Maine Geological Survey uses RLE students’ report about Harriman Point

The Maine Geological Survey is using a report prepared by students from a 2021 Research Learning Experience (RLE) course that describes the geological and anthropological features of Harriman Point, a natural preserve in Brooklin, Maine. 

Christopher Gerbi, a professor with the University of Maine School of Earth and Climate Sciences, and students from his Sharing Geoscience on Maine’s Public Lands RLE wrote the report “Bedrock, Glaciers, and People at Harriman Point, Brooklin, Maine.” The Maine Geological Survey published the report as its latest Maine Geologic Fact and Locality (GFL) release

Student co-authors include Allie Andersen, Briana Batista, Christopher Bibula, Sean Burke, Matt Henriques, Iris May-Fleming, Daphne McCollom, Brenna Murphy, Ian Ramsden, Katie Ritchie, Hana Stone, Tommy Young. The Maine Coast Heritage Trust, which manages the Harriman Point preserve, worked with the class by helping identify a property to study and reviewing the report. 

RLEs are courses that allow students across academic disciplines to engage in open-ended research and scholarship at the start of their college careers. The RLE program is a UMS TRANSFORMS initiative funded by the Harold Alfond Foundation’s historic $240 million grant to provide new opportunities for student support, faculty development and innovative collaborative degree programs to advance Maine’s economy and workforce in partnership with the public and private sectors. 

“A major goal of this RLE was to take new work from observation through publication, crossing between science and communication,” says Gerbi, who also serves as associate dean of research for the College of Natural Sciences, Forestry, and Agriculture. “I’m proud of how the students collaboratively developed a document in such a short time that we can share with the public.”