When your laboratory is a closed box, orbiting 250 miles above Earth on the International Space Station, it can be challenging to get a visual on what’s going inside the lab.

That was a problem that Professor of Physics Nathan Lundblad faced as the data from his experiments in the Cold Atom Laboratory started rolling in from the International Space Station a few years ago. 

The equipment was working the way he’d planned when he conceived of the project and pitched it to NASA. Working with NASA to run the experiments remotely from Earth, he and his team had successfully created — for the first time ever — bubbles of ultracold atoms, which earlier physics had theorized could exist but which simply couldn’t be done on Earth, where the rules of gravity won’t allow it.

This huge advancement for science, and win for the Cold Atom Laboratory, known as CAL, was announced in 2022 and this spring led to two exciting pieces of news for Lundblad. The first was that NASA was extending his opportunities to do research in space with a $1.89 million award. Then the agency honored his breakthrough in manipulating atoms by giving him its NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal. 

The space station’s program chief scientist Kirt Costello describes Lundblad’s work as “groundbreaking.â€�

“In the science program, we look for those people who have done investigations in the International Space Station and have also published findings that are really developmental for the field of science overall,� he says.

The new funding also meant that the assignment Lundblad had given one of the students who works with him in the Lundblad Laboratory at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ was going to be more essential than ever. Earlier this academic year, he had asked Kona Lindsey ’23 of Colorado Springs, Colo., to develop software to make it easier to visualize what was happening with those experiments on the space station.

With the data Lundblad pulls in from this lab in the sky, literally hundreds of shots a day when it’s his turn on the shared lab, there’s a lot of analysis to be done. It’s not just about making the bubbles — or spheres — of atoms but understanding the topology of them, how they function and how they can be altered by changing elements of how they are created. 

Lundblad’s “recipes,� tinkered with at extreme low temperatures in microgravity surroundings, include lasers, radio waves, rubidium, potassium, and various options for magnetic and optical trapping. Exploring these variables further is the plan. “But the first thing that needs to happen is, we actually need to sort of visualize it and say, ‘OK, let’s look at and analyze these clouds,’� Lundblad says.

“Historically, I sort of painstakingly loaded each image and pondered it and cycled through it all. But what I asked Kona to do is write a more coherent software package where I can just say, ‘Hey, what did yesterday’s data look like?’ And you can hit a few buttons and yesterday’s data just pops up on the screen nicely organized.�

Lindsey, he says, “exceeded my expectationsâ€� and established a baseline for future ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students to build on. “Another student will continue this work for sure,â€� Lundblad says. “Because you can always make it better.â€� 

If pressed, Lindsey, a physics and math double major with a minor in digital and computational studies, can boil it down to very simple terms, as he did when he was sharing his thesis at this year’s Mount David Summit: “There are pictures that are taken on the International Space Station of these experiments. And those pictures get sent back down to Earth. And I take those pictures and do some math on them.�

But the truth is, the work Lindsey is doing, along with the other physics majors Lundblad has brought into this project, involves complex science of mind-blowing proportions around what’s often described as a fifth state of matter (after solid, liquid, gas, plasma). Even Lindsey’s father, who teaches electrical engineering at the University of Colorado, finds what his son has been working with in the Lundblad Laboratory somewhat hard to grasp. “I think it’s a bit over his head,â€� Lindsey says with a smile. 

The applications for this area of physics aren’t clear yet, but its scientific significance is. This work dates back to atomic behavior that Albert Einstein said in the 1920s he believed could happen — theoretically, at least — but doubted anyone would figure out a way to make it a reality. Those who succeeded some 70 years later became Nobel Prize winners, and today this area of science, revolving around something called the Bose-Einstein condensate, or BEC, is one of the hottest areas of physics research.

The name of the condensate honors the two geniuses behind the theory, Satyendra Nath Bose and Einstein. Bose was a young physicist from India who reached out to Einstein in 1924, sharing a statistical theory he’d developed about photons and asking for help getting it published. Einstein embraced it enthusiastically, made sure the theory was published and then continued building on Bose’s work.

What emerged was a quantum theory that individual atoms could turn into a superatom — many atoms behaving collectively as one — under very cold conditions. And not Maine winter cold, but rather, as close to absolute zero as possible. That’s the lowest theoretical temperature, which temperatures in space come closest to naturally.

But it took the better part of a century — 71 years — to make the first of these superatoms. Einstein probably wouldn’t have been surprised it took that long; when he described the state of matter that would become known as the Bose-Einstein condensate, he concluded with “this appears to be as good as it is impossible.� It’s no wonder the National Institute of Standards and Technology has referred to the quest to produce a BEC as a “Holy Grail.�

Adrian deCola ’23 of Southbury, Conn., a physics major with a minor in digital and computational studies, included a two-page summary of the history from idea to realization in his thesis. “I wanted a hook,� he says. DeCola worked in the Lundblad Lab in summer 2022, modeling and building a laser-driven cooling and purification apparatus for his professor. (Lundblad has two BEC machines in Carnegie, one he’s been running for about a decade and a newer one, under development, that’s meant to more closely mimic the one up in space.) DeCola included Einstein’s long-ago proclamation about what atoms could do, under the right circumstances, as well as that challenge he seemed to issue to future scientists by calling it “impossible.�

It’s been “super cool� to work on components of a scientific inquiry at this high level, deCola says, although he admits, he “had a ton of questions� initially. “I finally get it,� he says. “Sometimes it seemed like I was learning the point as I was doing it.�

Similarly, this was all new and intense material to Elias Veilleux ‘23 of Orono, Maine, when he started doing research with Lundblad in his sophomore year. But by the time he applied for a slot in Princeton University’s electrical engineering doctoral program last fall, he was well versed enough to describe his work in Lundblad’s older BEC machine in Carnegie to his interviewer. He landed a spot at Princeton, and is grateful for Lundblad’s guidance. “He’s been a really invaluable resource,â€� Veilleux said, including in helping him decide whether to pursue a master’s or a PhD., from both an intellectual and financial standpoint.

There are four other U.S. research groups sharing lab time with Lundblad’s team on the Cold Atom Laboratory. (The lab was devised to be something of a “jack of all trades� for scientists studying ultracold atoms, says Lundblad’s co-investigator Dave Aveline, who is based at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.)

Several Nobel Prize winning physicists were involved in the planning stages of CAL, including Eric Cornell and Wolfgang Ketterle, who received their Nobel Prize in 2001 for making the first BECs in 1995, as well as William D. Phillips, who won the Nobel in 1997. When Cornell, Ketterle, and a third physicist, Carl Wieman, won their Nobel in 2001, Physics Today spelled out how little was known about possible applications for BECs. They are “still on the far horizon,â€� the publication noted, but listed off possibilities that included playing a role in quantum computing. That’s possible. But Lundblad promises only more experiments, not outcomes. 

“I don’t see a pipeline in this work toward practical applications,� Lundblad said. “Certainly on maybe a 20- or 30-year time scale. But it’s not immediate.

“We don’t really understand how these laws of quantum mechanics work for objects that are this big, like millimeter-sized objects. We have a guess and we have a pretty good suspicion, but there’s kind of an open question for how it plays out in practice.�

Creating and manipulating spheres of atoms moving together in a lab in space might sound like a very narrow area of inquiry, he says. “But it actually hits some of the areas in fundamental physics where there are open questions. Like, what happens to well-understood physics systems when you squeeze them to be thin instead of thick? What happens if you curve them around on the surface, rather than having them be flat? What happens if they have holes in the middle instead of being continuous? These are all typical physics questions that we all study in our own way.â€�

Space represented the next frontier in the exploration of BECs. Creating a BEC on Earth is now a straightforward thing, but continues to be limited by the forces of gravity. The balls of atoms quickly collapse and flatten. Aveline points out that these spherical groupings of atoms created in “trapsâ€� in space have much more longevity, opening up more time to watch — and tweak — their behavior. “You can get a lot longer in observation time, or as we call it, interrogation time,â€� Aveline says. 

Lundblad’s proposal to NASA a decade ago was inspired by a physicist from Sussex University in England, Barry Garraway, who in 2001 shared a theory about a way to manipulate the atoms into spheres and other hollow shapes using magnetic fields and radio waves. But in the presence of gravity, Garraway’s trick wouldn’t work. 

