CES at the Waterfront Campus

Living Building Challenge

Semans-Griswold Environmental Hall was built to achieve Living Building Challenge Certification. Living Building Challenge is a sustainable development model that is a step above LEED certification. Not only does this certification require that we use sustainable building materials and thoughtful decision making around the natural environment, but it also requires that the building produces at least 105% of the energy that it will use. This will be achieved through a strand of solar panels that will be stationed on the roof of the building, along with geothermal wells that are installed underneath the building. Living Building Challenge also requires a focus on the health and happiness of the building tenants, along with a focus on art and accessibility to the community.

Three Innovative Lab Spaces

• Wet Lab and River Flow-Through System – The wet lab hosts a river flow-through system, which pumps water from the Chester River directly into and out of the lab. This allows our students to study different aspects of the Chester River in a controlled environment using water directly from the river.
  
  
• Watershed Innovation Lab – The Watershed Innovation lab serves as the home to CES's Chester River Watershed Observatory. Here, students have the opportunity to work on buoys that monitor the river's water quality, side-scan sonar, build AquaBotz and more.
  
  
• Environmental and Biology Lab – The third lab serves as a laboratory learning space for some Environmental and Biology courses at Washington College.

Waterfront Classroom Space

The classroom at SGEH is used for multiple Environmental and Biology courses, along with serving as the on-campus classroom for CES's Chesapeake Semester.

The Center for Environment & Society's Headquarters

SGEH is the new home to the Center for Environment & Society at Washington College, one of three Signature Centers that focus on providing undergraduate students with graduate-level experiences outside of the classroom.

Feather Friendly Windows

Creating habitat includes ensuring that nearby buildings are safe for the birds that CES hopes to help. At Semans-Griswold Environmental Hall, nearby native meadows and hedgerows provide excellent habitat for birds and pollinators. We are in the process of installing Feather Friendly window treatments to help prevent bird strikes to make this living building a sanctuary for all. Feather Friendly has developed a window deterrent system that both helps birds to identify the window as an obstacle and preserve the views.

MuSE: A Community Museum

Hosted by the Center for Environment and Society, this public space in downtown Chestertown exhibits collaborations between students, faculty, staff, and the wider community. MuSE hosts rotating exhibits that highlight Washington College teaching, experiential learning, and research. Each exhibit will be informational, interactive, and highly visual, creating a dynamic community space for learning and sharing on the Eastern Shore.   

MuSE is currently open on First Fridays from 4:30 pm to 7:30 pm, Saturdays from 9:00 am to 12:00 pm, and by request for groups. 

For more information visit this page.

Flyways: A Bench of Inspiration

Flyways is a public art commission by Deirdre Murphy, sponsored by Washington College’s Center for Environment & Society in Chestertown, Maryland. This sculptural bench serves as a place of rest and reflection while observing birds in their natural habitat.  The Caspian Tern and the Least Tern – two long-distance migrants that follow the Atlantic Flyway – are honored in the sculpture. These graceful shorebirds connect distant coastlines and ecosystems on journeys spanning thousands of miles. 

Birds do not recognize borders. They move freely across countries and continents, bound not by human-made lines but by ancient instincts. As a migratory species ourselves, humans are also shaped by movement – yet we often create barriers. Migratory birds remind us to soften those divisions, to connect through openness, and to embrace our shared journey on this planet. 

Each bird is precisely laser-cut into steel, accompanied by their migratory paths and constellation maps. Traversing both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, these birds fly up to 20,000 miles each year to reach their breeding grounds. Like sailors of the past, many migratory species rely on the stars to guide them – an idea reflected in the sculpture’s etched constellations of Polaris and Cassiopeia on the shade roof. Constructed from weathering steel, the sculpture forms a stable, rust-like patina over time, allowing it to blend naturally into the Eastern Shore landscape. The bench seating is crafted from locally sourced Eastern Cedar. 

Callinectes

At 46 feet long, Callinectes is fully equipped with an array of the latest electronics and environmental instrumentation including trawls, sonar, acoustic seabed classification systems, magnetometers and positioning systems used in mapping and evaluating geological features of the Bay and its tidewaters. On the Chester River, sampling gear is used to collect water and sediment samples that are analyzed to measure nutrients, dissolved oxygen, algal abundance, toxic contaminants and other factors that tell us about the ecological health of the region.

Lookdown

In April 2013 CES acquired Lookdown from NOAA with the intent to provide additional research opportunities for Washington College students. Lookdown, created for the Coast Guard, will be primarily used for mapping the river with sonar, but will also be available for special trips for water sampling and testing.

Lookdown is considerably smaller than Callinectes, which works to her advantage. She will be able to access shallower areas of the Chester and coastal areas that are inaccessible to Callinectes.