Waterworks: Taking the Plunge into Bay Policy
by Carol Casey
A rigorous new freshman seminar, focused on the intercoastal Chesapeake Bay Program to resuscitate one of  the world's richest estuaries, challenges students to see their role in the future of its success.
As a high school student reading by the picture window of the Clearfield, PA, public library, Elizabeth Haag had looked up from her book to the West Branch of the Susquehanna River flowing toward central Pennsylvania, curious about where the river ended. Walter Parr knew where it ended--he had rocked on the currents of the Chesapeake Bay in his parents' boat every summer since he was six months old. But the Bel Air, MD, native knew that sooner or later he had to find out more about the water that buoyed the boat. On the Back River, Derek Smith of Baltimore peered over the gunwale of his grandfather's boat, his interest in the brownish water piqued. Kiera Skinner came to love the Bay and the land around it while riding to Ocean City from western New York State with her parents. An avid duck hunter from Newark, DE, James Agnor had learned to listen to nature. How could he learn to protect and foster it?
 Such quests led these Washington College students and their 16 classmates to choose Professor Wayne Bell's freshman seminar, The Chesapeake Bay Program. If Bell has his way, their choice will change their lives.
It's an opportunity they won't find anywhere else, for this class is the only one of its kind, anywhere, created by another one-of-a-kind, Wayne Bell. In his life he has brought together the rigor of a Harvard-educated scientist, the savvy of an experienced communicator and the sanguine attitude of one experienced in crafting policies, some of which actually succeed. He travels the globe to speak about the uniqueness of the Bay and the intricacies of the Bay agreement. In July, he was named director of Washington College's Center for the Environment and Society. He considers this course integral to the work of the center, existing on the edge of campus, uniting student needs with the world outside the academy.
Bell set up a challenge for himself as well as the students when he structured a freshman class around the study of the policies that protect and foster  the Bay's recovery from overuse and pollution. The Chesapeake Bay Program is an agreement among Maryland, Virginia, the District of Columbia, Pennsylvania, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Chesapeake Bay Commission. The original agreement was forged in 1983. In June a new agreement, Chesapeake 2000, was approved. Bell's course traces the history of environmental concern for the Bay, the goals of the agreement and the progress that has been made--or hasn't.
How to breathe life into what could be construed as dry policy? Bell has many ways. Early in the semester, he and the class boarded the research vessel Aquarius at Horn Point in Cambridge. Miles out in the Bay, they plunged devices into the deep waters, measuring its oxygen content at different levels and varying degrees of salinity. A great experience, the students and Bell agree. But the experience didn't end there. In a later class, Bell projects a graph showing oxygen level measurements. Against this official chart, downloaded from the Chesapeake Bay Program's website, he superimposes the readings the class took. The agreement is excellent. "Looks like you have confirmed the EPA's findings for September," he tells them.
Through Bell's knowledge and his hands-on approach, the students are becoming people involved in policy, part of a community that Bell knows very well. Far from an imaginary community, they are a society of Bay stewards who see and talk to one another often.
At least once and sometimes twice a week,  a flesh and blood representative of an aspect of the Chesapeake Bay Program appears in class. In all, 16 such Bay movers and shakers have addressed the students. First up was Joseph Mihursky, a biology professor from the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, whose address, "The Bay is Dying," set the stage for future speakers to talk about its resuscitation. Former Maryland Governor Harry Hughes appeared to discuss the political challenges of forging the original 1983 agreement and keeping it alive. Scientists such as Kennedy Paynter, whose specialty is oysters and their restoration, talked about working to restore the Bay to its historic role as the most productive shellfish bay in North America. Of Paynter's talk, Andrew Stein, Bell's assistant and a Washington College graduate, says, "At one time the Bay was so rich in oysters that they grew on anything projecting from the Bay floor--even discarded shoes." Speakers included Ann Swanson, lawyer for the Chesapeake Bay Commission, who was vital in crafting Chesapeake 2000; Frances Flanigan from the citizen's group Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay; and DNR's Sean McGuire talking about tributary strategy. "I'm proud of Washington College," Bell says. "No one I've asked to come speak has refused." He goes on: "Chesapeake Bay policy truly crosses all disciplines. We have heard from historians, politicians, teachers and writers, as well as scientists."
