At the annual Phi Kappa Phi ceremony on campus April 24, 90 members of the University of Maine community were inducted, including 85 undergraduate and graduate students. Also inducted were Ted Coladarci, director of Institutional Research and professor of educational psychology; Natasha Speer, assistant professor of mathematics education; Janet Waldron, senior vice president for administration and finance; alumnus and former UMaine hockey coach Tim Whitehead; and Vivian Wu, associate professor of food science and human nutrition. Phi Kappa Phi, the nation’s oldest and largest collegiate honor society, was founded at the University of Maine in 1897.
Over 25 digital posters by University of Maine Art Department students in Kerstin Engman’s 2-D design class are on display through finals week in Hauck Auditorium.
The posters depict climate change issues, such as sustainability and the divestiture of fossil fuels, and are the result of a collaboration between Engman and Karen Marysdaughter, organizer with 350 Maine, a grassroots movement dedicated to solving the Earth’s climate crisis.
Engman asked the students to chose a particular climate change topic and direct a clear, visual message to the campus community.
“By working together as a community of concerned students, the hope is that the impact of a collective effort will have greater influence in general public awareness and policymaking,” Engman says.
For more information, contact Engman on FirstClass.
UMaine’s community-supported agriculture program, the Black Bear Food Guild, based at Rogers Farm, is taking share orders. Half shares, serving two people, are $275; full shares, serving four, are $450. A share purchase ensures weekly supplies of high-quality, organic produce and is an investment in the hands-on learning of future sustainable agriculture farmers. This year, fresh cut flowers will be included in the shares — blooms grown to bolster the habitat for pollinators on the farm. For more information or for share orders, email the Black Bear Food Guild.
Professor of Sociology Steve Barkan has been elected vice president/president-elect of the Text and Academic Authors Association (TAA). TAA is the only nonprofit membership association dedicated solely to assisting textbook and academic authors.
Professor George Denton of the Climate Change Institute, and co-authors Philip Conkling, Richard Alley and Wallace Broecker are recipients of the Phi Beta Kappa Book Award in Science for “The Fate of Greenland: Lessons from Abrupt Climate Change,” published in 2011. The award recognizes outstanding contributions to science literature. As noted in Phi Beta Kappa news site, previous book award winners include Stephen Jay Gould, Marjorie Garber, Jared Diamond, Harold Bloom and Ernst Mayr.
In May, MPBN will rebroadcast the “Sustainable Maine” series, highlighting the research of Maine’s Sustainability Solutions Initiative (SSI), based at UMaine’s Senator George J. Mitchell Center. SSI is helping communities solve interconnected economic problems while advancing sustainability science. Information about the MPBN documentary series is online. The rebroadcast schedule is:
Desperate Alewives, 8:30 p.m. May 9
Saving our Lakes, 8:30 p.m. May 16
Basket Trees — Saving a Tradition, 8:30 p.m. May 23
Pools, Policy and People, 8:30 p.m. May 30
Due to outdoor recreational events scheduled throughout the day Saturday, April 20, UMaine Parking Services will close campus roads north of Long Road.
Gannett and Hilltop Roads will remain closed from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. to accommodate the Cub Tracks Youth Triathlon in the morning and the Healthy High 5/10k run/walk in the afternoon.
Parking for UMaine baseball and softball games will be in the Memorial Gym lot.
Orono Black Bear Express shuttle service will not have stops at the Recreation Center Saturday.
The pickup point during these hours will be Hauck Circle.
The University of Maine Humanities Initiative’s first weeklong development seminar will be held May 13-17 on campus, and in Bangor and Augusta.
The interdisciplinary sessions, which are free and open to the public, will feature presentations by 37 participants, including UMaine faculty and staff, area teachers, city councilors, and leaders of regional arts and cultural organizations.
The sessions will showcase UMaine arts and humanities research, and explore ways of making this scholarship more visible and pertinent to community partners.
The week concludes with a Maine Humanities Summit at the Governor Hill Mansion in Augusta featuring arts and humanities professionals examining present and future relationships of the humanities to Maine and its citizens.
To register for the May 17 summit or to request disability accommodations, contact Amy Cross (amy.cross@umit.maine.edu).
A full schedule of the Faculty and Staff Development Seminar is online. UMaine’s Humanities Initiative is dedicated to advancing research in the humanities, linking scholars to one another and the broader Maine community.
Gwendolyn Beacham didn’t have much of a break during the University of Maine winter and spring recesses.
During the three-week respite between semesters in December and January, the sophomore molecular and cellular biology major researched and wrote her entry for the 2013 John M. Rezendes Annual Ethics Essay Competition.
Each night during the two-week March vacation, the Farmington, Maine resident rewrote, revised and tweaked her draft. Her days were otherwise occupied; she and other UMaine students worked on a sanitation system in Dulce Nombre in Honduras for an Engineers Without Borders project.
Her thoroughness paid off. In April, Beacham won first prize, which included $2,800 and an engraved sculpture, for her essay “Ethics of the United States’ Clinical Trials in India.”
“Writing isn’t my main focus of study,” says Beacham, an Honors College student recently accepted for a 10-week summer internship at Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research at Cornell University.
“But I thought it was important that I do something outside of my comfort zone. This forced me to look at an issue from all sides.”
All UMaine undergraduates were invited to submit an 8- to 10-page essay for the annual competition. The 2013 theme was “The Ethics of Globalization.”
Ciarán P. Coyle, a sophomore from Lebanon, N.H., and Gareth Warr, a sophomore from Stonington, Maine, were also finalists; each was awarded $300.
Coyle is majoring in philosophy and Spanish and minoring in history. His essay was titled “Globalization of Reflection: Latin American Experience of Exploitation Justified by Abstraction.”
After graduating from UMaine, Coyle plans to enter a doctoral program of philosophy, either in social and political theory or in phenomenology – the study of the development of human consciousness and self-awareness as a part of philosophy.
Warr, a second-year political science major and legal studies minor, titled his essay “The Ethics of Globalization: A Marxist Critique.”
The Honors College student from Stonington, Maine plans to join the Peace Corps then perhaps enter law school or work in the criminal justice system.
A financial gift from Dennis and Beau Rezendes provides the university the opportunity to annually offer the John M. Rezendes Ethics Essay Competition in conjunction with hosting the John M. Rezendes Visiting Scholar in Ethics.
The 21st annual Borns Symposium at the University of Maine, April 22–23, this year will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Climate Change Institute. The event, named for institute founder Harold Borns, features UMaine climate change scientists presenting their latest research. Highlights of the two-day symposium, which is free and open to the public, include the David Clayton Smith Lecture, “The History of the Climate Change Institute: A 40-year Record of Excellence,” by professors emeriti George Jacobson and Hal Borns, 6:10 p.m., April 22, followed at 7 p.m. by alumni lectures: “The Human and Environmental Interactions in the High Andes of Peru: An Interdisciplinary Perspective,” by Kurt Rademaker and Gordon Bromley; and “Late Glacial and Holocene Climate Changes Registered by Small Ice Caps at High and Low Latitudes,” by Meredith Kelly. Research presentations take place the afternoon of April 22 and throughout the morning and into the afternoon of April 23. The symposium will be streamed using Google+. For more information or a full schedule of the research sessions, or to request disability accommodations, contact Betty Lee, 207.581.3406.