Department News
The Coastal Studies Center (CSC) offers facilities and resources that support student and faculty research, and courses, focused on coastal settings and issues. The scope of studies supported by the CSC is inter- and multi-disciplinary including humanities; arts; social, natural and behavioral sciences; and mathematics. All viewpoints, separately and in combination, provide insight and understanding to the multiple facets of coastal studies.
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Mission Statement
The Coastal Studies Center (CSC) seeks to support, encourage, and inspire research and creative projects broadly related to coastal studies undertaken by Bowdoin students and faculty. Further, the CSC seeks to support Bowdoin academic courses, research, or creative projects that study the natural world at the Thalheimer property.
Coastal Studies covers an inherently multi- and interdisciplinary set of inquiries. Accordingly, the CSC is a multi- and interdisciplinary entity that seeks to involve students and faculty from the humanities, sciences, and social sciences. The CSC seeks to foster interactions and inter and cross-disciplinary projects among faculty and students from multiple departments and programs. The CSC promotes awareness, visibility, and discussion of a broad range of coastal topics and issues at Bowdoin and elsewhere.
The CSC seeks to foster interactions and collaborative projects with other broadly similar entities such as colleges, universities, field stations, and museums. In this context, the CSC seeks to foster limited use of its facilities by visiting researchers, scholars, small academic courses and small academic conferences focusing on topics either broadly related to coastal studies or that studies the natural world at the Thalheimer property.
The Coastal Studies Center seeks to preserve that natural environment at the Thalheimer property. The only allowed uses of the property are for relevant teaching, research, meetings and reflection. Users are required to minimize their impact on the natural environment.
The Coastal Studies Center is:
- located on Orrs Island on the Maine coast, about 20 minutes from Bowdoin College.
- a natural, protected environment, with 2.5 miles of intertidal shoreline and 118 acres of woodlands and fields.
- a facility including a marine laboratory with running seawater.
- a terrestrial laboratory and art studio, a pier for year-round research and access to vessels during the open water season, an ocean buoy for scientific research, and a converted farmhouse, much used as a meeting place.
- a place for faculty and students to do research and conduct projects. Student Honors Projects and Summer Research Projects.
- a place to walk and reflect, to appreciate nature and biodiversity, to contemplate our coastal environment in its artistic, economic, historic, literary, scientific, and social contexts. Interpretive Trail Guide.
- a setting that encourages interdisciplinary connections and multidisciplinary understandings of coastal topics.
Photographs by Morgan Macleod '09.