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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not to mention what can be accomplished with waterlogged clay.

Growing up in coastal Maine, Essie Martin ’21 has seen the effects of climate change firsthand, both on ecosystems and on the communities that rely on the ocean for their livelihoods. 

That experience inspired Martin, a geology major from Newcastle, to study natural science and sparked her interest in aquaculture, a form of food production that, done responsibly, could mitigate the effects of overfishing and climate change. 

Martin will move closer to her goal thanks to a highly competitive Harry S. Truman Scholarship, funding graduate study for students with demonstrated leadership potential and a commitment to public service. 

The federally funded award, sponsored and administered by the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation, provides up to $30,000 for graduate study, as well as leadership training, career and graduate school counseling, and federal government internship opportunities. 

Martin, one of 62 Truman Scholars in 2020, is the first �ֲ���ý student to receive the scholarship since Jay Surdukowski ’02 in 2001. In applying, she worked closely with Robert Strong, lecturer in English and director of national fellowships at �ֲ���ý.  

“Essie has used her time at �ֲ���ý to acquire the knowledge and skills that will advance progress in aquaculture and help her address issues of vital importance to her home state of Maine,” says �ֲ���ý President Clayton Spencer. “These issues are among the most troubling effects of climate change in Maine, where commercial fishing — one of the state’s largest industries — is threatened by rapidly warming ocean waters.”

Martin plans to earn a master’s degree in aquaculture, the farming of marine organisms.  Aquaculture is a broad field: Practitioners could raise fish in specific ocean waters, or in tanks on land or in the water; or grow mollusks on seabeds or on rope; or cultivate kelp. 

It’s an alternative to traditional fishing, which is threatened by a set of intersecting issues. In the Gulf of Maine, not only are , but overfishing over the decades, particularly for , has contributed to decreasing biodiversity. As a consequence, most fishing industry effort tends to focus on a single catch — in Maine’s case, lobster, an industry that employs many of Martin’s high school classmates. 

“The resulting specialization can lead to environmental degradation and make economies more vulnerable to climate change,” Martin says. 

Martin sees aquaculture as a way to fight climate change and to sustain local communities. Growing kelp, for example, “provides income for the fishermen and food for the people on the coast and elsewhere, but then it also helps mitigate climate change by sequestering carbon,” Martin says. “It’s a similar deal with shellfish. Oysters filter the water.” 

That fusion of environmentalism and concern for people’s well-being led Martin to apply for the public service–focused Truman. She hopes not only to develop expertise in ocean science and aquaculture but help governments oversee the industry as it becomes more common. (Maine already supports farmed salmon and mussels, among other seafoods.) 

“In order for aquaculture to be part of the solution and not just another failed project, we really need good policy and good regulation,” Martin says. “That stems from understanding science, systems, and species.” 

That means including fishers, as well as scientists and policymakers, in policy and aquaculture development. 

“It’s really important for everyone to have a seat at the table if we’re going to write good policy,” she says. 

Martin’s undergraduate experience has already given her a strong science and public service background. She developed strong relationships with her professors, gaining classroom and field research experience. 

“It’s really nice to have a small department where you can form individual relationships,” she says. 

One of those professors was Whitehouse Professor of Geology Dyk Eusden ’80. During Short Term in 2019, Martin and two other students teamed with Eusden to map bedrock in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. 

Eusden came to appreciate in Martin the qualities of a future Truman Scholar, including deep and wide-ranging engagement in current issues, ideas, and the world around her, as well as the ability to negotiate the twists and turns of a difficult project.

“Essie showed great interest in our project, had a keen set of eyes for field geology, and was passionate about the progress and map we were making,” says Eusden. 

“It’s really important for everyone to have a seat at the table if we’re going to write good policy.”

“She would often point out to me wildflowers that she knew, discuss politics during the long walk in the woods back to the car from atop the Mahoosuc Range, or tell me stories of her family in Newcastle.” 

Outside the classroom, Martin serves as environmental director for the �ֲ���ý Outing Club, working to minimize the environmental impact of the club’s activities; as a student EcoRep she organizes the twice-yearly EcoService Day. 

She’s also gotten a head start on aquaculture itself, working as a research intern in summer 2019 at a , studying the effectiveness of cultivating oysters in abandoned lobster pounds in Bremen, Maine.

Environmental justice, the idea that environmental policies and initiatives should involve and be fair to all people regardless of race, national origin, or income, has been a vital part of her environmental education. 

