Ladd Fund for Community-Engaged Learning

A short documentary of a Maine island, by Mason Daugherty ’25, Seamus Goulden ’24, Melissa Su ‘24, Glenn Rice ’25, and Emi Schneider ’24 for Professor Shu-chin Tsui's Eco-Cinema: China's Environmental Ecological Crisis (ASNS/CINE/ENVS 2075).

"The Ladd Fund support our project received was pivotal in being able to execute our production plan. Filmmaking is often an expensive endeavor, so not needing to worry about certain costs allowed us to focus on creating a higher-quality documentary that best represented the people of Vinalhaven." - Mason Daugherty ’25

https://www.bowdoin.edu/news/2021/12/ecocinema-class-student-films.html

In the fall of 2020, four students worked together on a final project for Professor David Hecht’s interdisciplinary seminar, “Health, Culture, and Society.” For their project, Basmattie Dookie ’21, Emma Hahesy ’22, Joanna Lin ’22, and Hikmah Okoya ’21 decided to write and illustrate a children’s book entitled Coronavirus Heroes: Life During a Pandemic, which centers around a young girl who learns to use healthy coping mechanisms to deal with the isolation of the pandemic. Their collective experience working with children along with material from their seminar helped the group recognize the importance of having accessible information about the pandemic for children, many of whom found themselves confused and upset after COVID-19 upended their lives.

After their course had concluded, these students found a pro bono editor who wanted to help them publish and distribute copies of Coronavirus Heroes. They applied for the Ladd Fund to cover the costs of publishing 120 copies of their book to donate to schools in the greater Brunswick community, as well as to list on Amazon to generate proceeds for future printings. To make it accessible beyond the Brunswick community, they also made the book available as a free PDF. By putting their book out into the world, they hope to help children better cope with the pandemic and the emotional strains it put on them.

An article published by the Portland Press Herald on Coronavirus Heroes can be found here.

With the support of the Ladd Fund, she was able to enrich her project by carrying out original research, engaging directly with a variety of stakeholders through ethnographic field interviews, participant observation, and site visits to four different biomass plant, over twelve live conversations, and over twelve hours of public hearings. These insights have been invaluable as she not only completes the traditional lengthy academic product associated with an Honors Project, but explores ways to synthesize that knowledge into accessible materials like postcards, Storymaps, and brief handouts. By sharing these resources with these environmental justice networks, she hopes to assist their organizing work informing and empowering those whose homes and health are at stake in this fight, but who are rarely centered in knowledge production and academic discourse. It has been an incredibly meaningful experience for her to connect the insights, resources and privileges of a Bowdoin education to the issues closes to her home and her heart: the forests and communities of the South.

As part of her advanced independent study through the education department, Sophie Lewis '21 is exploring social-emotional learning combining literature-based research and a community-engaged partnership with Brunswick Junior High School. For the duration of the Fall 2021 semester Sophie will be observing the weekly SEL curriculum sessions that take place in advisory as well as working with a guidance counselor to facilitate small group sessions with ​six 7th grade girls. These small group sessions will run for ​10 weeks, starting in the first week of October and finishing ​in mid-December. These sessions are a targeted way to help support a few students who could benefit from increased time devoted towards developing social-emotional skills.

Sophie's current work is part of an ongoing passion that began in the summer of 2020 when she started working with an education nonprofit that creates SEL curriculum for upper elementary and middle schoolers. She has helped revise and create new curriculum, where a focus has been placed on identity, mental-wellness and social justice. In addition to developing curriculum, she has virtually taught these lessons to small groups of middle schoolers. She has worked at BJHS in the past while shadowing a 7th grader for the semester through the education class Educating All Students. 

Over the course of the Spring 2021 Semester, Mohamed Kilani ’21 and Norell Sherman ’21 worked with Kate Furbish Elementary School in Brunswick as part of the Multilingual Mainers program developed by Professor Margaret Boyle of the Romance Languages and Literatures department. Since 2017, this program has placed Bowdoin students in local elementary schools to increase language exposure for children between Kindergarten and 2nd Grade.

Building on the existing work of Multilingual Mainers, Mo and Norell took part in an independent study with Professor Boyle, where the two used tools from the Diverse Book Finder developed at Bates College to better understand the representation of BIPOC narratives at Kate Furbish’s library. This stemmed from Mo and Norell recognizing the importance of diverse narratives, and especially bilingual picture books, in creating more tolerant students. When they identified the ways that the library’s catalogue fell short, they worked with the Diverse Book Finder’s catalogue to find and purchase 250 engaging, quality children’s books that provided more meaningful representation.

An article published by Bowdoin College on Mo and Norell's project can be found here.

For her Honors Project in the Mathematics Department, Kathryn McGinnis ’21 looked back on her time in the McKeen Center’s Bowdoin Public Service program during her sophomore and junior years, where she worked as a research assistant for the Licking County Coalition for Housing. Her work with this organization, which is based in Licking County, Ohio, exposed her to the ways that the size of a homeless population is estimated, and how traditional “Point In Time” estimates only capture about a third of the nation’s actual homeless population. Such drastic underestimates often lead to the underfunding of programs that assist homeless populations from the federal government. Knowing this, Kathryn was inspired to work on an Honors Project with Professor James Broda with a goal of proposing a new methodology to provide better estimates of the homeless population in Licking County’s largest city, Newark.

McGinnis studied the “Capture Recapture” method for population estimates, which is derived from an 1802 method to estimate the population of France. To make this methodology accessible to community organizations across the country, McGinnis developed a resource guide on how to use this methodology to capture data on their own communities.  In May, shared her guide with the community partners she had worked with in Licking County and ran a Zoom workshop to walk them through how to use the tool.

An article published by Bowdoin College on Kathryn's project can be found here.

For her Honors Project in the Environmental Studies Department, senior Lily McVetty decided to turn her sights towards her hometown of Rockland, Maine. This town, situated in the West Penobscot Bay about an hour from Brunswick, is one of many rural Maine towns that is facing impending sea level rise along with other dangers from climate change. However, as towns like Rockland work to face these challenges, the needs of lower-income, BIPOC, and year-round residents, who are already disproportionately affected by climate change, often go overlooked by local government in favor of wealthier seasonal residents. 

Observing this cycle inspired McVetty to do her Honors Project with Professor Eileen Johnson. In this project, she worked to use the Equity Framework developed by the University of Maine’s Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions to help assess how to best serve all residents of Rockland. To better understand her research questions, McVetty conducted a series of interviews with Rockland’s year-round residents, including small businesses and fishermen and -women. Upon completing her Honors Project, she shared her findings with a Rockland City Councilor.

An article published by Bowdoin College on Lily's project can be found here.