Teachers and writers brought Bell, his students and Stein to the rolling landscape of Echo Hill Outdoor School on a sunny November morning for a day-long retreat. Perched on a bluff overlooking the Bay, with a blue sky above and periodic sonic booms from Aberdeen Proving Ground shaking the earth, Echo Hill is a perfect setting for contemplating education, communication and sense of place.
In the morning, students learned that 21st-century environmental educators bring more to their trade than walks in the woods, although, as Keith Williams of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation knows,  a trip on the Bay in a canoe is a transforming experience for anyone. Elizabeth McCown of Echo Hill said that the sense of accomplishment young students gain from their outdoor experiences empowers them to remain active in the out-of-doors their whole lives. Gia Ristvey, of Pickering Creek Environmental Center and the Maryland-DC Audubon Society, talked about engaging her students in problem solving, creative play and art. Bell, a firm believer in the primacy of environmental education in the curriculum, says that structuring math, science and humanities lessons around the environment enhances learning. "Maybe it's because the environment is real and something kids can identify with," he says.
 Of course, people who champion the environmental integrity of the Bay must be able to clearly communicate scientific data and complex ecological theories to their constituents. But ask any Bay lover, scientific or otherwise, why they're so involved in Bay work and watch what happens. They'll sigh. They'll look toward the water. If they're not near the water, they'll look into the distance, like the faithful seeking Mecca. Eventually they'll tell a story that gets at the intangible sense of life along the Bay. Vincent Leggett came to the Echo Hill retreat to talk about his work documenting and communicating the unheralded role of African Americans in the Bay culture. To convey a point about the life of black watermen, he read a poem. Then he told a story about George Crowner of Edgewater. It was the 1930s. Crowner's uncles and the rest of the black watermen of the area went out to tong oysters. A dark, low-hanging, fast-moving "Egyptian cloud, like the ones described in the Bible that appeared as Moses exhorted the Pharaoh to let his people go" came up over the horizon, the way storms do on the Chesapeake Bay. Crowder's uncles' boat capsized and they were drowned. The next day, Leggett said, the men were back out tonging again. "They were watermen. They had to suck it up and go out on the Bay to make the money for the funeral."
Jack Greer, poet and director of communications at the Maryland Sea Grant College, spoke to the class about media. He showed them slides and charts. But he ended his talk with a story about watermen. "When the pfiesteria scare was at its height, a waterman came to me and asked, 'Can I touch the water?' That made me so sad--a waterman asking me if he can touch the water. If he can't, who can?"
Stories are  what drove author Tom Horton to expand his writing from straight news to book-length essays about the Bay and its people. "I'd go to cover these meetings as a reporter. People would present a lot of scientific facts. But always the real story of their fervor was beyond the facts." An accomplished raconteur, Horton began his presentation with a story and ended with one. "Whenever I talk about the Bay, I try to distinguish between pessimism and hope. I looked up the etymology of hope and found that it's related to the word hop. A friend of mine has a little dog. His name is Hop. Whenever my friend takes his dog out into the long grass of the field, the dog hops up to look over the tall grass to make sure my friend is in sight. I'm pessimistic--we have a long way to go in restoring the Bay. I'm hopeful--I can see ways we can actually do this."
When he developed this course, Bell wanted to "take complex subject matter and present it so that freshmen could begin to understand early in their college careers that there is a place for them in the restoration of the Bay." If he has succeeded, his students will be a new generation of bay stewards, no matter what their occupation. In that, Bell and his colleagues find hope for the Bay's future.
But ask any Bay lover, scientific or otherwise, why they're so involved in Bay work and watch what happens. They'll sigh. They'll look toward the water. If they're not near the water, they'll look into the distance, like the faithful seeking Mecca. Eventually they'll tell a story that gets at the intangible sense of life along the Bay.
Freelance writer Carol Casey was formerly a media associate at Washington College.
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