Lundblad encountered the idea around 2006, when he was doing his postdoctoral work, “playing around with atoms and magnetic fields and radio waves,â€� he remembers. “And you sort of see that idea and you file it away, like, ‘OK, that’s cool.’â€� Then he heard about NASA’s call for proposals for the Cold Atom Laboratory in 2013. “I remember someone saying to me like, Hey, do you have any ideas tucked away that really need microgravity?â€� Lundblad did. 

Bringing it full circle, Garraway has now visited Lundblad at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ twice. “Because I’m a theorist, there is no greater honor than a theorist having their theoretical work starting to be implemented in experimental activity. I mean, that is just so fantastic,â€� Garraway says. On his second visit to campus, Lundblad had just gotten his first results from the International Space Station. The bubbles looked “a little alien-like,â€� Garraway says. 

Lundblad and Garraway may ultimately publish a paper together. In the meantime, the announcement of the $1.89 million in continued funding on the Cold Atom Laboratory means full steam ahead for Lundblad and his co-investigators Aveline and Smitha Vishveshwara at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign, where the grant will support a theoretical physics Ph.D. student.

“The first years were spent laying out some groundwork and techniques and the next step is exploring higher level goals of using that system to study other phenomena,� says Aveline, from a NASA perspective.

Lundblad anticipates that the work he has done and will do on CAL will be his intellectual “meat and potatoesâ€� for more than 10 years. More funding will mean he’ll have the capacity to bring in more students, collaborators, and visiting scientists onto the project (three postdoctoral researchers have worked on the project at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ thus far). â€œI want more of that culture here. I want our students to see more scientists, beyond just their faculty.â€�

 In the meantime, Lundblad has praise for deCola, Lindsey, and Veilleux. “They’re fantastic young scientists who’ve all contributed — in very different ways — to pushing the envelope on this research effort.â€� 

If an atomic physicist like Nathan Lundblad could slip the surly bonds of Earth’s gravitational pull, what kind of experiment would he dream up?

About a decade ago, that very question was posed to physicists around the country when NASA issued a call for proposals to do funded research using a new facility to be installed aboard the International Space Station.

Lundblad, a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ professor of physics, had a research proposal at the ready: He would attempt something never before done on Earth: create tiny bubbles of ultracold atoms.

In response its call, NASA announced in 2014 that it would fund seven research projects, including one headed by Lundblad, to conduct the first experiments aboard the Cold Atom Laboratory, which was launched to the International Space Station, about 250 miles above the Earth, in 2018.

This week, Lundblad and his coauthors published their first research findings, “Observation of ultracold atomic bubbles in orbital microgravity,� in the journal Nature, which is now attracting .

Before we explain the bubbles, we need to explain why they’re important, which has to do with exploring the wonders of quantum physics.

Lundblad’s research looks at what happens when a cloud of atoms become ultracold — near absolute zero, that is. This ultracold cloud of 10,000 or so atoms slow down — way, way down — until they come together “in a blob, or clump,” explains Lundblad.

Large enough to be visible to the naked eye, this blob of atomic gas is known as a Bose-Einstein condensate. Named for Albert Einstein and fellow physicist Satyendra Nath Bose, who correctly predicted their existence in the 1920s, BEC’s are considered a different state of matter from a gas, liquid, solid, or plasma. They intrigue physicists for their quantum properties, such as acting like a wave rather than individual particles, a property called “wave-particle duality.�

Lundblad describes a BEC as a “very special gas, where atoms become blurred out such that we don’t know where the atoms are within the blob.â€� 

The singular achievement reported by Lundblad and his research team in their Nature article is that they’ve successfully made a bubble out of a BEC, “like inflating a bubble from a blob of soap,â€� he explains. “When we blow it up, the bubble’s diameter can grow to a few tenths of a millimeter, larger than the diameter of a hair,â€� and visible to the eye. The sphere is relatively large compared to its thickness, “only a few atoms thick.â€� 

Until now, it’s not been possible to create ultracold atomic bubbles because gravity squashes them. For Lundblad and other researchers, that was a big draw of doing cold atom research aboard the space station: It’s a gravity-free place.

Successfully creating ultracold bubbles didn’t surprise Lundblad, but it was nonetheless still gratifying. “There was really no reason to expect that it wouldn’t work. But it was really nice to see it in action for the first time, and see how the bubble curled up around the sides.â€� 

This series of images shows an ultracold atom bubble being formed inside NASA’s Cold Atom Lab, as part of research led by ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Professor of Physics Nathan Lundblad.

The intrigue around creating and examining an ultracold bubble instead of a basic BEC is “similar to what’s special about doing physics on a curved earth instead of a flat earth,â€� he says. “You can get interesting and counterintuitive effects.â€�

For example, “some theoretical work suggests that if we work with one of these bubbles that is in the BEC state, we might be able to form vortices — basically, little whirlpools — in the quantum material,â€� says Lundblad. “That’s one example of a physical configuration that could help us understand BEC properties better and gain more insight into the nature of quantum matter.â€�

Currently, the ultracold bubbles created in the Cold Atom Lab are not themselves Bose-Einstein Condensates. The bubble becomes a bit too warm to remain a BEC. That’s the next step for Lundblad and researchers, to transition the ultracold gas composing the bubbles to the BEC state and see how it behaves.

Before now, Lundblad would create BECs in an apparatus on the ground floor of Carnegie Science Hall, so the new Cold Atom Lab research represents a sea change in how data is collected and shared in the field of ultracold atomic physics: It can now be done in space, on a shared user facility, “far from a scientist’s home institution,â€� says Lundblad.

But in other areas of physics, “you do your sample prepping at your home institution, then you travel to an X-ray or beamline user facility for a week, then you come back to your home institution. The science is done in a shared facility.â€� For example, Lundblad points out that his colleague Aleks Diamond-Stanic “doesn’t own the Hubble space telescope but he applies for time to use it. It’s a user facility.â€�

“I’ll get text messages with screen shots of images when I’m putting the kids to bed,� says Lundblad. “That’s cool.�

“Part of what’s neat about this project is that it started out with, ‘What if we could create an atomic physics user facility? And that’s what the Cold Atom Lab is doing here,â€� he said.

Lundblad gets access to the Cold Atom Lab for several days every few weeks. He communicates with the Jet Propulsion Lab in California, which executes what Lundblad outlines. (The astronauts aboard the space station are not involved.) 

The experiments are run during business hours at JPL, so the data starts coming in later in the day. “I’ll get text messages with screen shots of images when I’m putting the kids to bed,� says Lundblad. “That’s cool.�

“The BEC machine in Carnegie has been running for five or six years. It’s like an extension of my senses. I just know everything about it.�

Lundbland could tell when the Carnegie BEC wasn’t working right, and he’d mention it to a student, who’d ask, “How do you know that?â€� And Lundblad would say,  “It just doesn’t sound right.â€� 

Now, working with the Cold Atom Lab, circling the Earth a couple hundred miles above the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ campus, “you don’t have that direct experience, so that’s a bit stressful.

With this advance in science, Lundblad knows he’s said goodbye to a more hands-on era of his work. “It’s just a new way of doing things.â€�

Netflix options ‘Friday Night Lights’-like soccer story ‘One Goal’ — The Hollywood Reporter

and the reported that Netflix has bought the rights to One Goal by Amy Bass ’92.

The book, whose publication in February gained national attention, tells the story of the Lewiston High School boys soccer team, comprising mostly immigrants from Somalia and other African countries, that won the 2015 Maine state championship.

During a visit to Maine Immigrant and Refugee Services in Lewiston in March, Amy Bass ’92 talks to Shobow Saban, a Lewiston High School graduate and key figure in her book, One Goal.  (Daryn Slover/Sun Journal)

Bass cautioned that a book’s optioning does not necessarily mean it will be produced — but she said the story of the LHS soccer team is an important one to tell.

“It’s very much about Lewiston being a microcosm of bigger things happening right now,� she told the Press Herald. “Communities that come together don’t always stay together. It takes a lot of work.�

Baxter State Park, home of Mount Katahdin, gets new director — Portland Press Herald

The , the , and reported that Eben Sypitkowski ’05 will become the newest director of Baxter State Park, which contains Mount Katahdin, Maine’s highest peak.

An environmental studies major at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ who studied coastal bloodworm digging for his honors thesis, Sypitkowski is currently the park’s resource manager, and he told WABI that he hopes to continue the vision of Gov. Percival P. Baxter, who donated the land for the park in the early 1930s.  