It “permeates every level — Commons conversations, classes people are taking, the maps I was making in an environmental studies class,” Martin says, referring to a geographic information systems course that included mapping food deserts, indigenous tribes in Maine, and the damage from the Mount St. Helens volcanic explosion.

Absorbing and exploring these ideas from teachers and peers “have helped me go down this path,” she says. 

Funded by her Truman, Martin hopes to earn a master’s degree in aquaculture, then pursue a doctorate in oceanography, working to advance both the aquaculture industry and the policy surrounding it. 

“It means a great deal that the Truman Foundation believes enough in the research I want to pursue to award me a scholarship and welcome me into the amazing community of Truman scholars,” Martin says.

“Great work, Hannah and Emma!”⁣

That jubilant shoutout came from geology professor Mike Retelle, who posted his congrats right after his honors thesis advisees, Hannah Johnson ’20 of Brewster, Mass., and Emma Wheeler ’20 of Paradis, Norway, submitted their geology theses.⁣

He also included a happy photo of Johnson and Wheeler in survival suits prior to their plunge into a Norwegian fjord last summer.

For �ֲ���ý seniors, the honors thesis is the pinnacle of academic achievement — never more so than this year, as seniors and their faculty advisers had to make the sudden move to remote learning due to COVID-19. Moved from the original March deadline, honors were due April 1.

Despite the disruption, there was continuity: �ֲ���ý professors supporting their advisees.⁣

“Beginning with field work in the Arctic, which involved hiking over rough terrain and riding in small rubber boats in all kinds of weather, Hannah and Emma have been incredibly great to work with — always positive and always thinking,” said Retelle. ⁣

Hannah Johnson ’20 and Emma Wheeler ’20 pose in survival suits during safety training at the University Centre in Svalbard, prior to the start of summer 2019 fieldwork, which entails travel by boat. They’re about to jump into the fjord to test their suits. ⁣(Photograph by Mike Retelle)

The two theses draw on fieldwork that Johnson and Wheeler conducted with Retelle and other scientists in Svalbard, Norway. The former’s thesis looks at “Late Glacial to Holocene Sea Level History of Kapp Linne, Svalbard.” The topic of the latter is “A Hydroclimate Reconstruction in the Changing High Arctic Environment, Linnédalen, Svalbard.”⁣

Johnson sampled boulders on old shorelines with a hammer and chisel to determine the ages of the shorelines and reconstruct sea level during the retreat of the last ice sheet, as the Svalbard ice sheet 20,000 years ago is an analog of what is happening in Antarctica and Greenland today.

“After she came back she worked at the University of Vermont to dissolve the rock samples in hydrofluoric and perchloric acid, wearing hazmat gear,” Retelle explains.

Meanwhile, Wheeler’s project entailed recovering samples from a glacial lake to reconstruct its hydrology. “Her fieldwork required hauling a mooring by hand over the gunnels of a Zodiac boat, and then recovering samples and electronics from the mooring,” Retelle says. 

During summer 2019 fieldwork in Svalbard, Hannah Johnson stands at an outcrop above Linnévatnet, a lake at Spitsbergen, Svalbard. The white quartzite behind her is pockmarked with weathering pits. (Photograph by Mike Retelle)

Wheeler remembers what inspired her to choose geology as a major: a single image.

“After my first year, I remember seeing a picture �ֲ���ý had posted of two students, one standing on the other’s shoulders, inspecting a small, strange-looking bucket on top of a three-legged structure.”

The caption, she recalls, “said something about students doing research in the High Arctic with Professor Mike Retelle. My immediate reaction was, ‘Wow, I want to go there and do that’ — even though I wasn’t even really sure what ‘that’ was!” (She now knows the photo depicted the weather station in the Linné Valley on Svalbard. The bucket records precipitation).

“He is always ready to talk about anything, sediment-related or not!”

“Emma and Hannah are also mentally tough — just ask their coaches,” said Retelle. Wheeler is a three-time NCAA champion with the rowing team and a French translator for a local program that provides legal services for asylum-seekers. Johnson is a swim captain who was part of the team’s record-setting 200-yard medley relay at this year’s NESCACs.⁣

Emma Wheeler ’20 (left) and Inger Marie Aasberg, a student at the University Centre in Svalbard, do geochemical analyses of their sediment cores last September at the R.B. Gilmore XRF lab at the University of Massachusetts. (Photograph by Mike Retelle)

Typically, seniors would upload their theses from the comfort of their campus residence or the library, then celebrate with friends. That part was missing this year, but not the pride of achievement.

