Canadian-American Center Wins Academic Prominence Initiative Award
Contact: Nancy Strayer, Canadian-American Center, (207) 581-4220, George Manlove, (207) 581-3756
ORONO – The University of Maine’s Canadian-American Center has received a grant of $150,000 over three years to enhance support for several cartography projects and share geographic, cultural and environmental data with public schools, the tourism
industry and the university.
The grant, part of the new Maine Academic Prominence Initiative (MAPI), will help the UMaine Canadian-American Center complete significant cartography projects expected to have wide-ranging educational, cultural and economic benefits to the university and the
public in Maine and neighboring Canada, according to Stephen Hornsby, director of the Center.
The funding will allow the Canadian-American Center to extract environmental, economic, social and cultural data collected from the center’s comprehensive “Historical Atlas of Maine” project and make it available digitally as part of the Maine Learning Technologies
Initiative laptop program. Center outreach coordinator Betsy Arntzen will meet with teachers to determine the best way to organize and supply the information, some of which is based on research that has never been published before.
“Because the content is in a digital format, we can repackage it to be used at the middle school level,” Hornsby says.
The historical atlas, scheduled for publication in 2006, begins with the formation of the European and North American continents and continues to the present, illustrating environmental, economic, social and cultural interactions that have shaped the history of the state and region.
“There isn’t another state atlas like it in the country,” Hornsby says. Modules to be designed for schools will be flexible enough for teachers to use various components “in a way that is most useful to them,” he says. “This is going to be ground-breaking. We’re not aware of this being done anywhere.”
For the tourism industry in Maine, the center is working on an eco-tourism “Ice Age Trail Map,” produced in collaboration with the Climate Change Institute and Maine Geologic Survey. The map will chronicle the geological evolution of Maine since the Ice Age, focusing primarily on Downeast Maine. Maine stands apart geologically from most states because of its diverse physical environment, encompassing complex geological formations and textbook examples of glacial erosion and deposition, varied topography, several major watersheds and mixed coniferous and deciduous forests.
“Right now, people drive through Downeast Maine and they don’t have a clue of the significance of the physical landscape,” Hornsby says. “This map will explain it to them.”
The Ice Age Tail Map is expected to create an entirely new layer of tourist attractions for Downeast visitors. Additionally, the center plans to reprint its new “Explanatory Maps of Saint Croix & Acadia” an historical map illustrating and explaining migratory patterns of early Acadian settlers in Maine and the Maritimes.
Among the first mapping projects the Canadian-American Center’s cartography lab undertook were the UMaine Campus Map and Campus Trail Map, now both campus standards. Hornsby says the Center will continue to provide creative support to academic and other entities on campus and throughout the University of Maine System.
Maps produced by the Canadian-American Center, Hornsby says, are of the quality produced by the National Geographic Society. “They are going to be very high-end with scholarly content pitched for a general audience,” he says. “I think they will intrigue people who are interested in eco-tourism and cultural tourism in this state.”
The Canadian-American Center has built and maintains its cartography laboratory, run by professional cartographers Mike Hermann and Matt Cote, on public and private grants, including two from the National Endowment for the Humanities and National Science Foundation. Since it is ineligible for funding available to many research and development programs, the center was eligible for one of four UMaine MAPI grants awarded in March.
The center was established in 1967, and is one of the leading institutes for studying Canada in the United States, designated as a National Resource Center on Canada by the U.S. Department of Education. The Center also coordinates an extensive program of undergraduate and graduate education, supports a major research library collection on Canada, promotes cross-border research in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and professions, and it directs outreach programs to state, regional and national audiences.