Scholars representing a wide array of disciplines benefitted from grant funding during the spring semester. From math to music, from neuroscience to environmental studies, from biology to oceanography, ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ faculty are pursuing pioneering research.
The grants cover areas as diverse as the social impact of climate change, oyster reef restoration, the racial history of jazz education, biomedical research, and last but not least, polygonal billiard tables!
Senior Lecturer in Environmental Studies Eileen Johnson is involved in an ongoing initiative to help Maine coastal communities deal with the impact of climate change. It’s called the and is funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Maine Sea Grant program based at the University of Maine. The Sea Grant program is a federal-university partnership between NOAA and thirty-four university-based programs in every coastal and Great Lakes state, Puerto Rico, and Guam. (Other collaborators of this project include the Lincoln County Regional Planning Commission, the Wells Reserve, Blue Sky Planning Solutions, and Resilient Communities LLC.) The project received a fresh round of funding during the semester and it includes a particular focus on in Maine’s midcoast region, helping vulnerable residents mitigate coastal hazards caused by the changing environment.
A series of severe storms during the winter and early spring this year caused the focus of the project to shift somewhat, said Johnson, in an effort to understand how these storms impacted area residents and businesses. “Over the spring and summer, we have convened focus groups and are in the process of holding interviews with representatives from the emergency management, conservation, municipal, business, and social service sectors.” The aim, she explained, is to identify strategies for addressing the needs of residents who face heightened social vulnerability. Johnson has been working with two students on this project, Evan Grauer ‘26 and Kyle Pellerin ‘26. “In collaboration with our partners, the students have been important contributors to our project. Through this work, we want to better understand how we can plan for, respond to, and recover from the types of storms we experienced this past winter and spring.” Johnson said the project is one of several associated with ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ’s Roux Colab for Social Science Research that examine community resilience and rural livelihoods.
Associate Professor of Earth and Oceanographic Science Michèle LaVigne and her collaborators at Colby College were awarded a grant from the 's Fund for Maine Coastal and Climate Action for their project titled Social and Ecological Feasibility of Oyster Reef Restoration in Maine.
LaVigne said her role grew out of a research project she started with her class in spring 2021, when they were invited to join the , a in nearby Phippsburg, where shellfish harvesters, concerned about recent declines in productivity, were looking at ways to rehabilitate the local bivalve population. The project has since expanded, said LaVigne, and is now a case study site for using oyster reefs as a coastal resilience strategy against erosion—a strategy that could potentially be utilized in other locations.
The overarching question, she explained, is: What makes a site suitable for oyster reef development? “This has a lot to do with substrate, water flow, temperature, and other water quality parameters,” explained LaVigne. With the help of three ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ seniors—Henry Zucco, Caroline Vauclain, and Eli Franklin—she is doing chemical analyses of the waters in the Basin to determine how the carbon conditions and acidity compare to other coastal locations. “These two parameters could play an important role in shell development and stability of reefs. They could also indicate whether this location is vulnerable to future ocean acidification, which can impact long term stability.” LaVigne and her team, which also includes students from Colby College, are taking water samples biweekly through the summer, with the help of ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ marine resources staff.
Associate Professor of Music Tracy McMullen was funded by Harvard University to pursue her latest book project at its . Her project is called The Courage to Hear: Jazz Traditions and the Price of the Ticket. Her aim, she said, is to shine a light on the racial history of jazz education in which she explores the overwhelmingly white and male nature of jazz programs at US colleges and how the situation came about.
“The racial history of jazz education has not been detailed,” she observed, “and summations like jazz historian Barry Kernfeld’s that ‘jazz relocated itself from the nightclub to the academy’ are standard. Jazz did not relocate itself but was relocated by a small group of white men in the mid-twentieth century.” McMullen said while the whiteness and the maleness of current college jazz programs is often lamented, it is “couched in befuddlement, blaming the problem on women and people of color who aren’t interested in jazz. “My book,” she explained, “tells a different story: A small network of white men established college jazz programs, beginning at the Jim Crow segregated North Texas State (UNT) in the mid-1940s and spreading to other colleges.” McMullen said she describes two lineages, interweaving the history of Black American music and the rise of white male-dominated jazz institutions through five chapters, from the "Peculiar Institution" (i.e. slavery) to the , where McMullen was recently an ACLS Frederick Burkhardt fellow.