abundant, inexpensive and renewable plant materials, gives two public presentations at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College in October.

At 7 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 28, Lynd offers a lecture about ethanol made from cellulosic biomass — plant resources rich in cellulose — and its potential role in a more environmentally sustainable U.S. economy. The event takes place in the Edmund S. Muskie Archives, 70 Campus Ave.

Lynd leads a biology seminar at 4:10 p.m. Monday, Oct. 29, in Room 204, Carnegie Science Hall, 44 Campus Ave.

Both events are open to the public at no charge. The Oct. 28 lecture is sponsored by the biology department, the environmental studies program and the Maine IDeA [cq] Network for Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE). For more information, please call 207-786-6490.

is a professor of engineering science and adjunct associate professor of biological science at Dartmouth. As a researcher, visionary and advocate, Lynd is known for his leadership in finding cost-effective methods for making cellulosic ethanol, which promises to be advantageous over conventional corn-based ethanol in many ways.

Lynd’s achievements were recognized last spring when he received the inaugural $100,000

Along with his Dartmouth commitments, Lynd leads biomass conversion research at a new U.S. Department of Energy-funded biofuels center at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in Tennessee. He is also chief scientific officer and co-founder of the for-profit, New England-based Mascoma Corp., one of several companies with cellulosic ethanol (CE) facilities planned or under construction.