“This is a place to turn off your cellphone and let your relationship with nature be contemplative and not structured by commercial interests,� he said. “This is a place to step out of our connected world, and reconnect with yourself and nature.�

Large study finds colleges that go test-optional become more diverse and maintain academic quality — Inside Higher Ed

and other news media reported the findings of a major study of optional SAT policies co-authored by Bill Hiss ’66 and Valerie Franks ’98.

One of the study’s major conclusions is that SAT-optional policies can lead to an increase in underrepresented students in both the applicant pool and the first-year class.

The study also finds that, once in college, students who did not submit test scores posted lower grades initially, “but they ended up highly successful, graduating at equivalent rates or —  at some institutions —  slightly higher rates than did those who submitted test scores,� according to Inside Higher Ed. “This, the report says, is ‘the ultimate proof of success.’�

As dean of admissions from 1978 to 2000, Bill Hiss ’66 spearheaded the college’s test-optional policy. Since then, he’s tracked the policy’s effect at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ and nationally. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

The study is the second major SAT-outcome study for which Hiss and Franks have been key players.

Hiss, who was ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ dean of admissions from 1978 to 2000, spearheaded the college’s move to test-optionality in the 1980s. He and Franks have studied the issue extensively as more and more schools — most recently and notably the — drop the requirement to submit SAT or ACT scores.

Working: Building a brand — Sun Journal

The Lewiston caught up with Robert Little ’12, a local filmmaker whose latest projects include shooting for DIY Network’s reality series Maine Cabin Masters.

Little’s company, Sublime House Media, works on “filmmaking that could have a positive impact,� writes Kathryn Skelton. He’s parlayed experience filming in Indonesia and for National Geographic into making videos that help immigrants, and working with kids on filmmaking.

For Maine Cabin Masters, Little is following a crew of builders who fix up cabins in the woods. “Every profession has a wealth of knowledge, and I feel like people forget that about the trades,� Little told Skelton. “Video in a lot of ways is a trade. You’re making a product, and there’s lots of tools involved.�

Researchers to study history and impact of increased rain in the Arctic — The Boston Globe

What happens when, because of climate change, rain replaces snow in the Arctic?

Professor of Geology Mike Retelle and a colleague at UMass Amherst have won a $760,430 grant from the National Science Foundation to investigate the phenomenon, reported.

Professor of Geology Mike Retelle poses with Allie Balter ’14 and Greg de Wet ’11 at a field site in Svalbard, Norway, in 2013. (Courtesy of Greg de Wet)

Increased rainfall could have devastating effects on communities like Svalbard, Norway, which could suffer landslides and flash flooding.

According to a , Retelle and Bradley will study lake sediments in Svalbard in order to reconstruct a long climatic history. “This will provide a unique perspective on the nature of recent sedimentary changes and provide insight into the effects of contemporary changes in climate on the hydrological regime of this region,� Retelle said.

At ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College, new focus on ‘Purposeful Work’ — WGBH-FM

Boston public radio station WGBH-FM profiled, a signature ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ program that helps students discover work that aligns with their interests and values.

The station talked to Callie Reynolds ’18, who completed a Purposeful Work internship in her Connecticut hometown in 2015; she also completed the “Life Architecture� course that teaches students how to approach the twin life goals of professional and personal fulfillment.

In 2017, Gerald Nelson ’18 interned at Sports Illustrated Kids as part of the Purposeful Work Internship Program. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Purposeful Work, she says, “is all about figuring out what I want to do with my life.� She’s now heading to Stockholm to work for the nonprofit study-abroad foundation DIS.

Reporter Kirk Carapezza also interviewed Peter Bysshe ‘93, who was on campus during Short Term to teach a course on brand culture building, part of the Purposeful Work program that offers practitioner-taught courses on practical and applied areas of study.

“When I work with designers, I love watching them get from a stuck place to an unstuck place,â€� Bysshe told Carapezza. “We recognize that liberal arts students can do anything. We have them do real things so they can feel what it’s like, so it’s not just rhetoric anymore.”

Why are poor people in America so patriotic? One man went on an odyssey to find out — Salon

Chauncy Devega of Salon talked to Professor of Sociology Francesco Duina, author of Broke and Patriotic, about why the poorest Americans .

Asked why Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, Duina said Trump tapped a backlash against ideas such as political correctness.

Professor of Sociology Francesco Duina teaches a course in political sociology. (Theophil Syslo/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

For Trump, political correctness amounts to collective demands for unconditional equality. For him, “this is a way of saying that these collective identities — whether it’s blacks, gays, women, etc. — demand things from the government as a matter of right,â€� Duina said.

Yet to Trump and his supporters, such demands are a “non-American thing,� he added, that go “against the tradition of individualism: You have certain basic rights as an individual, not as a group.

“I think the people who voted for Trump by and large could be characterized as more individualistic-oriented. They lack interest in the government providing things for them and are more interested in the government getting out of their way. His voters and other supporters also feel that the government is corrupt and catering to all sorts of people instead of them.�

Can tech save the humanities? — The Boston Globe

The incorporation of technology into subjects like English and philosophy could breathe new life into the humanities, . Moreover, the increasing prevalence of technology in our society makes the humanities more necessary than ever.

Joshua Macht ’91 talks about entrepreneurship with Shaina Lam ’17 of Portland, Maine, in 2014. (Sarah Crosby/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Humanities and technology can intersect in promising ways, such as creating a game based on Henry Thoreau’s life or, as students in ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ Digital and Computational Studies program did this year, helping dancers compose music with their bodies.

“If the humanities are ever to enjoy a true resurgence, it will come as a result of a reinvention that embraces a fresh new take on old disciplines,� Macht writes.

Studying art, philosophy, or literature could also guide the development of technology. “We’ll need to develop not just the technical skills to build better tech, but also the moral and ethical reasoning to guide how society deploys them,� he writes.

Art review: Prints with a purpose – and power — Maine Sunday Telegram

In curating an exhibition of prints and posters in Portland, Maine, Myron Beasley debunked the myth that good art is “pure in itself and free from any ideological or utilitarian purpose,� the Maine Sunday Telegram’s Daniel Kany.

Beasley, an associate professor of African American and American cultural studies, curated “Print, Protest, Power,� exhibited at Able Baker Contemporary from May 18 to June 22. The prints and posters in the exhibition, created mainly by black artists during and after the civil rights movement, had clear messages of political action and fighting for justice.

“The works make a compelling case not only that there is much to be done, but that such efforts can and will be successful,� Kany writes. “The art builds on successes of the past as well as current topics of change politics, so when it looks to the future, it does so not desperately, but confidently.�

The quest to make super-cold quantum blobs in space — Wired

reported on Associate Professor of Physics Nathan Lundblad’s work with the Cold Atom Laboratory, the first-ever environment that is both cold enough and free enough of gravity to create a Bose-Einstein condensate.

In 2014, Associate Professor of Physics Nathan Lundblad works with summer student researcher Ben Lovitz ’15 of Portland, Ore., in Lundblad’s ultra-cold atomic physics lab. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

The Cold Atom Lab was launched to the International Space Station in May. The “blobs� the lab creates “should yield new insights about how atoms organize themselves,� writes Sophia Chen.

Working remotely, Lundblad will study this entirely new state of matter. “Imagine you were in a culture where you’d never seen ice,� Lundblad said. “You find out that when you cool water past 32 degrees Fahrenheit, this amazing form of H2O appears that is crystalline and regular.�

A camp for Jewish connections — The Jewish Week

The Jewish Week named Carine Warsawski ’07 one of its . Warsawski is the founder of Trybal Gatherings, which creates camp-like retreats for young Jewish adults.

Though she traveled to see family frequently growing up, Warsawski told the magazine that she first felt truly connected to Judaism during a camp, and during college and afterwards she worked at camps and for student tour companies. “It became important to lead experiences that helped people connect to their Jewish culture, no matter the geography,� she said.

“Summer camps are one of the Jewish community’s greatest assets,� she added. “Trybal is an opportunity to take my own transformative experiences from camp and offer [that] to others.�

Implicit Bias: Understanding our own beliefs — Maine Public

Weeks after a Starbucks employee called the police on two black men sitting in the store and Starbucks implemented an afternoon of anti-bias training for its employees, Lecturer in Neuroscience Laura Ligouri on implicit bias.

Ligouri, the founder of a nonprofit that applies psychology and neuroscience to human rights issues, said implicit bias is an unconscious process that influences people’s preconceived ideas about others and can lead to prejudice against groups different from one’s own.

