President Garry W. Jenkins has received the 2025 Maine Black Excellence Compass Career Award from , a network that connects Maine’s Black professionals, students, and entrepreneurs to opportunities across multiple areas, from social to professional. 

The Third Place gives its Compass Career Award in recognition of “outstanding professional achievement, principled leadership, and a commitment to equity and excellence in one’s field.â€� The nonprofit, which was founded in 2017 by Executive Director Adilah Muhammad, noted that Jenkins, the ninth president of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, is also its first Black president.

“From the courtroom to the boardroom to the college green, Garry Jenkins has led with integrity, brilliance, and heart,� the group said, citing his record spanning higher education, law, philanthropy, and public service. “His career is a compass for those navigating the intersections of leadership and justice.�

“I’m deeply touched by this honor, and for this award to be tied to my new home state of Maine,� Jenkins said as he accepted the award at a dinner celebration on a beautiful August evening outdoors at the Caswell Farm and Wedding Barn in Gray. “It carries special significance because it comes from a community that understands both the challenges we face and the excellence we represent.�

“Our democracy and our institutions succeed and flourish when everyone has a seat at the table and has the support and encouragement to shine brightly,� he added.

Jenkins was one of . He spoke of his pride at leading ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, citing its rich and unique history of inclusion and legacy of producing remarkable Black leaders through the 20th century and into the 21st century. Specifically, he mentioned John P. Davis, a debater at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ who graduated in 1926 and would go on to be a lawyer and pivotal figure in the Harlem Renaissance, and civil rights icon Benjamin Mays, a member of the Class of 1920, as well as pioneering television journalist Bryant Gumbel ’70 and Val Smith ’75, the president of Swarthmore College. 

“I want to make sure that we continue to produce alumni, of all backgrounds, who go on to make a difference to their communities, fields, and institutions,â€� Jenkins said.  

His remarks ended with an invitation to attendees to come to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, walk on the beautiful campus, visit the museum, and attend theatrical and musical performances as well as athletic competitions.

Among the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ community members who joined Jenkins at the event were recent graduate Davina Kabantu ’24, who is a trainee in a bank management development program, Professor Emerita of Politics Leslie Hill, and Morgan Kinney and Mohamed Awil of the Harward Center for Community Partnerships. The Portland Press Herald .

In the greenhouse atop Carnegie Science Hall, a green seedling peeks up from an unassuming black pot. Small but storied, this plant has traveled the world to put down roots here in Lewiston.

The ginkgo tree seedling, not even a foot tall, is the child of a ginkgo tree in Hiroshima, Japan, one of 170 hibakujumoku or “survivor treesâ€� that miraculously lived through the atomic bombing of Aug. 6, 1945 — 80 years ago this August — and still stand in the city today.

“We are looking at a piece of something that survived the bomb, and that’s what’s really magical,â€� says Alan Wang ’24, who coordinated the effort to bring the seedling to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in partnership with the .

Green Legacy Hiroshima tends to the surviving trees in Hiroshima and their legacies, collecting their seeds and sharing them with institutions of higher education and botanical gardens. The offspring of the survivor trees are now growing at 146 partner institutions across 41 countries, bringing their message of hope and survival to communities around the world. 

As a junior at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, Wang, who is originally from Henan, China, studied abroad in Japan through the Associated Kyoto Program. As part of the program, he traveled to Hiroshima to visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, where Green Legacy Hiroshima gave Wang and classmates a tour of the hibakujumoku. 

From a watch that stopped exactly at the moment the bomb detonated, to a shadow created by someone instantly vaporized by the heat of the atomic blast, what Wang saw in Hiroshima left a lasting impression on him.

“You can just see the devastating impact that the nuclear weapon caused,â€� Wang says. 

When he learned that Green Legacy Hiroshima had no partners in Maine, Wang became determined to make ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ the first. He imagined a survivor tree planted on campus, its presence encouraging discussion about the effects of nuclear weapons.

“I envision it as a platform to get people to talk about this,� Wang says.

But before he could bring the seeds to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, Wang had to secure the support of campus partners and then apply to join Green Legacy as a partner institution. Though it would be a long process, Wang was committed. 

As a senior back on campus, he started by bringing his idea to Assistant Professor of Japanese Language and Asian Studies Hanna McGaughey and Lecturer in Japanese Keiko Konoeda, who were both eager to support Wang’s efforts. Impressed by Wang’s persistence, Raymond Clothier, the interim multifaith chaplain at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, also joined the project.

“When somebody is willing to dedicate that amount of time to a project like this and to not let it go when he encounters bumps on the road, it is inspiring,� Clothier says.

Finally, Wang was left with finding a biology professor who was willing to take on a multi-year responsibility. A young tree needs a lot of tending before it is sturdy enough to plant outside. Wang eventually connected with Daniel Slane, a visiting assistant professor of biology, who immediately agreed to help.

