Facilities

Bowdoin's location on the Maine coast makes it possible to extend classroom and the lab into the field and find a diversity of habitats, species, and processes to study.

The Roux Center rooftop garden. "It’s beautiful and will get more beautiful, and it does contribute to the functioning of the building,” said Professor of Biology Barry Logan, a plant physiological ecologist who plans to incorporate the garden into some of his courses.

The biology department is based in a 106,000 square-foot interdisciplinary science facility. Its laboratories include large refrigerated marine aquaria, a confocal microscopy lab, a scanning electron microscope, chemidoc imager, spectrophotometric and fluorometric instruments, a variety of centrifuges, tissue and cell culture facilities, and other research apparatus.

The Hatch Science Library provides online databases for thousands of journals related to the biological sciences. The department also maintains extensive time-lapse photography and fluorescence microscope photography facilities, along with video equipment to generate three-dimensional animation of biological processes.

The College maintains several off-campus properties of great interest to the biology program: its 118-acre Schiller Coastal Studies Center, along with a diversity of estuarine and terrestrial habitats; the Bowdoin Pines, a 33-acre old growth stand of white pines; 83 acres of mixed coastal habitat on Coleman Farm, and the Bowdoin Scientific Station at Kent Island in the Bay of Fundy, a 200-acre seabird nesting island with a field research station for students, faculty, and visiting scientists in ecology, animal behavior, marine biology, botany, and meteorology.