“Submitting online from home was not how I envisioned how this project would end,” said Johnson. “But I am still really proud of this accomplishment and incredibly grateful for the thoughtful guidance from Mike throughout this whole process. Not being at �ֲ���ý and having face-to-face interactions was difficult, but Mike quickly replaced those with Zoom meetings.”

“Mike has been an incredible mentor,” Wheeler adds. “Not only has he shared his extensive knowledge of and experience in Arctic geology, but he is always ready to listen to new ideas or think through questions I have presented.

“He also really cares about his students, and is always ready to talk about anything, sediment-related or not!”

A member of the �ֲ���ý faculty since 1988, Dykstra Eusden ’80 is the new Whitehouse Professor of Geology.

Given by the late David C. Whitehouse ’36 and Constance T. Whitehouse in honor of their families, this endowed chair celebrates freedom of expression and inquiry; respect for human dignity; and exceptional teaching, scholarship, and service.

Dyk Eusden explains what the appointment means to him:

As a �ֲ���ý student of the 1970s, I can’t remember ever thinking about who was or who wasn’t a named professor. However, I truly liked my professors, especially the geology faculty who would become my colleagues, the late Roy Farnsworth and John Creasy.

While at �ֲ���ý, what mattered most was playing Ultimate, cross-country skiing, taking geology classes, doing thesis, and enjoying friends. As a faculty member, I’ve begun to notice that the list of named professors includes some of �ֲ���ý’ finest and most dedicated faculty members: professors who have served their majors, colleagues, students, and the college very well.

The deep appreciation I have for being appointed to the Whitehouse Professorship is commingled with the somewhat weird sensation that the college selected me for this appointment.

By way of gratitude, I offer a promise: to keep taking �ֲ���ý students out into the field — traveling by plane, van, kayak, or on foot — to study folds, faults, schists, granites, gabbros, and the many other excellent rocks exposed in the mountains and coastlines, from Yellowstone to Yarmouth Island.

About Dyk Eusden

Dyk Eusden ’80 is an intrepid field scientist who brings his students into the world so they can see, discover, learn from, and record geologic history, whether on Maine coastal islands or in the U.S. West.

He is an expert on regional geologic history and ancient tectonics of the Appalachians, as well as active tectonics in the South Island of New Zealand. A past recipient of the Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching, he involves students as co-authors of papers, research posters, and mapping projects.

A leader in the sciences at �ֲ���ý, he has served as department chair, division chair, and most recently, as co-chair of the STEM Facilities Review Committee that has developed options to meet the needs of current science programs as well as anticipated program growth. In 2017, Eusden and the Department of Geology hosted the New England Intercollegiate Geological Conference.

Professor Emeritus of Geology John Creasy, whose appointment to the �ֲ���ý faculty in 1975 ushered in the thriving modern era for geology studies at �ֲ���ý, died June 21. He was 71 years old.

Creasy earned a B.S. with high distinction in geology from Colorado State University in 1967 and completed a Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1974. He taught briefly at Middlebury College before joining the �ֲ���ý faculty. He retired in 2014.

John Creasy marches in the academic procession at Commencement in 2012. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Creasy’s arrival at �ֲ���ý coincided with seismic shifts both at the college and in the discipline of geology. At �ֲ���ý, he was part of a major expansion of the faculty and an invigoration of the curriculum under President Hedley Reynolds. At the same time, Creasy’s coming of age as a geologist coincided with the field’s embrace of the revolutionary theory of plate tectonics, the idea that the earth’s crust is made of massive plates that can move around.

Against that backdrop, Creasy used the resources at hand, including �ֲ���ý’ relatively new Short Term option and the senior thesis program, to expand and deepen the geology major into today’s highly rigorous program, one emphasizing extensive fieldwork (a tradition fostered by his predecessor, Roy Farnsworth), intensive lab work, and a required two-semester thesis.

David Bailey ’81, professor of geosciences and chair of the department at Hamilton College, was one of Creasy’s early students, and he recalls how the 1973 oil crisis also contributed to making geology “an up-and-coming field of study.” The hiring of Creasy and another young geologist, Patricia Cashman (who would go on to a long career at the University of Nevada in Reno), added to the sense that suddenly, geology at �ֲ���ý was hip.

“My freshman year, I took a geo course on a whim,” recalls Professor of Geology Dykstra Eusden ’80. “Here was this young guy who was so into plate tectonics, which was brand-new. He just captivated me and a whole bunch of other kids.”