Laura Ligouri, teaches “Neuroscience, Ethics, and Societyâ€� in May. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Ensuring that implicit biases don’t lead to discrimination takes more work than a few hours of training, Ligouri said — to understand and confront their biases, people must slow down and be willing to have uncomfortable conversations on an ongoing basis.  

“To create change, it has to be a commitment to a program that becomes a practice,� she said.   

Diet may influence the spread of a deadly type of breast cancer, study finds — ScienceDaily

Researchers including Charles Perou ’87 have found that blocking an amino acid found in certain foods might stop the spread of a particular type of breast cancer, the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center .

The team discovered that limiting asparagine — found in “dairy, whey, beef, poultry, eggs, fish, seafood, asparagus, potatoes, legumes, nuts, seeds, soy and whole grains,� according to the press release — in mice prevents the spread of triple-negative breast cancer.

The next steps are to test the effects of asparagine in healthy humans and then in cancer patients.

Perou is a leading researcher into variations of breast cancer and precision medicine. In October, the AACI Distinguished Scientist Award for his work in those fields.

Here’s a reward for getting up real early Monday morning: a chance to see a bit of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ streak into space.

At 4:39 a.m. EDT, a cargo spacecraft takes off from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Its destination: the International Space Station. Its payload: a laboratory that will conduct an experiment in ultracold physics for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ physicist Nathan Lundblad.

(Update 10:30 a.m. 5/18/18: Monday’s scheduled launch is a postponement from Sunday. Follow Wallops social media for .)

Lundblad is one of the few scientists, and the only one from an undergraduate college, chosen to have his research conducted by the Cold Atom Lab in the CAL’s initial experiments aboard the space station. Nature magazine calls the lab a “” for quantum physicists like Lundblad.

This map of the U.S. East Coast shows when and where the launch will be visible of a cargo spacecraft that’s delivering a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ physics experiment from NASA’s Wallops Island Flight Facility to the International Space Station. The launch is at 4:39 a.m. May 21. (Courtesy Orbital ATK)

Even hundreds of miles from the launch site, the rocket might be visible on the horizon. “Check the southern skies about three minutes after launch, about five degrees above the horizon,” says Noah Petro ’01, the NASA project scientist for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission, now orbiting the Moon.

“If you are in the right area, it will appear as a small dot of red light traveling much faster than an airplane with no blinking lights. You’ll want to be in an area with a clear horizon and away from bright lights.”

+How to Watch ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Rocket to Space

In Alexandria, Va., Petro will get up very early on Monday, not only because he’s professionally interested (and not only because he and his wife, Jennifer Giblin ’01, have two early-rising young children).

“I’m insanely proud of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. This is all about the power of science at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½,â€� Petro said from the Goddard Space Flight Center on Thursday. “Here I am at Goddard, a member of the NASA science community, and ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ is part of this really cool opportunity.â€�

Scientist Noah Petro ’01 represented NASA at a minor league baseball game in Oregon last August that had an “eclipse delay” because of the total eclipse of the sun. (Photograph courtesy NASA/W. Hrybyk)

He’s proud of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½-into-space launch, he says, because it reaffirms what he and others at NASA know well. “We ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ies — all of us liberal arts grads — do really great science,â€� Petro says, noting that a liberal arts graduate just down the hall trains the astronauts now aboard the ISS.

“This is not about putting ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ on the map of science teaching and research. It puts yet another ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ pin in the map.â€�

Petro earned a doctorate at Brown; his dissertation was “Provenance of Lunar Regolith Components: Redistribution of Material by Craters from the Heavy Bombardment Period through the Copernican Era.�

“ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ is just as preparatory for a career in science as any other institution in the country,” he says. “In fact, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ may do it even better. But that’s just my opinion!â€�

“This does not put ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ on the map of science teaching and research. It puts yet another ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ pin in the map.â€�

Here are seven things to know about Lundblad’s research aboard the space station.

1. Once it’s plugged in, the Cold Atom Lab will be the coldest known environment in the universe.

As its name suggests, the lab will be very, very cold — one ten-billionth of a degree above absolute zero.

Physics major Dan Paseltiner ’16, one of Nathan Lundblad’s former thesis students, narrates this short film about the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ experiment that will be aboard the Cold Atom Laboratory.

2. The lab will operate only when the astronauts are asleep.

Once the CAL reaches the ISS, the astronauts will hook it up. After that, it’s mostly hands-off, partially because the astronauts’ day-to-day movements actually move the space station itself, disturbing the stillness the lab needs to work properly.

“They decided, let’s run while the astronauts are sleeping,� Lundblad said. “It will be essentially remotely controlled.�

3. Cold Atom Lab experiments take turns.

Lundblad’s experiment is one of several housed in the Cold Atom Lab. “My project will essentially get a week, and then everybody else will rotate in and have a week, and then I’ll get another week, and then everybody else will rotate through. Then I’ll have a long downtime of a couple months to analyze each data set.�

Associate Professor of Physics Nathan Lundblad’s research rockets to the International Space Station on Sunday morning at 5:04 a.m. (Sarah Crosby/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

4. Lundblad will study a form of matter that can’t exist on Earth.

Lundblad works with Bose-Einstein condensates. BECs are ultracold clouds of gas whose atoms lose their individual characteristics and behave more like a unified wave. He can study them in pretty cold environments on campus, but without gravity he can go even colder.

“I’m interested in studying how the rules of quantum mechanics apply to a BEC based on its shape, and certain shapes are really tough to make in gravity,� he said in 2014.

“I’m looking to make a BEC in the form of a shell or bubble, and then study how quantum mechanics applies to a system that is two-dimensional, but without a border, like the surface of the Earth.�

5. When gravity goes away, other forces come to the fore.

In designing his Cold Atom Lab experiments, Lundblad had to take into account the magnetic field of the lab itself. That, for him, is a first.

“Gravity is the dominant force in these experiments down here. But in free fall, all of a sudden you’ve eliminated this enormous whopping gravitational force,� he says. “All these other little details begin to be important.�

6. Lundblad will work remotely.

Lundblad created an experimental sequence that the Cold Atom Lab will run. “Within a couple days, I will get a data dump,� he said. “The data comes in the form of, essentially, images of these cold clouds, tagged with something like, ‘OK, you designed experimental sequence 455 with all these particular parameters, and here’s the picture that resulted.’�

7. ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students will be involved.

Like many ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ science faculty, Lundblad involves students deeply in the research. When the Cold Atom Lab data comes in, “I’ll want to probably have a few late nights with some of my thesis students in the fall, trying to figure out, ‘Did that do what we thought it would? Is this looking like some of the effects we’re looking for?’â€�

Well-educated elites are no strangers to white supremacy — The Washington Post

After the violence in Charlottesville, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ faculty lecturer Christopher Petrella ’06 saying that our conventional wisdom that “it’s impossible to be both a white supremacist and a well-educated white American” is “both dangerous and historically inaccurate.”

In fact, he says, white supremacy has “not gestated on the fringes of American politics” but “flourished as a social movement grounded in respectability politics and led by elites.”

Christopher Petrella ’06 makes a point during a meeting of the college’s Justice and Equity Reading Group on Sept. 13, 2017. Petrella, faculty lecturer and associate director of programs for the Office of Equity and Diversity, is the group organizer. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Believing otherwise “allows middle-class and college-educated white Americans to escape responsibility for extirpating this stain on our society.”

Petrella, who is also an associate director of programs in the Office of Equity and Diversity at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, is completing his first book, on the history of white supremacy in 20th-century New England.

Social activism thrives in Maine’s fine art world — Portland Monthly

For , art critic Dan Kany interviews several Maine “art agitators,” including ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Museum of Art Director Dan Mills, who “represent the range and reality of Maine artists who dare to disturb, incite, and stir social engagement.”

Mills, who co-curated the first exhibition of Saudi contemporary art in New England, Phantom Punch: Contemporary Art from Saudi Arabia in Lewiston, is also an artist whose work has been exhibited in leading galleries in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

Mills’ “large-scale paintings on maps….use nuanced visual systems to redirect and provoke deeper understanding of demographic and map-related data,” Kany says.

Mills says that art “is only one facet or tool” for social change. “Unless the art rises to being culturally embraced beyond the art world and covered in the media, its scope is limited.”

Dan Mills’ painting “Current Wars and Conflicts Killed by Continent, Book 02,” ink, watercolor, and gouache on atlas, 15 1/4 x 22 1/2 x 2 inches.

