{"id":149237,"date":"2022-10-14T12:18:56","date_gmt":"2022-10-14T16:18:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=149237"},"modified":"2022-11-17T14:47:25","modified_gmt":"2022-11-17T19:47:25","slug":"make-something-you-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2022\/10\/14\/make-something-you-love\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Make something you love’: Bates biology class gets cheesy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What could be better than a little cheese after a hard day of classes? What about having your class transformed into a cheese-tasting room, complete with crackers, cheese, and two guest alumni who started their own goat dairy and cheese-making business?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Students got to have their cheese and eat it, too, in the course \u201cLiving in a Microbial World,\u201d taught by Lori Banks, assistant professor of biology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Project:
From left, Assistant Professor of Biology Lori Banks explains some of the cheese samples to from left, Ben Schmandt \u201922 and Haley Neighmond \u201922, who are at Bates this year as post-baccalaureate scholars in biology; James Hillers \u201926, Jules Murray \u201926, Charlotte Maffie \u201925, and Kyra Ong \u201926. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The course is one of the biology department\u2019s several innovative courses known as CUREs. These courses offer \u201ccourse-based undergraduate research experiences\u201d to students early in their STEM education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This fall, students in Banks\u2019 CURE course, Biology 195D, have been exploring the microbial world by looking at two different cheeses made by Banks and two colleagues involved in the course, Beth Malachowsky, a research technician, and Amy McDonough, an assistant in instruction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Anything involving food and microbes, we’re interested in,” says Malichowsky with a laugh.  After taking a course from the Vermont Cheese Council, Banks got the the idea of doing the course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Project:
Mavy Ho ’26 of Gorham, Maine, sniffs dubiously at a plate of cheese samples. In addition to samples from the two batches of cheese made by Banks, Malichowsky, and McDonough, students enjoyed a selection of cheeses from Blue Ledge Farm, provided by Sessions and Bernhardt. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The trio spent about a week making two different batches of cheese for students to taste and examine throughout the course. The students are trying to reverse-engineer the cheesemaking process using microscopy and molecular biology techniques.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cReverse engineering\u201d means that it\u2019s the students\u2019 job to figure out how Banks\u2019 team made the cheeses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Along the way, Banks wants the students to \u201cknow and understand what are some things that we change about the fungal species\u201d (fungus being a starter culture for some blue-veined cheeses) \u201cif we want to program in a difference, or design a cheese, they can start to make some observations and then produce a hypothesis at the end of what was different about these two cheeses.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To lend a helping hand, two alumni recently visited Banks\u2019 classroom in Bonney to talk with students about cheese, life after college, and how a postgrad path can take the most unexpected turns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Project:
Greg Bernhardt ’99 and Hannah Sessions ’99, founders of Blue Ledge Farm, a goat dairy and cheesemaking operation in Leicester, Vt., came and spoke to Banks’ class ahead of Back to Bates weekend. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Hannah Sessions \u201999 and Greg Bernhardt \u201999 met at Bates; both were studying art; Sessions was an interdisciplinary major in studio art, women\u2019s studies, and political science, and Bernhardt was a double major in art and English. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the last classes they took, an introductory course titled \u201cPlants and Human Affairs,\u201d turned their humanities gaze toward science.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The course explored economic botany, how humans use plants for food and other basic necessities, and ethnobotany, which examines the relationship between those uses and the cultural practices and traditions they inhabit. \u201cThat class was like our life,\u201d said Bernhardt. \u201cIt was like science for English majors.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A year after graduating, they moved to Vermont and began a life that knits the two together. They transformed an old dairy farm into what is now Blue Ledge Farm, a goat dairy and cheesemaking operation. That produces anything from plain ch\u00e8vre, to a camembert-brie hybrid, to cheeses with touches of peppers, maple, and orange.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Project:
Two years ago, Banks taught this course at night, and the cheese observations had to be done with take-home samples because of COVID. Now, the logistics are better, and students can enjoy their cheese together, while sharing what they’re observing with each other in real time. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, Sessions<\/a> and Bernhardt<\/a> pursued their artistic endeavors, oil painting and writing. Beyond designing the unique (and varied!) logos for their different cheeses, their art can be found adorning galleries with oil paintings of goats, cows, chickens, and of course, cheese.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Banks\u2019 students were more than happy to sit and munch on cheese from Banks\u2019 batches and from Blue Ledge Farm, while listening to Sessions and Bernhardt talk about their farm, and the path that led to their way of life. But, the pair had some hard-won advice to share as well, for students interested in cheesemaking, or not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, springtime brings a surplus of milk from their cow milk supplier, so much milk that it\u2019s hard to process and sell in time. The solution: make more hard cheeses, which have a longer shelf life than high-moisture cheeses. \u201cHard cheese is like money in the bank,\u201d advised Sessions. It\u2019s not hyperbole, either: Italy has a literal bank of cheese<\/a>, where hundreds of thousands of wheels of aging Parmigiano-Reggiano sit as surety for farm capital, growing more valuable while waiting through the stormy fluctuations of the parmesan market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Project:
From explaining some of the processes of cheesemaking, to which breeds of goats are the best for which types of farming, to a few economic principles for cheesemakers, Sessions and Bernhardt gave the students a peek into their life on Blue Ledge Farm. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Agriculture, like any other business, has layers of complexity and is hard to predict, said Sessions. The correct path forward is never obvious, and even the best-laid plans can turn out to be as full of holes as a good slice of Swiss. But \u201cyou just have to keep an open mind and do your best,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the end, said Bernhardt, offering a piece of advice that fits whether one chooses farming or finance, \u201cyou have to make something you love,\u201d said Bernhardt. \u201cIt\u2019s sort of like writing a paper for a professor; if you don\u2019t love it, they won\u2019t either.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Class got a little cheesy for students in Lori Banks’ microbiology course, “Living in a Microbial World.” In addition to a cheese-tasting session, students got advice from two cheese-making alumni who have their own goat dairy in Vermont.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1422,"featured_media":149245,"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":149267,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":"summary_large_image"},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-149237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149237","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\/1422"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149237"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149237\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":149887,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149237\/revisions\/149887"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}