Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions

In 2019, the Environmental Protection Agency estimated that each year, U.S. households trashed 26.5 million tons of food, or 338 pounds per household. That’s enough to feed 26.5 million people in a year or about 350,000 U.S. residents over their lifetimes. According to the USDA, 30–40% of the U.S. food supply is wasted. Reducing this […]

This week, the National Science Foundation announced that they would provide $30 million in funding to a collaborative center based at UMass Amherst. The new center, named the Center for Braiding Indigenous Knowledges and Science (CBIKS) aims to focus on issues currently facing indigenous populations in Maine. The Northeast hub of CBIKS will operate on […]

We wanted to share with you the exciting news that Governor Mills has issued an official Proclamation designating September 25-29, 2023 as Maine Food Waste Awareness Week! In particular, we’d like to thank the Maine Dept. of Education and the teachers, staff, and students who participated in our 2023 Maine School Cafeteria Food Waste Study. Their […]

By Sarah Delmonte On Monday, September 11, the Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions introduced their fall talk series with speaker Vanessa Levesque, a social scientist and assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at the University of Southern Maine. In her discussion, titled “Vacationland or Climate Migrationland?”, Levesque introduced the concept of […]

Our Maine is… ”beautiful enough to sit on a coffee table, but informative and rigorous enough to be an academic resource.” “reads like love letters to Maine.” We are thrilled to announce that a new book, Our Maine, edited by Mitchell Center faculty fellows Aram Calhoun and Mac Hunter, has just hit bookshelves. The book […]

With Earth’s oceans facing rapid climate and ecological change, University of Maine faculty will use a $3 million award from the National Science Foundation to create a new training program for graduate students that will support the next generation of marine science and conservation professionals. Over the next five years, Joshua Stoll and his colleagues […]

In an article about how the insular world of academia can prevent community-focused research, The Chronicle of Higher Education spoke to David Hart, director of the University of Maine Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions and professor of biological sciences, and Linda Silka, senior fellow at the Mitchell Center. When Hart and Silka […]

Sharon Klein and Caroline Noblet, both associate professors of economics and Mitchell Center Faculty Fellows, are working with Wabanaki and rural low-income communities to co-develop a new resource for helping them implement renewable energy and energy efficiency projects. The Environmental Protection Agency awarded $1.13 million to Klein and Noblet so they can investigate the effectiveness […]

The Coastal and Estuarine Research Federation (CERF) announced that associate professors Lauren Ross and Sean Smith received the 2023 Donald W. Pritchard Outstanding Physical Oceanography Paper Award for “Coastal Hydrodynamics and Timescales in Meso-Macrotidal Estuaries in the Gulf of Maine: A Model Study.” Ross and Smith co-authored the paper with Sohaib Alahmed, former UMaine student […]

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has granted $1.5 million to the University of Maine and collaborators to carry out a series of programs that will educate and aid farmers in climate adaptation and mitigation. Agricultural producers anticipate an onslaught of challenges due to climate change, such as increases in flooding, drought, pest and disease […]