Eusden, who was hired by Creasy in 1988, recalls Creasy leading a special-topics course on plate tectonics that involved “reading the brand new peer reviewed papers.” It was more than a thrill, Eusden says, “trying to get our heads around this new global paradigm — it was awesome!”

Near Flagstaff, Arizona, in 2011, on his final Short Term trip to the U.S. Southwest, John Creasy poses next to examples of “volcaniclastic” rock, which has been moved or affected by wind, water, or similar action. (Photograph by Dykstra Eusden ’80)

For many geology students, the excitement of that youth movement — and Creasy’s high expectations as a professor — was felt during excursions far from �ֲ���ý that created, in some cases, lifelong bonds.

Bailey, for example, was a first-year when he took what would become Creasy’s signature course, a five-week Short Term trek to map the geology of the U.S. Southwest. Bailey thought the course would be a lark. Then he got into the van for the trip West.

“But it was so good for me, and I am where I am because of him.”

Driving upwards of 15 hours a day, the 20 students riding in two vans were expected to observe the passing terrain, all the way from Maine to Arizona, and make field notes. “At the end of every day, after dinner and doing dishes, we would have a quiz on the geology of the states we drove through,” Bailey says. “John ran the course like a boot camp in geology.”

And his students loved it. Tall and reserved in manner — the actor James Cromwell could be his doppelgänger — Creasy looked the part of the taskmaster. “We were in awe of him, but his intensity was contagious,” Bailey said. “There was so much respect for him: I wanted to work my butt off to impress John, to achieve for John.”

By 1981, Bailey’s senior year, Creasy had ramped up the department’s thesis program. “My thesis defense at �ֲ���ý was the hardest of my career,” he says. “John brought in a big-name Ph.D. as part of the examining committee, and they put me in my place. My master’s and Ph.D. defenses were love fests in comparison.

“But it was so good for me, and I am where I am because of him.”

A few years ago, several geo majors from that Short Term, joined by Creasy, enjoyed a mini-reunion at an alum’s camp on Sebago Lake. “The geology department was our home at �ֲ���ý, academically and socially,” Bailey says. “When you spend so much time in the lab and in the field together, you bond. That speaks to the power of the �ֲ���ý geology department.”

“His philosophy was to teach to your strength; he didn’t shoehorn us into one area. Thirty years later, I so appreciate that gift.”

Equally powerful was Creasy’s support of the junior faculty members in his department, and he helped them build teaching and research careers by giving them the freedom to follow their interests.

John Creasy poses with geology majors Saebyul Choe ’14 and Sula Watermulder ’14 during a mapping project in the Gilead Quad in western Maine. The two majors had given Creasy the matching blue bandana for the trip. (Photograph by Dykstra Eusden ’80)

“John gave us direction when we needed it, but also allowed us to explore and follow our passions,” Eusden said. “His philosophy was to teach to your strength; he didn’t shoehorn us into one area. Thirty years later, I so appreciate that gift.”

That open-minded approach extends to the department’s hiring practices, says his colleague Professor of Geology Beverly Johnson. When Johnson, whose expertise is in biogeochemistry and paleoclimatology, was hired, �ֲ���ý at the time was actually seeking a hydrogeologist. “But John had the openness to consider candidates like me with other abilities,” she says.

“He was a mentor and friend, almost like an older brother — a calming influence.”

As a young graduate student in the 1980s, Professor of Geology Mike Retelle had a one-year appointment to the geology faculty. His youth and energy showed; as a teacher and researcher, “I was all over the map,” he recalls.

Still, Creasy hired Retelle to a tenure-track position in 1987. “He must’ve known that I could direct that energy,” Retelle says with a shake of his head. “John hired people and let them do what they were best at. He let us rock and roll.”

John Creasy in 2004.

Importantly, adds Retelle, Creasy chose to serve as department chair for long stints in the 1990s, shouldering loads of administrative work as Retelle and Eusden were establishing themselves. “He protected us,” Retelle says. “For me, he was a mentor and friend, almost like an older brother — a calming influence. Every morning, we’d check in with each other. We’d run together. We’d talk about everything under the sun.”

As a researcher, Creasy’s work added to the knowledge of the geologic history of the White Mountains. As a doctoral student at Harvard under the legendary Marland Billings, he studied ancient volcano craters, known as calderas, within the White Mountains. Through field mapping and laboratory analyses, he identified two major periods of volcanic activity 100 to 200 million years ago, associated with the opening of the North Atlantic Ocean.

