{"id":70,"date":"2012-10-29T09:43:32","date_gmt":"2012-10-29T13:43:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/stateofmaine2012\/?p=70"},"modified":"2012-12-01T12:57:09","modified_gmt":"2012-12-01T17:57:09","slug":"our-class-trip-to-augusta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/stateofmaine2012\/2012\/10\/29\/our-class-trip-to-augusta\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Class Trip to Augusta!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Senior Colby Environmental Policy majors enrolled in one of the senior capstone courses get a tour of the Maine statehouse with Colby alumna Emmie Theberge (\u201908), Clean Energy and Global Warming Outreach Coordinator for the Natural Resources Council of Maine (NRCM). Emmie was a student in this capstone course when she was an Environmental Policy major at Colby College. Front row (l-r): Carla Aronsohn, Ginny Keesler, Lindsay Garrard, Siya Hegde, and Kaitlyn Bernard; Back row (l-r): Noah Teachey, Jackson Broadbent, Emmie Theberg (NRCM, Colby \u201908), Laramie Maxwell, and Garrison Beck<\/h5>\n
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Submitted by Kaitlyn Bernard ’13<\/h3>\n

The first full month of the semester has blown by and seniors enrolled in the three senior capstone courses offered by the\u00a0Environmental Studies Program<\/a>\u00a0at\u00a0Colby College<\/a>\u00a0have hit the ground running. In the domestic, Maine-focused capstone, we are working on projects using the theme of \u201cThe State of Maine\u2019s Environment.\u201d\u00a0 We got off to a great start by taking a field trip to Augusta, the state\u2019s capital, to take advantage of resources that will help us to develop our final project ideas.<\/p>\n

Our first stop was the\u00a0Maine State Museum<\/a>, where we explored some of the history of the state of Maine. The exhibits cover everything from forestry, mining, and agriculture to Maine\u2019s prehistoric history.\u00a0 The visit was a great way to get a general understanding of the historic context of Maine\u2019s current environmental challenges and opportunities. As a Mainer myself, I really enjoyed connecting some of the museum exhibits to the area of Maine where I grew up and thinking about how our colorful past still characterizes Maine\u2019s landscapes and people today. My favorite exhibit in the museum was the working three-story water-powered woodworking mill. A ramp wound around the whole mill, showing exactly how it worked from different angles.<\/p>\n

After the museum, we headed over to the\u00a0Natural Resources Council of Maine<\/a>\u00a0(NRCM) to talk with some leaders in state environmental advocacy. NRCM is a large nonprofit membership organization that works to \u201cprotect the nature of Maine\u201d by engaging members and legislators on a variety of environmental issues. We spoke with Pete Didisheim, the Senior Director of Advocacy, and Emmie Theberge, the Clean Energy and Global Warming Outreach Coordinator, about emerging threats to Maine\u2019s environment. Emmie is a Colby Alum (Environmental Policy major \u201908) who wrote a paper on the \u201cThe State of Land and Resource Use in the Unorganized Territory in Maine<\/a>\u201d when she was a student in this course!\u00a0 Pete and Emmie told us that some of NRCM\u2019s biggest priority issues this year include a proposed East-West Highway, the tar sands pipeline running across Southern Maine, and potential mining projects across the state. These topics cover a lot of ground and are relevant in some way to nearly every group\u2019s project focus.<\/p>\n

Emmie took us all over to the Maine State House and gave us a guided tour, explaining how the state legislature works and sharing some of her experiences working on environmental policy in Maine. It was a great opportunity to be able to talk with a Colby Environmental Studies Program\u00a0 alumna about her \u201creal world\u201d job and see what\u2019s out there for Environmental Studies majors!<\/p>\n

All in all, it was a great way to dive right into Maine environmental issues and gather a general context of the politics and issues that our projects will focus on.<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Senior Colby Environmental Policy majors enrolled in one of the senior capstone courses get a tour of the Maine statehouse with Colby alumna Emmie Theberge (\u201908), Clean Energy and Global Warming Outreach Coordinator for the Natural Resources Council of Maine (NRCM). Emmie was a student in this capstone course when she was an Environmental Policy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2417,"featured_media":72,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3838],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/stateofmaine2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/stateofmaine2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/stateofmaine2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/stateofmaine2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2417"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/stateofmaine2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/stateofmaine2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/stateofmaine2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70\/revisions\/76"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/stateofmaine2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/stateofmaine2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/stateofmaine2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/stateofmaine2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}