Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions

People of MeSH

The Maine Sustainability Hub is made up of UMaine staff, students, and alumni from many different backgrounds and academic focuses. Everyone in MeSH is involved in sustainability from different angles as they are at different ages, stages of life, professional backgrounds, and personal focuses. Please contact us at mesh@maine.edu or 207-581-3196. You can also reach out through Instagram at mainesustainabilityhub.

My interest in sustainability started with the first Earth Day in 1970 when I helped organize a teach-in at my high school. I presently work on the catalytic upgrading of bio-based fuels. My interest in interdisciplinary education brought me to think about MeSH as a place for a wide range of students to pursue approaches to the big environmental and sustainability challenges facing the planet.

Don Beith works in environmental philosophy, existentialism and ways philosophy can help us live a good life (ethics). Don came to MeSH to share a passion for thinking together outdoors, to engage with students interested in changing the world and in hopes of co-developing a dynamic interdisciplinary network and curriculum addressing real world issues like sustainability, well-being and climate change.

Christine Beitl is a faculty member in the Anthropology Department and a Faculty Associate of the Mitchell Center. Her research and teaching has centered on the sustainability of oceans, coasts, fisheries, forests, and other common pool resources in Latin America, Oceania, and more recently, Canada and the U.S.  Christine hopes MeSH will provide a space for the development of a campus-wide network to enhance students’ university experience by inspiring ideas for sustainability research and mobilizing action, awareness, and civic engagement.

Megan is the coordinator for the office of Green Campus Initiative, an office within Auxiliary Enterprises. Her work focuses on education surrounding sustainability initiatives at UMaine. GCI supports the Green Living Floor, a themed living floor for first year students; coordinates sustainability events across campus; coordinates weekly food recovery trips that collect food from dining halls and deliver it to the BBE, the on-campus food pantry; and coordinates the end of semester Clean Sweep collections to reduce the amount of items being sent to the landfill. She is passionate about sustainability and the importance of collaboration.

Ruth is the Strategic Program Manager for University of Maine’s Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions. The Mitchell Center was created to help address sustainability challenges – that is, challenges related to the dual goal of improving the well-being of people and protecting the environment. Efforts to tackle these challenges require the ability to “connect the dots” across economic, social, environmental and other factors that often influence sustainability problems. Ruth’s work at the Mitchell Center includes assisting teams of students and faculty from many different fields in their work to link knowledge with actions to help solve Maine’s thorny sustainability problems.

Yadina Clark is a staff member at the Maine Center for Research in STEM Education (RiSE Center), a member of the UMaine Permaculture Committee, and an advisor for Terrell House Permaculture Living and Learning Center, an experiential learning and sustainability project which she proposed and co-founded in 2012. Yadina’s prior experience in environmental education and research includes a Maine Conservation Corps term of service at Newforest Institute, a Research Associate internship at Earthwatch Institute, and a Peer Review Coordinator position at Eastern Research Group.

Shaelyn is an alumni who graduated with a degree in Ecology and Environmental Science and a Climate Science minor. While attending UMaine she was involved in Divest UMS (now UMaine Climate Action), SEAD, and early MeSH discussions. Shaelyn became interested in sustainability and the environment after learning about climate change in her childhood and her personal experiences with climate anxiety. Her Honors thesis studied the prevalence and impact of climate anxiety and action on college students. After graduating she was hired by MeSH to compile information, create documents, and put them into the MeSH website. She is working to pursue a career related to the planning and implementation of diverse, effective, and accessible sustainability solutions.

Nara is a Civil Engineering major with a concentration in environmental engineering. She is the President of a student organization called “Sustainable Environment Action Division” or SEAD. SEAD is a club which works to inform students about sustainability and work toward a greener campus. She is continuing with this goal in MeSH and would like to act as a bridge between sustainable student organizations and the general student body. She wants to promote sustainability and promote awareness of the things that people, especially students can do on campus to help the environment. Her specific interest is sustainability in construction and infrastructure, and she would like to learn more about the embodied carbon of full operational infrastructure works, as well as how to reduce the carbon footprint. Her participation in MeSH will allow her to talk to many people with different interests in sustainability and gain more insight into her personal sustainability interests.

Laura transferred to the University of Maine in FALL 2022 and is completing her senior year. She is passionate about community-resilience in regard to Climate Change. Laura is also a core organizer for UMaine Climate Action on campus.

For Daniel, sustainability is about guiding both individuals and communities towards a future where human populations live in conjunction with the environment. It involves greater intimacy with nature, others, and their own thoughts and a society that does not value perpetual growth. This type of societal healing is necessary to empower communities to achieve climate resilience. As a climate advocate, Daniel has participated in low-income housing projects and installed large scale permaculture earthworks in southern Maine, as well as studied and cataloged invasive pest species in northern Myanmar. Daniel spends a lot of time growing his own food and enjoying the outdoors which has instilled the basic principle ‘Lighten Up’, meaning that it is important to discover levity and pass it onto others.