In 2014, Johnson delivered the traditional retirement tribute at the final faculty meeting of the year. In it, she praised Creasy for “promoting experiential learning and inquiry-based approaches to teaching way before it became popular. His de-emphasis of traditional lectures and emphasis on field-based, hands-on data collection, coupled with subsequent laboratory analysis and interpretation of the data, has influenced the way all of us teach in geology.”

In practice, Retelle recalls how Creasy “gently” taught him how to teach in the field, especially during Short Term. He recalls Creasy marching his group of Short Term students to the rim of a canyon, giving them a brief overview of the wide-open space before sending them down to map the features.

“We sat on the rim watching them move around,” Retelle recalls. “Even from a mile away, by how they moved around you could see the light bulbs go on when they figured something out.”

A walrus skull wearing a �ֲ���ý ski team hat sits on a table in the Carnegie Science Hall office of Professor of Geology Mike Retelle.

“The walrus is a really strange story,” he says.

Retelle and a student found the walrus skull, along with two bowhead whale skulls, while gathering data in 1993 to reconstruct the historical sea levels of beaches on Cornwallis Island, located in the High Arctic of Canada.

The remains were geologically useful because Retelle and his student were doing a lot of radiocarbon dating, which requires “any available organic material,” he says, “and that includes shells and driftwood — and in this case, bones.”

Professor of Geology Mike Retelle found the walrus skull while doing research in the Canadian High Arctic in 1993. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Because they couldn’t bring a whole whale skull home to Maine (it was as big as a kitchen table), they took its inner-ear bones, which are made out of ivory, a compound particularly valuable for carbon dating, explains Retelle.

Back in Maine, they did the dating. “Sure enough, we had a progressive, really nice story of how sea level changed in response to how the land rose up as the heavy glaciers retreated,” Retelle says. “Kind of a cool story.”

But the walrus skull told a different story.

Mike Retelle’s 1993 photograph of the walrus skull as he first saw it in the Canadian Arctic.

Retelle and his student found that skull, including its tusks, on a spot of ancient shoreline about three miles inland from the existing coast and 20 meters above sea level. “We thought the skull would help us date the shoreline, but its radiocarbon age was really different from what the elevation would suggest. It was a strange relationship,” he says.

Turns out, the walrus had walked inland about three miles from shore and died. As old walruses die, they sometimes “get a little bit crazy and go on walkabout. They’ll go somewhere other than the shoreline to die,” Retelle says. So, “his age represented by radiocarbon had nothing to do with the ancient shoreline he was on.”

Retelle recalls how he cut the tusks into slices for carbon dating. He took an old table saw onto the Historic Quad, running an extension cord back into Carnegie Science.

That day, a young biologist was interviewing for a faculty position at �ֲ���ý. “He was another Arctic guy, and I’m out there with dirty clothes cutting walrus bones, which made a hell of a smell. But he said, ‘That’s cool,’ and we hit it off.”

That was Will Ambrose, and he’s been Retelle’s colleague and collaborator for more than two decades. “We’ve worked together on a lot of projects in the Arctic.”

The walrus is now a useful teaching tool that Retelle uses in his climatology class to demonstrate radiocarbon dating in climate reconstruction. And he uses it to explain the superiority of pure ivory over porous mammal bones for carbon dating (the latter collects more modern carbon from lichens and mosses).

Retelle, a hat wearer, has placed many a cap on the walrus. The ski team one is the latest. “It just looks good,” he concludes.

Unplugged from everything except the sky above, students and their professors call it a night at a Madison River campground near Yellowstone National Park on May 17. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ���ý College).

The first two weeks of the year are nearly frenetic as clubs and organizations recruit new members, sports teams get underway, and professors lay out expectations and challenges.

And a lot of this happens as students plug into the �ֲ���ý network.

But what happens when students unplug? For that, we look back to the spring, when 14 students spent a stretch of time offline during their Short Term fieldwork in the Northern Rocky Mountains with geology professors Dyk Eusden ’80 and Geneviève Robert.

Here’s what the 14 had to say about being unplugged. (Hint: they liked it.)

Owen Ahlborn ’19

Physics major Owen Ahlborn ’19 of Providence, R.I., read eight books. “I really didn’t do much reading for pleasure before this, so it’s been sick to just cruise through a bunch of books and to have a bunch of time to do that.”

His list included A Farewell to Arms, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Alive (about the 1972 plane that crashes in the Andes with a team of soccer players), Cooked (by Michael Pollan), The Martian, plus one “that I can’t remember right now.”