With the four faculty and staff members on board, Wang submitted the application for partnership to Green Legacy Hiroshima during the holiday break between semesters of his senior year and heard back within a month: ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ was approved as a partner.

In summer 2024, seven ginkgo seeds arrived from San Diego, where all Green Legacy Hiroshima seeds for U.S. partner institutions are stored. Slane first sanded their hard exteriors to make it easier for them to germinate. He then refrigerated two of the seeds for cold stratification, a process which mimics winter by exposing seeds to cool weather and encouraging germination. After a couple of months, he removed the seeds and planted them in pots in the greenhouse high above the Historic Quad.

But, those first two seeds did not germinate. Slane suspects that the soil conditions were too moist. Back to square one, Slane refrigerated and planted three more seeds. A couple months later, one seed germinated. Now, Slane heads upstairs almost daily from his office to check on the seedling.

One of the oldest tree species on Earth, ginkgo trees are known for their resiliency. Konoeda says there is a message there for all beings about enduring through the impossible.

“The mother plants survived and watched the experience — the fire and the wind and the heat. And still, we see this green and the tree,â€� Konoeda says. “So, we don’t know what is going on in the world right now, but we will survive.â€�

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ seeds are from a 200-year-old ginkgo tree in the lush Shukkeien Garden, created in 1620. The garden is a little less than a mile from where the bomb exploded. Its blast spread outward and then the force of air, rushing back toward the hypocenter, pushed the tree inward, leaving the tree with a permanent slant toward ground zero. 

The fact that the hibakujumoko are able to reproduce is impressive, Slane says, because high radiation can cause plants to become infertile. The ginkgo seeds’ DNA may even be altered due to epigenetics, the way in which heritable traits in offspring are changed by a parent’s life experiences. 

“If you have seeds from a tree that has been impacted by a natural event or something like a bombing, they will have certain epigenetic changes that allow the offspring to probably deal better with those changes,� Slane says.

Though it will be at least two years before the tree is large enough to plant outside, the ambition, or hope, is that the ginkgo will eventually be planted on campus, joining the ranks of the bright yellow tree standing guard outside of Carnegie since 2003 and the new ones at Bonney Science Center. Once the tree is planted, Clothier and the Multifaith Chaplaincy will be in charge of maintaining it. 

“It’ll be meaningful to me to see the tree when it’s in the ground, to have a place, a marker on campus for peace, for the intergenerational work of peace,â€� Clothier says.

Like the seeds themselves, each of the people contributing to this project have a personal tie to the atomic bombings or the brutal history of World War II, and most have traveled across oceans to end up at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. Konoeda, for example, grew up in Kitakyushu, Japan, the original target for the second atomic bomb. The city narrowly avoided complete destruction when clouds obscured its skyline on the planned day of the bombing, and American planes headed toward Nagasaki instead.

Growing up in Independence, Mo. — the hometown of President Harry S. Truman, who authorized the atomic bombings — Clothier interrogated the history of the bombings at a young age. 

In middle school, he and his peers put Truman “on trial� for a school assignment, attempting to answer the question, was authorizing the bombings the right choice? Thinking through these questions in a shared hometown contributed to Clothier’s interest in peace and ultimately led to his anti-nuclear weapons activism.

McGaughey and Slane both have a German background, which instilled in them the importance of never forgetting the atrocities of the war. Both also spent years living in Japan.

Growing up in Germany, “I was brought up with, ‘Remember, remember, never forget what happened back then,’â€� Slane says. “For me, that’s in a way connected, and that’s why my heart is there.â€�

At the intersection of these varied identities and backgrounds are differing narratives about the story of World War II and the relationship between countries like Japan, Germany, and the U.S. The ginkgo trees do not declare one narrative right or another wrong, the project contributors say; they simply open up a space for listening and thinking beyond preconceived notions. 

“Japan tells a story that is very much about its big victimhood and not about what it has done or how it has come to that position in the history,â€� Konoeda says. “And the U.S. tells its own narratives. And only by stepping outside of those stories, you see a bigger picture. And we are stuck now looking at this contemporary world that’s so divided in different ways, but we need to step back.â€� 

As a living reminder of both the past and the potential of the future, the ginkgo tree will offer students the opportunity to reflect on their own lives while perhaps exploring these differing historical narratives, McGaughey says.

“The past isn’t necessarily a blueprint for how we should do things. I think we are free to decide for ourselves what should come next,â€� McGaughey says. “That’s what I hope that the tree can be — a place where people can reflect on, ‘So what is the right thing to do here?’â€� 

For Wang, a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ politics major and Japanese minor, the relationship between his home country of China and Japan is storied and complicated. Fighting between China and Japan during World War II exacerbated the two countries’ fraught political relationship and, for many, established an enduring resentment between the two populations, a feeling only complicated by the devastation Japan experienced during the atomic bombings.