Retiring ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Dance Festival director Faure “put Maine on the map” — Portland Press Herald

Laura Faure, who retires Nov. 30 after directing the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Dance Festival for 30 of its 35 years, is known as “a fierce advocate for choreographers and dance in its many forms,” said Aimee Petrin, executive and artistic director at Portland Ovations.

Faure, who was profiled by , said that the “life of a dancer is a tough life, and what we offer is support and a safe space.” She added, “We support artists through the arc of their career, and I am so proud of that.â€�

Retiring ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Dance Festival Director Laura Faure poses with noted South African dancer and choreographer Vincent Mantsoe during one of her visits to Africa. Mantsoe has taken part several times in the festival’s International Visiting Artists Program. (ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Dance Festival)

Keyes said that Faure “helped establish the festival as a destination for dancers and choreographers to refine, perfect and expand their skills, establish new work, and experiment with ideas and collaborations.”

“We have created an environment that didn’t exist in the dance world and that is based in the democratic and egalitarian model that is ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College,â€� Faure said.

Faure will be succeeded by Shoshona Currier, who began her work in August.

Shaw’s veterinary health tech firm secures $223 million investment — Portland Press Herald

Vets First Choice of Portland, founded by CEO Ben Shaw ’00, received a $223 million investment in July that will “accelerate the company’s growth and hiring, launch new services and begin a global expansion effort into Europe and Asia,” according to .

Father and son entrepreneurs David Shaw and Ben Shaw ’00 consult before their May 5 talk, “Adventures in Business and Social Entrepreneurship,” part of the spring’s “Purposeful Work: Voices in Entrepreneurship” series. David Shaw returned to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ at Commencement to receive an honorary degree. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

“The venture capital funding represents the largest sum invested at one time in a privately held Maine company in at least two decades, and possibly ever,” Anderson reported.

Vets First Choice offers e-commerce pharmaceutical services to veterinary clinics.

Also in July, Shaw was recognized by Ernst & Young as a .

Atomic physicists will soon make ultracold states of matter on the space station — Science

When NASA’s $70 million Cold Atom Laboratory arrives at the International Space Station in early 2018, it will carry out a select few research experiments, including one designed by Associate Professor of Physics Nathan Lundblad.

In its Sept. 8 story, Science reporter Adrian Cho described a few of the projects, , noting that the Cold Atom Laboratory will “take advantage of weightlessness to attain record-low temperatures and break ground for ambitious studies of quantum mechanics and gravity.”

Physics major Dan Paseltiner ’16 narrates this short film about the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ experiment that will be aboard the Cold Atom Laboratory.

Weightlessness, plus the lab’s near-absolute-zero temperature, will “produce a long-predicted state of matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate, in which the atoms shed their individual identities and crowd en masse into a single quantum wave.”

Cho said that Lundblad’s experiment hopes to create “hollow shells of BECs,” like bubbles, something “that gravity squashes on Earth.” If successful, the shells might allow researchers “to probe the wave nature of the BEC in a new way.”

The other experiments were designed by scientists from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the universities of Colorado, Michigan, Rochester, Virginia, and California at Berkeley.

Commentary on why parents shouldn’t be told the sex of their fetus — Journal of Medical Ethics

Professor of Sociology Emily Kane, the author of The Gender Trap: Parents and the Pitfalls of Raising Boys and Girls, joined a sociological discussion about the common practice of parents learning the sex of their unborn child.

In an article published last year in the Journal of Medical Ethics, Tamara Kayali Browne of the Australian National University argued that .

Disclosure of the sex, she said, invariably leads parents to anticipate a child’s gender. Since “the conflation of sex with gender is implicit” when the sex of a fetus is disclosed, “it may be more accurate to refer to [disclosure] as misinformation.”

Professor of Sociology Emily Kane delivers her Convocation address, “Summer Posts, Fall Possibilities,” on Sept. 5, 2017 (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

In , she said that while other experts can weigh in on the feasibility of withholding such information, she agrees with Browne that both child and society would benefit by postponing “the gendered anticipation” that prenatal sex information encourages.

Given what we now know about the vast difference between gender and sex, postponing might “chip away productively at the vast network of social processes that constrain children and conflate sex with gender.”

Harvard names new diversity dean — The Harvard Crimson

Harvard Dean of Students Katherine G. O’Dair announced the appointment of Roland Davis ’92 as associate dean for diversity and inclusion, on Aug. 31.

Roland Davis ’92 is the new associate dean for diversity and inclusion at Harvard.

Davis “brings to Harvard a deep and nuanced understanding of the social, cultural, and psychological factors that impact communities around the issues of diversity and inclusion,� she wrote.

Davis’ appointment, the Crimson said, “coincides with the implementation of…penalties on members of single-gender social organizations,” such as barring members of these groups from “campus leadership positions, athletic team captaincies, and certain prestigious fellowships.”

A former dean in Student Affairs at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, Davis served as the college’s founding director of the Office of Intercultural Education from 2010 to 2012.

Building products that people want to use — The Silicon Review

In its review of the 10 fastest-growing software companies, , a software engineering firm co-founded by Ben Schippers ’04.

The Review said that in the “ocean” of apps that exists today, Schipper’s company “is generating its mark by building thoughtful products” that “people want to use.”

Ben Schippers ’04 is co-founder of the Brooklyn-based software engineering firm HappyFunCorp. (Phyllis Graber Jensen)

One of HappyFunCorp’s recent products was an app allowing onto TV-based platforms, including Apple TV.

Portland’s restaurant  boom reflects the “simplicity of living here, and honoring individual ingredients” — American Way Magazine

Portland, Maine, is home to 672 dining establishments, according to , “giving it a human-to-restaurant ratio of roughly 96-to-1,” which is lower than “almost every other city in America (San Francisco can make a similar claim).”

For insights on the boom, writer Alexandra Hall turned to award-winning restaurateur Andrew Taylor ’03, who said that it’s about the “simplicity of living here, and honoring individual ingredients.â€� He said, “People here are averse to big: big corporations, big restaurants.”

Taylor and Mike Wiley are chef/co-owners, with their manager, Arlin Smith, of Eventide Oyster Co., The Honey Paw, and Hugo’s. The pair won a , considered an Oscar of the food world.

James Beard winner Andrew Taylor ’03 poses at his restaurant Eventide with Matthew Moretti ’06, president of Bangs Island Mussels and Wild Ocean Aquaculture, on Sept. 26 2016. Bangs mussels are featured at Eventide and exemplify Taylor’s commitment to the local food economy. (Josh Kuckens/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ college).

Preparing for the football season and for what’s ahead after graduation — WMTV-TV

WMTV-TV sports anchor Travis Lee , a chemistry major from Cumberland Center, Maine, who plans to enter the medical field after graduation.

Over the summer, Rasch traveled to Haiti with International Medical Relief to “get involved in some sort of medical experience outside the U.S. in a culture that I’m not used to.”

Rasch says that football, specifically a lineman’s job to communicate with teammates during “drastically changing circumstances,” will help him down the road. “I am able to communicate with people in a large group and help get people on the same page.”

“Whatever I do for a living, I want to make sure that it has a good deal of purpose. That way I can dedicate myself fully to it.”

Shortly after 2 p.m. on Monday, as the moon started to do its thing, Sylvia Deschaine, who is the building coordinator in Carnegie Science Hall, knocked on the door of a crowded second-floor classroom, then entered, much to the surprise of prospective students and their families attending an Admission information session.

“Excuse me,� said Deschaine, in the brogue instilled by her birthplace, Maynooth, Ireland. “The eclipse is starting, and it’s a once-in-a-lifetime event. The president of the college is here, so come on and follow me.�

And they did. Admission counselor Jane Ngoc Tran had been leading the session, and she appreciated Deschaine’s spur-of-the-eclipse intervention. “We’re always looking for something new to share with families. We like to go the flow — ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ is a spontaneous community.â€�

The crowd followed Deschaine (“She got everyone pumped up,� Tran said) outside to the Historic Quad, where an eclipse watch party had drawn a few dozen faculty and staff, including President Clayton Spencer.

Associate Professor of Physics Nathan Lundblad set up a solar telescope, while his colleague Matt Côté, associate professor of chemistry, deployed a homemade viewing device that incorporated an old film camera.