Jake Atwood ’19

Jake Atwood ’19 of Natick, Mass., said he had experience going without his phone for extended periods. The Spanish and philosophy double major said that “it’s really good to take a break from technology every once in a while and remember the other things that are important in life. I’ve loved that about this trip.”

Nick Barker ’18

Environmental geology major Nick Barker ’18 of Lancaster, N.H., said he rediscovered the fun of reading before bed. “At �ֲ���ý, we have so much required reading, so I don’t want to read before bed. I just want to sit in bed and relax.”

Plus, he adds, “going to bed when it’s dark and waking up when it’s light has been pretty cool.”

Lindsey Beauregard ’18

Lindsey Beauregard ’18 of Hollis, N.H., said being offline meant “a lot of face-to-face time with people and more time to reflect on what I want to pursue in the future.” The value of those conversations confirmed why she’s “a big fan of not being obligated to check technology every day.”

A neuroscience major, she did a lot of reading for pleasure, and it was “interesting to hear all the recommendations that people have and read their books.” It’s given her an appreciation for “literature as art” instead of being “just what I can get from a story.”

Students play cards in their West Yellowstone campground cabin on May 21 during their Short Term geology trip to the Northern Rockies. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ���ý College)

Jack Doyle ’18

Geology major Jack Doyle ’18 of Mendham, N.J., said that his phone broke so he’d be offline anyway. “I actually really enjoyed it.”

Adelae Durand ’19

Adelae Durand ’19 of Cumberland, R.I., said that her mom was kind of “freaked out” by not hearing from her. “But it’s good to get into the wild and seclude yourself,” said the neuroscience major. Although, she allowed, she was starting to miss home.

“It makes me wonder what my attachment to the news was all about back home.”

Elise Emil ’17

An environmental studies major from Washington, D.C., Elise Emil ’17 said that she had been “addicted” to news about the presidential race before the trip. That was before a data blackout at Craters of the Moon. Since then it had been two weeks, “and it’s pretty nice to be detached. It makes me wonder what my attachment to the news was all about back home.”

Danielle Fournier ’18

Danielle Fournier ’18, an economics major from Sugarland, Texas, said she “broke out the hammock a lot more than I would at �ֲ���ý. Then again, maybe not, since it’s Short Term.”

She valued the time to read: “I picked up a Walmart book for the first time, but I couldn’t tell you what it was.” And she thinks everyone is “talking about what we’re doing” more than they would back on campus.

Ian Hillenbrand ’17

Geology major Ian Hillenbrand ’17 of Terrace Park, Ohio, said that “playing games, spending time with new friends, and having a communal experience without technology have been great.”

Ashley Kulesza ’18

Ashley Kulesza ’18 of Great Falls., Va., valued spending time “reading and journaling.” The geology and environmental studies double major said she “liked being outdoors with minimal distractions, and that includes technology and all that comes with it.”

Sam Rickerich ’18 said he read for pleasure more on the trip than he had the past four years.

Tess Miller ’19

Tess Miller ’19 of Santa Monica, Calif., liked doing more reading because “I’m an awful reader. Let’s hope I keep with it” back home. Away from the screen, she learned “a lot of random bird-watching stuff” from professors Eusden and Robert, along with “knot-tying from other students and weird fun facts.”

Sam Rickerich ’18

Sam Rickerich ’18 of York, Maine, said he read for pleasure more on the trip than he had the past four years. “Four books, maybe five,” said the geology and mathematics double major: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, A Farewell to Arms, “some random book that Hazel [Cashman] gave me, and now I’m working on One Hundred Years of Solitude.”

Sarah Stanley ’16

Environmental studies and politics double major Sarah Stanley ’16 of Springvale, Maine, was impressed by how “a lot of people are powering through books, but me, I’m focused on the disc and the basketball” — taking time to play hoops at the University of Western Montana early in the trip and to throw around the Frisbee at day’s end when they were at campgrounds later on.

Hazel Cashman ’18

And finally, and out of alpha order because her comment is a good way to end, Hazel Cashman ’18 of Bellingham, Wash., said it was good “not having to worry about things that I had convinced myself are important when I was back at �ֲ���ý.”

An anthropology and geology double major, she was surprised that she enjoyed “not having to keep up with all those social responsibilities because “it’s a lot of effort, you know?”

Interviews by Josh Kuckens/�ֲ���ý College.

