BIDDEFORD — The University of New England recently was gifted a small Maine business to provide students with real-world learning opportunities about nutrition, business, marketing, aquaculture, and more.
SeaMade Seaweed Company co-owners Tara Treichel and Mark Dvorozniak donated their Portland-based business as an educational tool that will allow students to locally source the ingredients from the university’s Biddeford campus to produce the sweet-and-savory, cranberry-honey-kelp bars. Production will start as early as this fall through an initiative that will champion interdisciplinary collaboration and sustainability.
“Having this product get out into the world, out into the market, and to have seaweed made available to people in a grab-and-go, easy-to-eat kind of way is really exciting,” Treichel said. “Students, with all of their ideas and energy, can work on new nutritional aspects, flavor aspects, and maybe take it further than we were able to. I’m very excited today.”
Treichel started producing SeaMade Bars and selling them in southern Maine in 2016. Later, Dvorozniak joined her to help grow the company. But the limited availability of processed seaweed created challenges in meeting the wholesale demands. Last year, after the co-owners met UNE Associate Professor Carrie Byron, who studies regenerative seaweed aquaculture, at a seaweed festival in Portland, they decided gifting the company to Maine’s largest independent university was the perfect way to help it remain a viable business focused on sustainability.
“We are so thankful to Tara and Mark for donating SeaMade to UNE. This brand and product will provide unmatched opportunities for UNE students from various majors to gain firsthand experience in the many aspects of building and maintaining small businesses grounded in sustainability,” said Gwendolyn Mahon, M.Sc., Ph.D, UNE’s provost and senior vice president for Academic Affairs.
Students are already growing and harvesting kelp from UNE’s aquaculture research farm, and they will harvest some of the honey from UNE’s two beehives to provide key ingredients for the bars. Students in the College of Business will help run the financial and marketing aspects of the business, and nutrition and other health professions students will study the nutritional aspects of the product. UNE’s School of Marine and Environmental Programs has applied for a farming lease from the Maine Department of Marine Resources.
“One of my visions for my lab is to cultivate other species of seaweed to figure out what is more nutritious,” Byron said, adding that her lab currently grows sugar kelp but is permitted to grow other species.
This fall, a workforce of willing, creative students will begin the production, marketing, sales, and branding of the kelp bars — a task that will set their majors apart from those at competing institutions, said Cameron Wake, director of UNE North, who will manage the initiative.
“This year, we’re going to have an innovation team of 10 students working on this project over the course of the semester and they’re going to need mentorship from lots of people,” Wake said.
Other faculty who will help students produce and market the bars include Lisa Herschbach, UNE’s director of the Office of Innovation; Norm O’Reilly, the inaugural dean of UNE’s College of Business; and Alethea Cariddi, UNE associate director of sustainability, who manages the school’s beehives.
The University of New England is Maine’s largest independent university, with two beautiful coastal campuses in Maine, a one-of-a-kind study-abroad campus in Tangier, Morocco, and an array of flexible online offerings. In an uncommonly welcoming and supportive community, we offer hands-on learning, empowering students to make a positive impact in a world full of challenges. We are the state’s top provider of health professionals and home to Maine’s only medical and dental colleges, a variety of other interprofessionally aligned health care programs, and nationally recognized programs in the marine sciences, the natural and social sciences, business, the humanities, and the arts. Visit www.une.edu.