Georgette Dumais, an academic administrative assistant, views the eclipse through an old Speed Graphic camera belonging to Associate Professor of Chemisty Matt Côté, who looks on. (Jay Burns/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

For students on the traditional summer tour of colleges, different schools can begin to blur. For ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ visitors on Monday, the eclipse made its mark. “We will not forget the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ tour,â€� said Meg Alexander, visiting ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ from Concord, Mass., with her daughter, Lucy Hirsch. “This is such a special moment.â€�

“This is so exciting,â€� said parent Jody Culcasi of Northbridge, Mass., visiting ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ with her daughter, Maddie, and husband, Pete. “We weren’t expecting to be able to see it.â€�

Pete Culcasi is a welder for a fabrication shop in Boston, and he was amused that because of the eclipse hoop-la, the world suddenly knew all about the numbering system for eye-protective welding glass.

“Most people never know the numbers. I do only because I order the stuff,� he said. “To hear the number on the news, for people to call you up and ask, ‘Do you have 14?’ — wow. Everyone’s calling for 14, but we don’t use 14. We have up to 12. We use 10, and sometimes 9.�

He’d brought a glass with shade 12. “NASA says that’s safe,� Jody said.

Pete Culcasi of Northbridge, Mass., looks at the eclipse through protective eyeglasses with his daughter, Maddie (left), and wife, Jody. A welder by trade, Pete had also brought protective welder’s glass. (Jay Burns/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Côté had rigged the camera, a Graflex Speed Graphic (the familiar large-format style that news photographers used in the mid-1900s) so that the image was displayed, safe for viewing, on the camera’s ground glass viewer.

It had belonged to his late father, an avid amateur photographer who was a longtime professor of wood science and technology at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry.

The night before the eclipse, Côté stumbled upon the camera in his “messy storage area� and “hauled it out to see if I could use it to view the eclipse.�

Fun with the sun: The partial eclipse is projected onto the Class of 1932 Sun Dial through a pair of binoculars. (Jay Burns/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

He could, and it was a popular attraction. Leading up to the 57.6 percent eclipse, a steady stream of viewers took turns looking at the image on the ground glass.

“It was odd to rediscover the camera, right now, after several years,� Côté said. “I thought, ‘This is serendipity.’ It’s neat to be putting to use something from my father.�

The new Digital and Computational Studies Program will teach students to have a broad, critical, and thoughtful approach to problem solving in a digital age. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Technology is instantaneous, global, and ever-changing.

And it’s placing unprecedented pressures on colleges like ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ to expand how they define and deliver a liberal arts education.

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, for one, has a robust curricular response: With recent gifts of $19 million from seven ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ families, the college will build and launch a new Program in Digital and Computational Studies (DCS).

“The capacity to claim the world.”

The program will comprise three new professorships, a range of new academic courses, and eager involvement from ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ faculty in many disciplines.

Ultimately, the program’s goal is squarely in the liberal arts wheelhouse: To give ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ graduates “the capacity to claim the world,” in the words of classics professor Margaret Imber.

In this Q&A, 11 members of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ faculty talk about the work of building an innovative and distinctive DCS Program.

+As chair, what do you hope to bring to the development of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ DCS Program? Expert: Lauren Ashwell

Expert: Lauren Ashwell, associate professor of philosophy and chair of the Program in Digital and Computational Studies

Much of my teaching in logic, metaphysics, and epistemology touches on the limits of computation. I also teach feminist philosophy, which includes the kind of social critique that I think will be important to the DCS Program.

While it is easy to hear that ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ is creating an interdisciplinary program and then think that the focus will be on computers merely as tools and instruments for work in other disciplines, it is important to note that the program will go beyond this. The DCS Program won’t just equip students with the ability to use computational methods, but will also include awareness of the limits and the social impact of technology.

Associate Professor of Philosophy Lauren Ashwell is chair of the Program in Digital and Computational Studies. (Josh Kuckens/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

That’s the great thing about the group of faculty working on the program – I don’t think anyone sees DCS as merely a set of tools for other disciplines, but as something that will complement the existing ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ curriculum in a robust kind of way. Computation can extend possibilities within other disciplines, but other disciplines can also bring their own tools to bear on questions about the digital world.

As builders of the DCS Program, we can instill the idea that learning about the tools of technology is not only about all the wonderful things that you can do with them, but also about what you can’t do. Students need not just awareness of the theoretical limits of computation but also the skill and ability to think critically about the limits of technology’s ability to solve problems.

In my classroom, when we talk about critical thinking, I use the word “carefulâ€� to describe an important skill that I want my students to take away from their coursework. You are careful in the sense that you do not just accept what people tell you: You reflect on it with time and care. You are not just being fed information — instead, you’re engaging with information in a reflective way. These are the characteristics of a future ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ DCS student.

+How will the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ DCS Program be distinctive and make ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ a leader in this realm? Expert: Jason Castro

Expert: Jason Castro, assistant professor of psychology

The way DCS is conceived at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ is unique because, for one, it will be more than just a computer science program with add-ons and peripherals.

It was conceived as a communal enterprise; the decisions about how DCS will be formed and deployed, and conversations about its intellectual makeup, involved the humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences.

Jason Castro teaches computational neuroscience during Short Term 2014. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Having that cross-disciplinary conversation, that set of ideas built into the launch of the program, is exciting. It will make for flexible curricular programming and vivid awareness of the roles that digital media have in our lives.

+What would you tell a colleague at another institution about why you are keen to teach in the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ DCS Program? Expert: Nathan Tefft

Expert: Nathan Tefft, assistant professor of economics

Because the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ program will be inter- and cross-disciplinary, I would tell a colleague that I am in the right place and time, in terms of my research.

Nathan Tefft is an assistant professor of economics. (Josh Kuckens/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

In my work, I seek to answer important questions using data in novel ways.

The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ DCS Program will support my research in part by bringing me into closer contact with new methods and tools from computer science and statistics, tools that are associated with the Big Data phenomenon and are fast being adopted by economists.

The DCS Program is also a crucial development in our historical liberal arts mission.

If a liberal arts education means giving graduates a deep understanding of the various ways that people interact with the world, and if people interact with the world through technology, then I believe a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ education that includes DCS will be much more effective.

+What are the implications for the college's information and library services operation when we add DCS to the curriculum? Expert: Katie Vale

The Expert: Katie Vale, vice president for information and library services and librarian

One of the things that’s particularly novel is that this is not just a straight computer science program. While students can certainly learn to code, the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ DCS Program will give students experience with a variety of technological tools and the curricular work will have ties to many different subjects and topics.

What ILS excels at is helping people make connections.

Technology plays a central role in myriad forms of inquiry and expression, and students will learn and apply skills that will help them at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ and well beyond. That excites us a lot.

What ILS excels at, especially on the library side, is helping people make connections, find information, and learn to use technologies to ask questions and solve problems. Our librarians and academic technologists assist faculty in thinking about new types of assignments that will increase students’ understanding of the world.

Katie Vale is the college’s librarian and vice president for information and library services. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

For example, they can locate actual government data sets that can be analyzed to understand a range of political, social, and economic issues in a particular country or group of nations. Or they might help with GIS mapping technologies to identify population changes or environmental resource constraints. Students can report their findings via research papers, multimedia assignments, or even 3D-printed items.

Digital and information literacy skills are necessary for life in the 21st century, and we in ILS look forward to supporting the DCS Program.

+What is the value of bringing interdisciplinary thought to the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ DCS Program? Expert: Rebecca Herzig

The Expert: Rebecca Herzig, the Christian A. Johnson Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies and chair of the Division of Interdisciplinary Studies

In my view, an interdisciplinary perspective is really about perceiving and understanding relationships, and that’s a long-standing theme at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, something ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students do unusually well. And what does a networked world demand but the ability to see and frame and transform relationships in new ways?

I like to imagine that our graduates will help build a different kind of digital infrastructure and, in so doing, build a different kind of world: more inclusive, more sustainable, more democratic.

And they’ll be able to do that not only because they have the requisite technical skills in coding and analysis and so on, but also, more importantly, because those skills emerge within the context of a broader liberal arts education.

An interdisciplinary education can encourage students to explore the social underpinnings of technical skills, and the limitations of those skills, as well as their most potent applications.

Rebecca Herzig is the college’s Christian A. Johnson Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies and chair of the Division of Interdisciplinary Studies. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

+Why might a DCS-minded student — or young scholar, for that matter — go to a liberal arts college like ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ instead of a school known for computer science? Expert: Nathan Lundblad

The Expert: Nathan Lundblad, associate professor of physics

Launching the DCS Program underscores the college’s strong support of faculty who have a commitment to both teaching and research.