As geology students did faculty-guided fieldwork in and around the �ֲ���ý–Morse Mountain Conservation Area on Aug. 13, �ֲ���ý photographer Josh Kuckens followed along.

And after a long day looking down at sand, marsh, and water, the young researchers, whose work will inform and guide their senior theses, got a chance to look in a different direction — like up, into the night sky.

9:52 a.m. — Measuring up

At Popham Beach State Park, Nicole Cueli ’16 of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., sets up an a transit, or autolevel, a device used by scientists, builders, and surveyors to measure distances and elevation changes. In the distance at right is Ian Hillenbrand ’17 of Terrace Park, Ohio.

9:53 a.m. — Staff support

Hillenbrand ’17 holds a stadia rod, which is used in tandem with an autolevel to measure the elevation change between two points on the beach.

Geology majors Cueli and Hillenbrand have joined �ֲ���ý geologist Mike Retelle’s long-term work to monitor and evaluate how the area’s sandy beach systems respond to changes brought about by storms, seasonal wave climate, and rising sea level.

9:54 a.m. — Level best at Popham

Cueli uses the autolevel. In her left hand is the geologist’s trusty companion, a yellow field notebook.

10:20 a.m. — Sooner or ladder

As Dana Cohen-Kaplan ’16, of Newton Mass., steadies the ladder, Retelle downloads weather data and time-lapse images from a unit mounted on the west bath house at Popham Beach.

11:28 a.m. — Break time

Back at the �ֲ���ý College Coastal Center at Shortridge, adjacent to �ֲ���ý-Morse Mountain and Popham Beach State Park, the �ֲ���ý researchers break for lunch.

Here, Cueli jokes with Retelle, who is reviewing time-lapse images from the beach, and with  Laura Sewall, who is director of the �ֲ���ý-Morse Mountain Conservation Area and Shortridge.

1:24 p.m. — You can get there from here, but it’ll take awhile

Geology majors Cailene Gunn ’16 (left) of Granby, Conn., and Dana Cohen-Kaplan ’16 of Newton, Mass., secure benches to the top of Gunn’s car before heading out to do fieldwork at Long Marsh in Harpswell.

The distance from Shortridge to Long Marsh is just 10 miles as the crow flies, but it’s 30 miles (and a 45-minute drive) on roads that follow Maine’s infamously zig-zaggy shoreline.

2:22 p.m. — Waist deep in big muddy

Gunn suddenly finds herself waist deep in Long Marsh. “It happens, but it’s not usually this bad,” she says.

Gunn and Cohen-Kaplan have been working with geology professor Bev Johnson to measure the carbon budget of Maine’s salt marshes.

Specifically, they are measuring the amount of methane released by two different salt marshes, the Sprague River Marsh, part of �ֲ���ý-Morse Mountain, and Long Marsh, in Harpswell.

Long Marsh, occupying a long, narrow glacially carved valley at sea level, has experienced restricted tidal flow for decades. As a result, its health has suffered.

3:21 p.m. — Gassing up

In early 2014 a new and wider culvert was installed beneath a road that crosses the marsh.  The wider culvert allows sea water to flood the marsh regularly.

The tactic is working, says Gunn, seen here taking a gas sample from the marsh. “We can actually see the ecosystem beginning to restore itself.”

Taking gas samples is necessary to measure the amount of methane being released from the marsh. Among other things, better tidal flow throughout Long Marsh should help the marsh retain more methane.

While carbon dioxide is the more prevalent greenhouse gas, methane is much more potent as a heat-trapping gas.

3:37 p.m. — Wetlands at work

Tidal marshes are paramount to the overall health of coastal ecosystems. They provide nursery habitat for important fisheries, protect against storm surges, filter out pollutants, and serve as carbon sinks.

Unfortunately, most of Maine’s salt marshes have been anthropogenically altered in some way, and many are in need of restoration to function properly.

7:25 p.m. — Setting the scene

Gunn and Cohen-Kaplan join Adam Auerbach ’16 of Silver Spring, Md., and Nathan Stephansky ’17 of Whitman, Mass., on Hermit Island., about three miles from Shortridge, where they watch the sunset from a spot called the Bath Tub.

The four students, each of whom did fieldwork or related coastal work over the summer, used Shortridge as their home base.

7:43 p.m. — Getting rooted on the rocks

Gunn does some sunset-inspired yoga.

9:16 p.m. — Back to Shortridge

Cohen-Kaplan and Cueli finish off their late supper at Shortridge.

