Colby students at Bigelow Labs
by Emily Price
While Colby offers countless places to study internationally, many at Colby who are choosing abroad programs are unaware of the fact that they could simply travel to the coast of Maine. Bigelow Laboratories consists of a state-of-the-art 60,000 square-foot laboratory in East Boothbay, Maine. In recent years, Colby College and Bigelow have fostered a close relationship, with strong connections between Colby students and faculty and scientists at the lab.
To get a better sense of students’ experiences studying at Bigelow Laboratories, Katie Senechal ’19 and Duncan Coles ’19 discussed their recent time there. Both Senechal and Coles are environmental science majors. The environmental science program is split into two sections, environmental science and environmental policy. Senechal explained, “every senior is required to do a capstone, which is a cumulative experience that you do with a group within your major. There are two policy capstones and two science capstones. One of the cap- stones in the fall semester focused on changes in the Gulf of Maine as it is warming. Our professor brought us down to Bigelow Labs for Ocean Sciences, about an hour and a half drive from the campus.”
Senechal gave insight into what exactly she studied at Bigelow, “Ten of us, ten environmental science majors that is, went to Bigelow every Thursday from 11 in the morning until six at night. We spent our days researching our individual topics. The project that one of my classmates and I worked on was focused on a pathogen that is coming into the Gulf of Maine with higher densities because of the warming environment.” Senechal added that while she knew people spent semesters at Bigelow, last semester was her first experience at the lab as an environmental science major. “It can count as your abroad or towards your capstone research, and you can live there,” Senechal said.
“They have beautiful new dorms and state-of-the-art technology… It is definitely one of the best experiences that I’ve had at Colby and I am so happy I did it because it gave me the hands-on knowledge of working in an actual lab.” Senechal commented that the students had good relationships with the scientists who worked there longterm, and that they often offered insight into their careers as well as guidance for the students’ futures. “The scientists were extremely willing to talk to the students as well,” said Senechal. “They would explain how they got to be in their position, why they are interested in what they’re researching, and explained what we as students could do with what we were learning.” Senechal added that her class worked with one scientist specifically, and that he has since sent information on graduate schools and provided advice to the students since the semester ended.
Coles has also spent a significant amount of his time at Colby working at the Bigelow Laboratories. An environmental science and biology double major, Coles explained how his semester at Bigelow helped shape his experience at Colby, “I’ve always liked marine biology. The program at Bigelow seemed more micro-focused when I first heard about it, and I like more macro-focused research…but Josh Martin told me I should try this thing, so I applied and got in.”
Coles said that the students accepted to Bigelow Laboratories study subjects ranging from environmental science to geology, and some came from colleges other than Colby, including students from Wheaton College in Massachusetts and Middlebury College in Vermont. “For the semester program, you get paired up with a scientist at Bigelow to work on an independent study,” Coles added. “The program works so that you either are working on something you might be really knowledgeable about or sometimes you’re thrown into research where you have no idea what’s going on…I was in the latter. I did work on genetics. It was something that I never would have had the opportunity to work on otherwise, and I really had no idea what I was doing at the time. But now I can pretend like I do… I gained hard environmental science and biology skills that I didn’t have before. It was definitely a growing experience and I learned a ton.”
Coles continued to explain the difference between some of the more traditional academic experiences at Colby and the learning that takes place at Bigelow: “It was very cool living there and working with the scientists. They’re all Colby accredited professors, but they’re not in university academics. Everyone is really straightforward with you about how the research actually is and super excited teaching and working with students. It’s nice that they’re really starting to do more with Colby students now.” Aside from collaborating with Colby, the Laboratories perform outreach in the local community of East Boothbay. Coles elaborated on this, “It’s cool how a research institute of this caliber wants to have so much interaction with both East Boothbay and Colby. It’s one thing to be in there doing your research, but it’s another thing to be teaching and instilling that kind of passion in the younger generations.”