At top liberal arts colleges, cutting-edge research in the natural sciences is attracting federal dollars, being published in top journals, and sending students to top graduate programs.

Associate Professor of Physics Nathan Lundblad. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

For example, I have a federal grant from NASA to study the physics of ultracold atomic systems aboard the International Space Station, and as part of this I’ll be one of a few remote users of a facility orbiting the Earth performing precision tests in quantum mechanics.

I’m excited to bring DCS students aboard as interns for computational aspects of my project.

This project involves extensive computer modeling and programming to guide and design various experimental processes, and, as happens at a liberal arts college, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students have been working directly with me on crucial aspects of the project.

I’m excited to bring DCS students aboard as interns for computational aspects of my project, and I’m looking forward to having my physics students take DCS classes to better prepare them for research where computational skills are increasingly indispensable.

Coming to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ to work in digital and computational studies gives students the opportunity to work on projects like this while benefiting from the close teacher-student interactions that are the central pillar of the liberal arts experience.

+How will the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ DCS Program support what the mission statement calls the 'emancipating potential' of the liberal arts? Expert: Margaret Imber

The Expert: Margaret Imber, associate professor of classical and medieval studies

DCS is going to allow students to ask the critical question of the liberal arts: Why do I know what I know? Why do I believe this? How do I know it?

You have the capacity to claim the world.

In pursuing those questions, you have the capacity to liberate yourself. You have the capacity to claim the world.

I have a senior doing an honors thesis on the political topography of violence in ancient Rome. He made for himself a data set of every reference to political violence in Rome in the last century of the republic. He used software to recreate images in 3D to better understand, for example, Livy’s and other written descriptions of riots down the streets of the Via Sacra.

Associate Professor of Classical and Medieval Studies Margaret Imber is co-director of the Faculty Commons for Teaching and Learning. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

By using these tools — more often associated with the natural sciences or graphic design rather than classics — he got a much better sense, almost tactile, of what the words were describing. More important, he gained the ability to ask questions about the accuracy or distortions of the historical texts.

That’s why DCS is perfect for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ and the liberal arts. It will help emancipate students from presumptions, sloppy thinking, and living in a world that other people give to you.

+How might DCS contribute to citizenry that is more numerate, and why does that matter? Expert: Adriana Salerno

The Expert: Adriana Salerno, associate professor of mathematics

For me, numeracy and computer literacy are human rights, like reading. We believe people have a right to learn how to read because it gives you opportunities. I believe the same should be true for being numerate.

Nobody every says you have to compete in the Tour de France in order to be considered a bicycle rider. It should be the same for learning math and computer science. You don’t have to be the best person at this. But you can still do it.

Associate Professor of Mathematics Adriana Salerno. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Yet in computer science and STEM fields there is often that attitude that says, “This is only for a certain elite.” But we have a problem if only certain groups of people have the skills to have those jobs, and we especially have a problem if those elite just happen to all look very similar in terms of their race and gender.

We have a clean slate. We can decide what this major is going to be.

At ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, we have the power to create a program that doesn’t have the baggage and vices of some of the established programs, where people say, “Computer science is taught this way.â€� We have a clean slate. We can decide what this major is going to be and who it is going to attract, whether it’s a student who likes math, or is a dancer, or takes a lot of philosophy courses.

We will create all sorts of routes for students to get a technology- and computer-science-based education.

+What value might an art and visual culture major find in the DCS curriculum? Expert: Rebecca Corrie

The Expert: Rebecca Corrie, Phillips Professor of Art and Visual Culture

DCS gives us a chance to equip our already great students with the skills they increasingly need.

When technology arrived in our fields, you could say, “Let’s bring someone in who knows how to do that.” Today, you cannot outsource technology tasks. You have to embody them. You need to have the skills.

Rebecca Corrie is the college’s Phillips Professor of Art and Visual Culture. (Josh Kuckens/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

For example, if you are an architectural historian who needs to create a digital reconstruction, you should not only know the art history and the architectural history but also be capable of working with or even developing the programs yourself.

Fields that hire art history majors, such as museums and auction houses, for example, want hires who know how to code and who are skilled at different technologies.

+What do you see as the unifying themes of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ DCS Program? Expert: Pallavi Jayawant

The Expert: Pallavi Jayawant, associate professor and chair of mathematics

What the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ DCS Program will support and recognize — whether the ultimate goal is theorizing and applying principles of computation, exploring philosophical boundaries of artificial intelligence, modeling queries using complex data sets, or designing three-dimensional digital maps using layers of coded data — is creativity and rigor in defining and answering questions.

Importantly, DCS at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ will support collaboration across the entire faculty, inside and outside of the program, to develop new elective courses and/or enhance their existing courses with digital and computational abilities.

Pallavi Jayawant is an associate professor of mathematics and department chair. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

DCS will teach students how to get inside of and learn their way around computers rather than simply be proficient at using them. This will be especially liberating because it will help them develop and apply new knowledge and improve their understanding of the world around us.

Ultimately, an education that involves the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ DCS curriculum can serve as a bulwark against unreflective, biased, or limited understandings of computer technologies in our lives.

+How might the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ DCS Program help faculty and students find new connections across disciplines? Expert: Eden Osucha

The Expert: Eden Osucha, assistant professor of English

Technology is transforming, in a real sense, the very objects of study that are at the heart of the humanities and the humanistic social sciences.

As we develop the program, we will recognize that in teaching students about technology, we need to be teaching students to have a critical understanding of technology’s many impacts on language, community, identity, culture, and our notions of the human. Technology is transforming all of these things, which are, in turn, also shaping technological change and practices.

Assistant Professor of English Eden Osucha teaches a class in Pettigrew Hall. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

When students do technologically driven assignments in an English classroom alongside more traditional writing assignments, an interesting thing happens: They begin to recognize something new about their academic disciplines, whether they are humanities majors or not.

A senior physics major or a math major who takes their first English class and does a digital textual mapping project, for example, might realize that, while they are adept at thinking about knowledge in terms of data, or thinking in terms of structures and relations, they now can deploy those abilities to achieve a critical engagement with a literary or other cultural text.

In so doing, they expand their own understanding of the value and purpose of those skills.

Gifts of $19 million to create six new endowed professorships, including three for the DCS Program

Last May, at the last faculty meeting of the 2015 academic year, the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ faculty approved a new Program in Digital and Computational Studies, with one major condition: that ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ would secure millions in funding to establish up to three endowed new professorships within the new program.

Meeting that condition took just half a year. On Feb. 5, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ announced gifts of $19 million to create six new endowed professorships, including three for the DCS Program, plus endowed program support.

Funding in place, the program has a fall 2018 slated start date as a major.

Demand for the program is high. Survey results suggest that 94 percent of students believe that ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ should have a DCS major. Fourteen percent of students say they would “definitely majorâ€� in DCS. And 69 percent indicate they would take courses in the program.

Interest among professors is great, too, as are the preceding ideas and insights about why the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ program can be among the best in the country.

Professors are also eager to explain why the program will be quintessentially ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ — how it will support key parts of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ mission statement, such as:

• dedication to the emancipating potential of the liberal arts;
• educating the whole person; engaging in the transformative power of our differences;
• cultivating intellectual discovery and informed civic action;
• and preparing leaders sustained by a love of learning and a commitment to responsible stewardship of the wider world.

In faculty promotions recently announced at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College, four professors have earned tenure and three others have been named full professor.

These professional milestones recognize the significant contributions each professor has made to their field of study and to the growth and education of their students, said Matthew Auer, vice president for academic affairs and dean of the faculty.

“All seven faculty members are outstanding teachers and scholars,� Auer said. “They exemplify what it means to be fully invested members of our liberal arts community and leaders in the academy.�

The promotions, awarded to professors in the fields of philosophy, politics, mathematics, physics, dance, biology, and chemistry, were recommended by the faculty Committee on Personnel and approved by the college’s Board of Trustees during the 2014-15 academic year. They took effect Aug. 1.

Promotions to associate professor with tenure

Lauren Ashwell

Lauren Ashwell

Department: Philosophy

Field of study: Metaphysics, philosophy of mind, epistemology, and feminist philosophy

Came to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in: 2009

Why I teach: “Philosophy classes help develop the skills of thinking carefully, considering opposing views charitably, and giving arguments supported by good reasons rather than mere opinions.

