LIMESTONE, Maine — The second annual Howard Family Speakers Series at the Maine School of Science and Mathematics will be held April 4 at 7 p.m. in the Boothby Auditorium at the Limestone Community School. This year, MSSM will welcome Aaron Putnam, MSSM Class of 2000 and Presque Isle native for a talk entitled “Charting the Last Great Global Warming: What our ice-age past can tell us about our climate future.” It is open to the public.
MSSM, a public residential magnet school focused on STEM, has developed a reputation as one of the top public high schools in the country. Its students are often top performers at math and science competitions and are attracted to the school for its challenging curriculum and talented faculty. Its hundreds of alumni contribute to the Maine economy and to the advancement of science and technology internationally. The Howard family established this series through the MSSM Foundation in order to bring distinguished academics, professionals, and practitioners to MSSM and share with the community their passion and area of expertise. Science is a global endeavor, and one goal is to encourage students to consider careers in public service, so speakers with international experience in STEM or science policy are ideal.
An associate professor at the University of Maine, Putnam studies the geologic record of Earth’s mountain glaciers and ice sheets to gain insights into the dynamics governing past global changes. He is also interested in the climate drivers and feedback loops responsible for the industrial-age worldwide retreat of mountain glaciers and shifting global rain belts. Since participating in a scientific cruise to study the dynamics of Arctic sea ice in high school, Putnam has logged over 200 weeks conducting fieldwork in remote glacial environments, such as Antarctica, the Southern Alps of New Zealand, the southern Andes and the mountain chains of High Asia. His research focuses on charting the demise of Earth’s terrestrial ice masses during the termination of the last ice age, with an aim toward identifying the climatic mechanisms that drove massive changes in the global energy budget. An overall goal of his is to improve knowledge of climate dynamics and ice melt in a warming world.
In a preview of his talk, Putnam explains, “Earth’s glaciers have left geological imprints on landscapes around the world that can be used to decipher the climate mechanisms that produced ice ages and their rapid terminations. I will share a new view of what caused ice-age climate change based on our ongoing effort to chart the history of glaciers in mountain chains around the world during and since the last ice age. Finally, I will discuss how ice-age climate dynamics derived from this effort may apply to today’s warming world.”
This series is made possible by a gift to the MSSM Foundation from Dr. Eric Sevan Howard, who is the father of two MSSM alumni (’16 and ’18) and has a background in climate change, environmental policy, and education. Howard and his three children all enjoyed science in high school and college, and they each found fulfilling jobs in STEM. His own 30-plus year career as a manager and executive director in the nonprofit world took him to more than three dozen countries on five continents. Because of their experiences, Howard was pleased to endow this speaker fund to expand the horizons of MSSM students; where future generations of MSSM students will end up is a story yet to be written.
“We are so thankful to the Howard family for the creation of this speaker series,” says Rob Constantine, MSSM executive director. “The opportunity to bring distinguished scholars to our campus — spending time with our students in their classes and providing engaging community talks — is invaluable. It also allows us to highlight the on-going contributions of MSSM alumni as STEM leaders.”
The MSSM Foundation supports grants to MSSM for professional development, facility upgrades, summer camp, student financial assistance and academic programming.
