{"id":131943,"date":"2020-04-03T12:23:39","date_gmt":"2020-04-03T16:23:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=131943"},"modified":"2024-07-01T16:42:21","modified_gmt":"2024-07-01T20:42:21","slug":"great-work-two-seniors-meet-the-honors-thesis-deadline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2020\/04\/03\/great-work-two-seniors-meet-the-honors-thesis-deadline\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Great work!’ Two seniors meet the honors thesis deadline"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cGreat work, Hannah and Emma!\u201d\u2063<\/p>\n

That jubilant shoutout came from geology professor Mike Retelle, who posted his congrats right after his honors thesis advisees, Hannah Johnson \u201920 of Brewster, Mass., and Emma Wheeler \u201920 of Paradis, Norway, submitted their geology theses.\u2063<\/p>\n

He also included a happy photo of Johnson and Wheeler in survival suits prior to their plunge into a Norwegian fjord last summer.<\/p>\n

For Bates seniors, the honors thesis is the pinnacle of academic achievement \u2014 never more so than this year, as seniors and their faculty advisers had to make the sudden move to remote learning due to COVID-19. Moved from the original March deadline, honors were due April 1.<\/p>\n

Despite the disruption, there was continuity: Bates professors supporting their advisees.\u2063<\/p>\n

\u201cBeginning with field work in the Arctic, which involved hiking over rough terrain and riding in small rubber boats in all kinds of weather, Hannah and Emma have been incredibly great to work with \u2014 always positive and always thinking,\u201d said Retelle. \u2063<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Hannah Johnson \u201920 and Emma Wheeler \u201920 pose in survival suits during safety training at the University Centre in Svalbard, prior to the start of summer 2019 fieldwork, which entails travel by boat. They\u2019re about to jump into the fjord to test their suits. \u2063(Photograph by Mike Retelle)<\/p><\/div>\n

The two theses draw on fieldwork that Johnson and Wheeler conducted with Retelle and other scientists in Svalbard, Norway. The former\u2019s thesis looks at \u201cLate Glacial to Holocene Sea Level History of Kapp Linne, Svalbard.\u201d The topic of the latter is \u201cA Hydroclimate Reconstruction in the Changing High Arctic Environment, Linn\u00e9dalen, Svalbard.\u201d\u2063<\/p>\n

Johnson sampled boulders on old shorelines with a hammer and chisel to determine the ages of the shorelines and reconstruct sea level during the retreat of the last ice sheet, as the Svalbard ice sheet 20,000 years ago is an analog of what is happening in Antarctica and Greenland today.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter she came back she worked at the University of Vermont to dissolve the rock samples in hydrofluoric and perchloric acid, wearing hazmat gear,\u201d Retelle explains.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Wheeler\u2019s project entailed recovering samples from a glacial lake to reconstruct its hydrology. \u201cHer fieldwork required hauling a mooring by hand over the gunnels of a Zodiac boat, and then recovering samples and electronics from the mooring,\u201d Retelle says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

During summer 2019 fieldwork in Svalbard, Hannah Johnson stands at an outcrop above Linn\u00e9vatnet, a lake at Spitsbergen, Svalbard. The white quartzite behind her is pockmarked with weathering pits. (Photograph by Mike Retelle)<\/p><\/div>\n

Wheeler remembers what inspired her to choose geology as a major: a single image.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter my first year, I remember seeing a picture Bates had posted of two students, one standing on the other’s shoulders, inspecting a small, strange-looking bucket on top of a three-legged structure.\u201d<\/p>\n

The caption, she recalls, \u201csaid something about students doing research in the High Arctic with Professor Mike Retelle. My immediate reaction was, \u2018Wow, I want to go there and do that\u2019 \u2014 even though I wasn’t even really sure what \u2018that\u2019 was!\u201d (She now knows the photo depicted the weather station in the Linn\u00e9 Valley on Svalbard. The bucket records precipitation).<\/p>\n

\u201cHe is always ready to talk about anything, sediment-related or not!\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cEmma and Hannah are also mentally tough \u2014 just ask their coaches,\u201d said Retelle. Wheeler is a three-time NCAA champion with the rowing team and a French translator for a local program that provides legal services for asylum-seekers. Johnson is a swim captain who was part of the team\u2019s record-setting 200-yard medley relay at this year\u2019s NESCACs.\u2063<\/p>\n

\"Emma<\/a>

Emma Wheeler ’20 (left) and Inger Marie Aasberg, a student at the University Centre in Svalbard, do geochemical analyses of their sediment cores last September at the R.B. Gilmore XRF lab at the University of Massachusetts. (Photograph by Mike Retelle)<\/p><\/div>\n

Typically, seniors would upload their theses from the comfort of their campus residence or the library, then celebrate with friends. That part was missing this year, but not the pride of achievement.<\/p>\n

“Submitting online from home was not how I envisioned how this project would end,” said Johnson. “But I am still really proud of this accomplishment and incredibly grateful for the thoughtful guidance from Mike throughout this whole process. Not being at Bates and having face-to-face interactions was difficult, but Mike quickly replaced those with Zoom meetings.”<\/p>\n

\u201cMike has been an incredible mentor,\u201d Wheeler adds. \u201cNot only has he shared his extensive knowledge of and experience in Arctic geology, but he is always ready to listen to new ideas or think through questions I have presented.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe also really cares about his students, and is always ready to talk about anything, sediment-related or not!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Hannah Johnson and Emma Wheeler have been great to work with \u2014 always positive, always thinking,\u201d says thesis adviser Mike Retelle. \u2063<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":131947,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4,14,6,217,11012,11009],"tags":[12135,10841,4244,10896,7842,10950],"class_list":["post-131943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life","category-faculty-staff","category-maine-world","category-science-technology","category-student-life","category-the-college","tag-covid-19","tag-geology","tag-honors-thesis","tag-mike-retelle","tag-senior-thesis","tag-svalbard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131943"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133502,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131943\/revisions\/133502"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}