The Schiller Coastal Studies Center (SCSC) recently received nearly $150,000 in grants funded by the Casco Bay Estuary Partnership through a Monitoring Infrastructure Grant under the Infrastructure Investmentment and Jobs Act. With this money, Bowdoin will have the means to establish a long-term water quality monitoring station and fund eelgrass restoration efforts in Casco Bay.

The station will allow the SCSC to track water quality and increase accessibility to water quality data for both stakeholders at Bowdoin and in the larger Maine community. While there are water quality stations all throughout Casco Bay, there was not one in Harpswell Sound previously.

With the funding, the SCSC will also award three Bowdoin students funded internships to develop eelgrass seed processing methods in support of the seed-based restoration efforts in Casco Bay. Two of the three students will intern with the Collaborative for Bioregional Action Learning and Transformation and receive training in scientific diving and monitoring as well as harvesting and reseeding eelgrass meadows. The third student will work as a coastal research assistant supporting the lab-based seed maturation and collection processes and analyzing data.

Anne-Sophie Kagan ’27 previously worked as an SCSC research assistant, focusing on the eelgrass monitoring that part of the new funding will be allocated to as well as a blue crab monitoring project with Manomet Conservation Sciences. While her work was biology focused, she noted having used her education and design skills and emphasized the SCSC’s capacity to welcome students with diverse academic backgrounds.

“The funding can get more people that don’t have enough experience to have research at Schiller to get to do stuff there,” Kagan wrote in an email to the Orient. “I really found my place at Schiller not only because of the beauty of it but because of the people working there. Everyone was extremely welcoming, kind and curious.”

Holly Parker, director of the SCSC, hopes to provide other students similar experiences with the new funding.

“One of the things we’re also looking to do … is create more interdisciplinary experiences and experiences in the arts, humanities and social sciences,” Parker said.

Parker, whose own background bridges multiple disciplines, sees the interdisciplinary mindset as beneficial to learning.

“I’m a social scientist with an arts and humanities background, so I would love to have students down there doing work across the curriculum. We’re always looking for opportunities to find funding for those kinds of projects,” Parker said.

Beyond funding and the curriculum, Parker emphasized the importance of broad campus engagement, as the SCSC’s outreach is aimed at the entire Bowdoin community.

“We want to just get the message out that the [SCSC] and our conversations and research surrounding climate impacts in coastal communities is really for everyone in the liberal arts,” Parker said.

Current Bowdoin Coastal Studies Semester students, who have spent the fall taking classes and conducting lab work at SCSC, were briefed on the new program and encouraged to apply. One student, Gabe Marra-Perrault ’28, said the announcement aligns with his own experience at the center taking classes in the humanities, social science and STEM disciplines, saying that he already appreciates the interdisciplinary nature of the SCSC but would love to see it continue.

“I feel like they’ve done a really good job of incorporating and making it an interdisciplinary program already,” Marra-Perrault said.

He added that the SCSC’s location is just as much a part of the learning experience as the classes themselves.

“It’s just such a great resource to have that much waterfront property in such an awesome area, and I feel like it would be a waste to not incorporate as many different disciplines as possible,” Marra-Perrault said.