“Not only are these incredibly useful general skills, it’s also super fun to engage in these mental calisthenics together in discussion. I love it when I can help students think about a question in a new way, and also when they can do the same for me!â€�

Stephen Engel

Stephen Engel

Department: Politics

Field of study: American political development, constitutional law, and social movements, particularly LGBTQ sociopolitical and legal mobilization

Came to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in: 2011

Why I teach: “One of the reasons I enjoy teaching at a liberal arts college, and at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in particular, is the substantial openness here to challenging and breaking through disciplinary boundaries. When designing my classes in constitutional law and LGBTQ+ politics, I have been able to reach beyond traditional political science and law to incorporate history, sociology, music, film, television, and advertising.

“Doing so not only is an exciting creative challenge and keeps things interesting for me, but I hope it provides access points for students who might not initially be drawn to the study of U.S. politics, who may not be politics majors. Because, in the end, I teach to inspire a student not to be a political scientist or a lawyer per se, but instead to think a bit more critically about power, identity, and participation, and to take responsibility and accountability for our collective role in shaping the world as it is and as we hope it can be.â€�

Nathan Lundblad

Nathan Lundblad

Department: Physics and Astronomy

Field of study: Ultralow-temperature physics, Bose-Einstein condensation, and atomic physics in microgravity

Came to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in: 2009

Why I teach: “Physics is the study of how our universe operates at a fundamental level. To see students work with this material, and grow and change over their four years at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, is an immense privilege and pleasure. Seeing where they go after ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ is a great pleasure as well; it’s a strong motivation for me every day to know that the interactions I have with students have the potential to affect their lives years down the line

“On top of that, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ makes it possible for me to be an active scholar in my field, which gives students a unique opportunity to be a part of cutting-edge physics research while getting all the advantages of the small-college experience.â€�

Adriana Salerno

Adriana Salerno

Department: Mathematics

Field of study: Number theory and arithmetic geometry, with an interest in communicating mathematics to the general public

Came to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in: 2009

Why I teach: “I believe quantitative literacy, just like verbal literacy, is fundamental to ensuring that our students go on to be successful and involved citizens when they graduate.

“I love helping students navigate math problems at all levels, from the intro courses to the upper-level math major courses and capstones, particularly if I can help them see more of the power and beauty in mathematical thinking. It is a great joy to see my students grow as people and as learners. I like to think of my classes as a community of equals, and I love how much I also learn from my students.â€�

Promotions to full professor

Ryan Bavis

Ryan Bavis

Department: Biology

Field of study: Animal physiology, particularly respiratory physiology

Came to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in: 2003

Why I teach: “As a product of a small liberal arts college myself, I know how rewarding it is for undergraduates to get into the lab and actually do science. I am so fortunate to be able to offer these opportunities to the students here at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ through inquiry-based labs, summer research fellowships, and senior capstone experiences.â€�

Carol Dilley

Carol Dilley

Department: Theater and Dance

Field of study: Dance

Came to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in: 2003

Why I teach: “As an artist whose dance practice informs my experience of the world, I like to think I make a difference through my work. As an artist who teaches, I influence the next generation to consider the world with the sensibilities of an artist as well.

“Teaching in the arts is my most effective means to generate positive momentum towards growth in the immediacy of the dance studio and in the world beyond.â€�

Paula Schlax

Paula Schlax

Department: Chemistry

Field of study: The role of RNA structure in controlling gene expression in diverse prokaryotes

Came to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in: 1998

Why I teach: “I love to help students learn how to develop a research question, design and execute experiments to answer their question, analyze and interpret their own experimental data, and, perhaps most importantly, recognize that these are useful skills for lifelong learning in most disciplines.�

Goldwater Scholarship recipient Joanna Moody ’14.

A ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College student aiming to become a railroad systems engineer has received a prestigious Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship to support her studies.

A sophomore, Joanna Moody of Charlottesville, Va., is triple-majoring in physics, math and Japanese. Moody has spent the current academic year at Nanzan University in Nagoya, Japan.

The scholarship program honoring the late Sen. Barry M. Goldwater was designed to foster and encourage outstanding students to pursue careers in mathematics, the natural sciences and engineering. The Goldwater is the premier undergraduate award of its type in these fields.

Moody is one of 282 U.S. students to receive a Goldwater Scholarship for the 2012–13 academic year. The one- and two-year scholarships cover the cost of tuition, fees, books and room and board up to a maximum of $7,500 per year.

A second ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ student, Daniel Peach of Madison, Ala., received an honorable mention from the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation. Peach, a junior mathematics and philosophy major at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, plans to conduct research in numerical analysis and algorithm design while teaching at the graduate-school level.

Moody intends to earn a doctorate in systems engineering after she graduates from ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, with the longer-term goal of a career in railroad traffic control technology.

“The Goldwater Scholarship is recognition of my efforts and ambitions,” says Moody. “It’s a green light that affirms that I should continue to study in pursuit of my career dreams despite the many obstacles that I may face along the way.”

Moody has studied Japanese language and culture, as well as business and economics, during her stay in Japan. Less formally, she has also researched the significance of railroads in Japanese culture. “I’ve focused on how the railroad historically was a symbol of Japanese modernization, and how today it remains an integral part of the social network of Japan,” says Moody, a rail fan whose train travels in Japan have been as much for enjoyment as research.

“I’m interested in comparing this train-oriented society with the car-oriented society of America,” she says. “I’ve always preferred the feeling of trains over other forms of transportation, but as I’ve learned more about it, I’ve realized that it’s a shame that more Americans don’t utilize the railroad for environmental and economic reasons as well.”

In her first two years at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, Moody’s activities included participation in the physics lab of assistant professor Nathan Lundblad, who researches atomic behavior at ultralow temperatures. Moody’s contributions included computer programming and hands-on work with experimental apparatus, including lasers and vacuum chambers.

“I chose ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ because I wanted an academically rigorous, well-rounded liberal arts education in a small school where I could have strong relationships with my professors,” Moody says.

But she has found, in addition, that ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ “has been flexible in accommodating my rather unusual course of study at the school,” including approving her triple major and allowing her to pursue studies in Japan.

“I’m very grateful for this flexibility and the control it gives me over what I chose to study.”

The Goldwater Foundation is a federally endowed agency. Since its first award in 1989, it has bestowed more than 6,200 scholarships worth approximately $39 million.

Assistant Professor of Physics Nathan Lundblad is the first member of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College faculty to receive a Defense Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (DEPSCoR) grant from the U.S. Department of Defense.

Sponsored by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the grant is for $388,088 over three years. It will fund Lundblad’s research into atomic activity at ultralow temperatures. ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ is the only liberal arts school in the nation and the only academic institution in Maine to receive a DEPSCoR grant this year.

It’s well-established that certain materials become extremely efficient electrical conductors — superconductors — when cooled well below freezing. But why particular materials behave this way at such temperatures, potentially suitable for practical application, isn’t clear. Lundblad hopes to better understand this phenomenon by taking it to the extreme: He will study the subatomic behavior of matter when cooled to about 100 billionths of a degree above the temperature, roughly 460 degrees below zero, where atomic motion ceases — absolute zero.

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“It’s an experimental area where the laws of quantum mechanics, the natural laws that govern the behavior of particles on extremely small scales, become dominant,” he says. “These laws can be very weird and counterintuitive.”

Lundblad plans to observe a sample of ultracold gas called a Bose-Einstein condensate. At such low temperatures, the locations of the gas atoms become fundamentally indistinguishable. With the gas confined in a vacuum chamber, he will use laser beams to create “optical lattice traps” that simulate the complicated behavior of electrons in high-temperature superconductors.

But the simulation will be “cleaner,” or subject to fewer variables, than its crystalline high-temperature counterparts. The hope is that the gas particles’ behavior at near absolute zero will shed light on particle behavior in crystalline high-temperature situations.

While any applications of the research won’t come for quite a long time, the work could support important technological advances. “An electrical grid made of a high-temperature superconductor, for example, could be immensely cheaper than our current system,” he says. Timekeeping and other measurement systems could also benefit.

Any military applications, Lundblad adds, would be nonspecific and on a long time scale. “I like to think of ultracold atoms as a field similar to the laser in the 1960s — a hotbed of research, but nobody knew quite what to do with them yet.”

The Department of Defense takes the long view, he explains. “Similar to its funding of research related to creating the Internet, they figure that spending research dollars advances the cause of the country in general, and if they reap some technological benefit 30 years down the line, so be it.”