Alumni Profiles

What have you been up to since graduating from Bowdoin?

I just graduated in June of 2022 with a PhD in Marine Science from the University of California Santa Barbara. I tried to attend all my friends' online defenses while preparing to do my own defense. It was a really fun couple of weeks.

Why earth and oceanographic science?

I was really interested in being able to pursue research in an area is applicable to so much of my life on earth. When you think about earth science, you might not immediately think about human health, but so much of what I was learning has been about the way that the earth is so essential for sustaining things like oxygen in the atmosphere, fisheries and people's ability to get sustainable food where they live, and mitigating impacts on climate. While going through my PhD and my undergraduate degree at Bowdoin, it was so much about the people who were doing the work. Marine science is just a very uniquely supportive and friendly group of people, so I felt very welcomed into the field and really encouraged. That community in EOS laid the groundwork for me to feel comfortable and confident moving into the next stages of my career and pursuing this work that is really important and interesting to me. I had experiences at Bowdoin that both made me feel intellectually confident to be able to contribute, but also personally welcomed and supported while doing the work.

Are there any classes, professors, or experiences that had a lasting impact on you?

My most memorable course was Oceanography of the Gulf of Maine.

What have you been up to since graduating from Bowdoin?

My advisor, Rachel Beane, helped me get a job right after I graduated, at the Maine Geological Survey. I did that for six months, and then I moved to Seattle and got a job at a research center called the Applied Physics Lab, which is associated with the University of Washington and focused on mostly oceanography. I worked as an oceanographic field engineer there, and I maintained and repaired all sorts of oceanographic moorings and instruments to monitor water quality. I did this for two and a half years, but it was purely engineering—I wasn't really doing any science, per se. I decided that I wanted to get a chance to actually look at oceanographic data and not just the instruments used to collect data. I went back to graduate school at the University of Washington and I just finished my PhD in March of 2022. Now I'm doing research at Oregon State Univeristy!

Why did you choose earth and oceanographic science?

During my time at Bowdoin, I really liked science, but I was not good at standing in a lab all day. When I started taking EOS classes, there was something that really clicked for me—I was learning about the landscape around me and discovering, for example, that it's not an accident that there are hills in one place and rivers in another; there's rhyme and reason to it. I really enjoyed those classes and it felt like a career trajectory where I could be very directly helping people and dealing with climate change. EOS is a really nice intersection of spending time outdoors, engaging with hard science, and doing something that directly helps people.