Amid climate change, students envision a future Harpswell

As climate change continues to impact Harpswell’s coast, a group of students has proposed creative solutions aimed at helping the community adapt and become more sustainable.

More than a dozen projects were developed by graduate students of landscape architecture at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville as part of Envision Resilience’s 2025 Midcoast Maine Challenge. Based in Boston, Envision Resilience is a nonprofit that brings together students, educators and coastal communities to design solutions for climate change.

Harpswell has a direct connection to the University of Virginia in the form of Jamie Hark, a local landscape designer with Acorn Engineering who attended the university. Hark, who serves on Harpswell’s Conservation Commission, helped facilitate the student projects.

“We are truly in unprecedented times here in Harpswell, Maine, the country and the world,” Hark told attendees at an open house on March 13 at the Schiller Coastal Studies Center, where some of the student projects were on display. “It’s going to take a lot of creativity for our next steps.”

Attendees examine a three-dimensional map of Harpswell at the Schiller Coastal Studies Center on Orr’s Island on March 13. The nonprofit Envision Resilience chose the community for its Midcoast Maine Challenge, which asked students to design solutions for adapting to climate change in the region. (J. Craig Anderson photo)

The Midcoast Maine Challenge focused on two communities: Harpswell and Bath. To complete their projects, the students first traveled to Maine to tour the communities and meet with local residents and officials.

University of Virginia graduate student Michael John “M.J.” Minutoli was among the group that worked on projects envisioning a future Harpswell. His project focused on Harpswell Community School, the town’s only remaining public school.

Minutoli began with the prediction that State Route 24, the main road in front of the school, would need to be raised in the future to accommodate climate change. He also learned about the Anna M. Tondreau Preserve, 57 acres of pristine forest and undeveloped shoreline held by the Harpswell Heritage Land Trust directly across Route 24 from the school.

Minutoli’s idea was to design a way to raise the road in front of the school using cribbing, similar to the design of Harpswell’s Cribstone Bridge, but with fallen trees instead of stones. There would be tunnels underneath the road through which students could pass safely to access the preserve.

“(I) found the body of land right in front of the school was at risk of being eroded with the recurring storm surge,” Minutoli said in an interview. “This felt like a nice opportunity to combine something playful with all this research I had done.”

A project by University of Virginia graduate student Michael John “MJ” Minutoli is displayed at the Schiller Coastal Studies Center on Orr’s Island on March 13. It envisions a future Harpswell Community School campus with tunnels extending beneath State Route 24 so students can safely access the adjacent Anna M. Tondreau Preserve. (J. Craig Anderson photo)

Another project, by student Andie McMann, envisions stacking old lobster traps filled with rocks and soil to reinforce the eroding shoreline at Mackerel Cove on Bailey Island. A third project, developed by student Catelyn “Cate” Southwell, imagines using dredging material in Cundy’s Harbor to build in-water mounds that lobstermen could use to service their boats at low tide.

“We want to try to find a way to help things change gracefully on scales that communities can embrace and accept and see value in as they change,” said Michael Luegering, assistant professor of landscape architecture at the University of Virginia.

Luegering said this was the third year his students had participated in an Envision Resilience challenge. Previous challenges focused on Portland, in 2024, and New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 2023.

He said landscape architecture students almost never get to work with real people facing real design problems as part of their studies, which makes the Envision Resilience challenges a rare opportunity.

“It is just a fundamentally different thing to be able to look people in the eye and truly listen to their stories, and then have to struggle through making things that we think are respectful and engaging in what they’ve told us,” Luegering said.

Mary Ann Nahf chairs both the Harpswell Conservation Commission and the town’s Resiliency and Sustainability Committee. She said the local community benefits from projects like the Midcoast Maine Challenge.

“Part of the work we do … is to bring a heightened awareness (to climate change issues), and I think this type of a project will do that,” Nahf said.

Charlotte Van Voorhis, Envision Resilience’s community engagement manager, said working on a student design challenge in Harpswell was a one-of-a-kind experience.

“Nowhere really represents the kind of Maine grittiness and the community cooperative support like Harpswell,” Van Voorhis said. “Our team has completely fallen in love with this coastline, not only for being the longest in the state, but also because of all the community support and kindness that you’ve showed us during this entire challenge.”