Faculty Focus: Pam Morgan, Ph.D.

When Pam Morgan, Ph.D., a professor of Environmental Studies, first arrived on the Biddeford campus roughly thirty years ago, the environmental program as we know it had not yet been created, and in its place was the Division of Life Sciences.

“I wish I could say that I was originally from Maine, but I grew up in New Jersey,” she said. “I spent a few summers here as a kid and fell in love with the state. I went on to get my master's degree at UMaine Orono, and decided this was really where I wanted to be. Coincidentally, the location is also what brought me to UNE. Being here in the state of Maine, right on the coast, and close to all of these awesome natural areas was the biggest draw, because ultimately, that's what I'm most passionate about.”

Morgan’s approach to teaching gets students out of the classroom and into the real world with an abundance of hands-on fieldwork throughout the semester. In a recent interview, Morgan shares how she gives her students the opportunity to make the most of the land we all call home.

How do you put “learning by doing” into practice as an instructor? 

You can be hands-on when you're in the classroom. For example, if I'm teaching a class about plants, I can bring in specimens for students to view and teach them how to identify unique attributes. But really, for me, learning by doing has a lot to do with getting outside of the classroom and into nature. We have a 363 acre parcel of woodlands right at our doorstep, so it’s not uncommon for us to spend the entire four hour class outside identifying plants, birds, and collecting data.

Another important piece of learning by doing is getting my students working with nonprofit organizations. We do projects in our upper level classes that are off-campus where we visit conservation areas that are owned by different nonprofit organizations, and students take what they've learned in class and apply those skills to the work they’re doing with the conservation property. During these opportunities they’re not just learning how to collect information and identify plants and animals. They’re given the tools to take it a step further and package their research up and present it to an actual “real life” audience like a board of directors. I’ve found this approach to be super effective, and the students work really hard when they know that there's an outside audience.

What careers do your students pursue once they’ve graduated?

Our students are successful in getting jobs right out of college in the environmental field. One student who comes to mind took my wetlands class. Once he graduated, he started working for an environmental consulting group down on the Cape and was immediately able to apply what he had learned here to his work on the Cape. He recently moved to Maine and is now working for a different environmental consulting firm in Portland. Alums have gone on to work at the Department of Environmental Protection, the US Forest Service, and some go on to grad school and get their master's in public health. Figure out what your passion is, and we’ll provide the support to get you where you want to be.

For a student who might be a little anxious about their first year of college, how do you offer support?

I think the most important thing for students to know is that the faculty are here for them and they should feel okay with reaching out. We are lucky here that we're small enough that we know students on a first-name basis. The class sizes for the most part are small enough that we know who you are and we want you to succeed. That's our job. Please, let us help you!

I'm sure that that becomes pretty apparent within those first few weeks of attending classes. You're not on your own here.

That's a good way of putting it and I think that's really true. These days I can see that students deal with a lot of anxiety and stress, especially in the environmental field due to issues like climate change. The people who make up the environmental program at UNE tend to be a pretty empathetic group. We’re so passionate about what we do which ties us all together and in return we become a community who helps each other out. ‘Cause if you’re going to go into a field like environmental, you're going to need that support.

Tell me about one of the most memorable experiences you've had when doing fieldwork with students.

We have 363 acres of woodlands and wetlands that we spend a lot of time in. During the first semester, our sophomores go out in small groups and are given a GPS to navigate their way. One day, everyone had made their way back to the lab except for one group and I was starting to get a little nervous. All of the sudden we heard a noise in the hallway and there they were completely covered in mud. They decided to get creative on their return trip, and instead of using the main trail, they used their GPS to get from point A to point B, as the crow flies, which ended up taking them directly through a swamp. One student lost a sneaker, so, somewhere out in those 363 acres is a shoe.

And the lesson there is don't cut corners.

Exactly. Don't try to cut through because it really doesn't save you any time.

Another story that always makes me laugh happened during one of our field labs where we walk out to an island that is easily accessible during low tide. We’re always careful to watch the time because we don't want to be out there too long and get stuck. Well, some tides are lower than others depending on the stage of the moon. Last fall, we were trying to make our way back, but the water had come in really fast and it was pretty deep. So, the students were all getting across, holding their backpacks with all their data above their heads. Luckily most of them had waders. But unfortunately one of my poor students, Maddie, who’s just under five feet tall, had the water up to her neck. We ended up having to put her on another student's shoulders to successfully get her back across.

What are you most excited about for this academic year?

I'm always super excited about getting to know a whole new group of students. That’s what keeps me here and keeps me coming back. It's so much fun to get to know them. When we take field classes together we're walking back and forth to the parcel. It takes 15 minutes to get out there, 15 minutes to get back. So you're chatting and you really get to know each other well. The second thing I'm really excited about is a new project that we're working on with the US Fish and Wildlife Service. We got a grant to do a restoration project on the big marsh behind the soccer field on Biddeford pool. I had two students working with me over the summer collecting baseline data at the site.

Once the restoration project gets kicked in and they start doing the actual, earth moving work out there, then we'll continue to study the site for five years with student interns working on it during that time, and we’re going to be able to take classes out there as well. I'm very excited about this because a lot of environmental issues can be kind of depressing, but when you get into restoration and figuring out how to “heal” the earth, it's an opportunity to learn that you really can do things to make it better.