Shortridge was donated to �ֲ���ý in the mid-1990s by John and Linda Shortridge, who had built a retirement home on the land. It has facilities for field research while also supporting other �ֲ���ý activities. Each year, some 25 student groups, representing up to 400 students, use the center.

The center sits on 79 acres of woodlands, wetlands, granite escarpments, and a glacially-scoured pond.

10:03 p.m. — Starry starry night

At night, “the Rock,” an outcropping behind Shortridge that looks out over Meetinghouse Pond, is a dark and spectacular place — a perfect spot to watch the night sky.

Here’s what it is like to spend the summer as a funded research assistant in a �ֲ���ý geology lab that, among many other steps, melts chemical mixes in an oven at temperatures up to 1750 degrees Celsius, or 3182 degrees Fahrenheit.

With the drill press in the background that she uses to take cores from slabs of glass, Paige Guevarra ’18 of Brooklyn, N.Y., is shown in Genevieve Robert’s geology lab. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ���ý College)

Name: Paige Guevarra ’18

Hometown: Brooklyn, N.Y.

Major: Undecided, leaning toward the natural sciences

Summer funding: Science Fellows Program Faculty-Student Grant, part of a �ֲ���ý program giving first-year students a solid introduction to STEM research.

1. Tell us more about your research project.

It’s titled “Synthesis of Mixed-alkali Aluminosilicate Glasses,” and it’s designed to determine how changes in chemical composition affect the heat capacity and viscosity, or resistance to flowing, of certain types of glass.

I’m assisting Rebecca Smith [a rising senior from South Freeport, Maine] with her thesis research and Genevieve Robert [Smith’s adviser, assistant professor of geology, and an authority on factors affecting how molten rock flows].

We’re synthesizing and preparing test samples of glasses with different chemical compositions. And we’re testing the viscosity, density, heat capacity of each sample.

We’re looking to see more clearly the effect that the ratios of sodium, potassium, and silica have on viscosity, and therefore on the properties of magma within the Earth.

2. What are some of the overarching lessons you’ve taken away from this experience?

In the lab, when we’re not actively doing something with our hands, there’s a lot of free time, which I use for reading geology literature about silicate glasses and melts.

“It’s on me to use my time wisely and be productive.”

I realized this is a great chance to learn more about the experiments we are conducting, and that I should take advantage of this opportunity that I wouldn’t have had if not for the Science Fellows program.

3. How is this different from coursework?

I don’t have assignments due, and Genevieve isn’t saying, “Hey, read this, do this.” It’s on me to use my time wisely and be productive. What I’ll be able to take away from this experience will reflect the effort I put into being a part of the lab. This knowledge is giving me more motivation and incentive to engage myself in my work, which I hope will carry on through the rest of my years at �ֲ���ý and in life.

Paige Guevarra '18 of Brooklyn, N.Y., and Assistant Professor of Geology Genevieve Robert. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ���ý College)

Paige Guevarra '18 of Brooklyn, N.Y., pours an experimental glass mixture onto a copper sheet to solidify. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ���ý College)

With the drill press that she uses to take cores from slabs of glass in the background, Paige Guevarra '18 of Brooklyn, N.Y., is shown in Genevieve Robert's geology lab. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ���ý College)

The lab work has given relevance to things that I learned throughout high school about the whole scientific process — having a hypothesis, a purpose, making a clear procedure and documenting everything.

People always laugh, “Do we really have to write everything down?” But you do. When I have to write about this at the end of the summer, or when Rebecca is writing her thesis a year after the first experiments were conducted, we do need to know everything that was done.

4. Genevieve and Becky Smith are serving as mentors to you. How is that going?

Becky is a really good geology mentor, considering that I had very little knowledge of it and she was in the same place not too many years ago. I appreciate her presence as both an older student and friend who is able to offer guidance not only in lab, but also in classes and �ֲ���ý life in general.

Genevieve has guided me through a lot of what we’re doing and explained concepts in a way that I could understand without extensive background knowledge.

Working with them has also shown me where I could potentially go. In a year at �ֲ���ý, Genevieve has created a lab and found students to work in it, and maybe that will be the path I’ll pursue one day.

5. Why would you recommend someone do research over the summer?

It’s your school, and the relationships you build with professors or other students over the summer — whether it’s with people in your lab or in another lab, or other students here in the summer — could really be beneficial.

I’ve been in contact with other student science researchers on campus, but I wasn’t aware how many students on campus are doing things besides science research, such as economics research, working in our art museum, or working in the Lewiston and Auburn communities.