Canadian-American Center earns $1.55 million to preserve, add programs as National Resource Center on Canada
The Canadian-American Center at the University of Maine received two grants from the Department of Education totaling $1.55 million to continue offering programs, and incorporate new ones, as a National Resource Center on Canada.
The Canadian-American Center is the lead institution for the Northeast National Resource Center on Canada, which also includes the State University of New York (SUNY) at Plattsburgh’s Center for the Study of Canada. The designation, and DOE funding that comes with it, allows the UMaine’s center to offer a wide range of resources and initiatives in Canadian Studies, including courses and programs for undergraduate and graduate students, lectures, cross-border research and various texts, photographs and similar materials for Fogler Library and other archives.
The DOE awarded the the Canadian-American Center a $1.05 million National Resource Center Title VI Grant to maintain its activities for four years, and a $502,668 Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) grant to provide stipends and tuition assistance for students who wish to improve their knowledge of French, the Abenaki-Penobscot language or the Maliseet-Passamaquoddy language.
The funding also will support new research, education and faculty professional development opportunities offered by the center that will focus on four key areas: environmental challenges; equity, inclusion, and reconciliation; French and Indigenous languages; and national security issues involving border policies, energy and diplomacy. Examples include student field trips to New Brunswick, Montréal and Québec city, a map project titled “Arctic cooling and the balance of the earth: mapping climate action at Inuit Nunangat’’ by world-renowned cartographer Margaret Pearce, four book projects and outreach initiatives for K-12 teachers in the U.S. Additionally, funds will be provided for holdings at the Fogler Library and Garbrecht Law library at the University of Maine School of Law, course development on cross-border issues, guest lecturers, a scholar-in-residence at the Hudson Museum, a sustainable tourism workshop and an initiative titled “Building a Canadian-American Research Network to Support Small-Scale Fisheries and Community-Based Seafood Systems.”
“Maine and Canada share a long history of transnational dialogue, partnership and commerce,” says Frédéric Rondeau, center director and associate professor of French. “The role of the Canadian-American Center aims to better understand Canadian differences and our relation to our neighbor, to develop a vast network of courses offering Canadian content, to encourage high-caliber research on Canada and to create a broad range of useful resources for students and K-12 educators in the U.S. Obtaining the Title VI grant makes us one of the two National Resource Centers on Canada in the U.S. and it is an incredible opportunity for faculty and students to participate in transborder projects.”
Contact: Marcus Wolf, 207.581.3721; marcus.wolf@maine.edu