With this historical context, some people, Wang says, may be surprised to see someone from China advocating so strongly for something like the preservation of the hibakujumoku seeds.

But, after studying Japanese for two years at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ and studying abroad in Japan, Wang holds two things to be true at the same time: the relationship between his home country and Japan has been a difficult one, and the atomic bombings in Japan were unequivocally devastating.

“All of that has some nuanced influence on my opinion of the seed,� Wang says. “But at the end of the day, it came from something that survived the bomb. The wonders of life, the resilience of this being, I think, deserve celebration.�

Ginkgo trees can live for thousands of years. ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ tree may live on to see the next generation of people, and the next, and the next, its legacy of survival and hope enduring for centuries to come. 

The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ community will gather on May 4 to celebrate something even rarer than a solar eclipse: the inauguration of a new president.

Garry W. Jenkins, who began his tenure as the ninth president of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College on July 1, 2023, will be formally installed as president on Saturday, May 4, 2024. The installation ceremony begins at 10:30 a.m in the Margaret Hopkins Merrill Gymnasium. 

Jenkins was unanimously elected president by the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Board of Trustees in February 2023. Initially scheduled for last fall, the inauguration was postponed in the wake of the Oct. 25, 2023, tragedy in Lewiston.

Here are a few questions and answers about the installation ceremony, college inaugurations in general, and ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ President Jenkins:

How can I watch the ceremony?

The ceremony can be viewed on the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ website, , , , and starting at 10:30 a.m.

For the event, Margaret Hopkins Merrill Gymnasium has been elegantly transformed for the event with evocative lighting, video screens, and a sleek, multilevel stage, above which will hang the official college seal.

How long is the event?

Approximately 90-minutes.

Where can I learn more about President Jenkins?

Jenkins is a nationally respected authority on nonprofit organizations, corporate governance, lawyers and leadership development, and higher education, and came to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ from the University of Minnesota Law School, where he was dean and William S. Pattee Professor of Law. 

He received a bachelor’s degree with honors from Haverford College, a master’s degree in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School, and a juris doctorate, cum laude, from Harvard Law School.

Here are a few ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ News stories featuring President Jenkins, starting with his appointment in February through to his welcome to the Class of 2027 at Opening Convocation.

• Announcing the Next ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ President: Garry W. Jenkins (March 1, 2023)
• President-elect Jenkins’ First Remarks (March 10, 2023)
• Picture Story: “Sometimes Dreams Come True” (March 10, 2023)
• President Jenkins’ Get-to-Know ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Day (July 6, 2023)
• At Opening Convocation, an Embrace and a Promise (Sept. 8, 2023)
• President Jenkins Awarded Honorary Degree (Dec. 12, 2023)

How is a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ inauguration rarer than an eclipse?

There have been eight inaugurations since ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ was founded in 1855 as the Maine State Seminary. In terms of total eclipses visible in the U.S., there have been around a dozen (various sources offer different numbers) since the mid-1800s.

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ has had nine presidents and eight inaugurations. What’s with that?

The college’s first president, Oren Cheney, did not have an inauguration — but he did almost everything else. Cheney created ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ from scratch, first as a seminary (like a high school) that opened its doors in 1857, and then working to transform the school into a college by 1864. He then served as its president for another 30 years, until 1894.

As Cheney turned the presidency over to George Colby Chase on Sept. 22, 1894, he said, “There is not a tree, or building, or spot on this campus but seems a part of myself.�

What is the purpose of an inauguration?

The inauguration offers the college a formal and ceremonial opportunity to welcome the new president.

According to Merriam-Webster, the word “inauguration” comes from one meaning of the Latin word inaugurare, which means an important action or undertaking (such as a new president) that would be consecrated by augury — checking of signs and omens, and by taking auspices, which means to interpret the flights of birds. 

By the 1500s, the word “inauguration” had the meaning “to induct into office with suitable ceremonies.”

What is the purpose of various people offering greetings to President Jenkins during the ceremony?

As a tradition of installation ceremonies, greetings offer a chance for representatives within the college community, the Lewiston-Auburn community, and higher education to welcome, raise their voice in support of a new leader, and display connection, solidarity, and community.

These are the people who will offer greetings:

• From ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students: Rebecca Anderson ’24 of Boone, N.C., and Dhruv Chandra ’25 of Kolkata, India, who are co-presidents of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Student Government
• From ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ faculty: Mary T. Rice-DeFosse, Professor of French and Francophone Studies
• From ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ staff: James L. Reese, Associate Dean for International Student Programs
• From ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ alumni: Kevin Moore ’93, President of the Alumni Association
• From the Lewiston and Auburn community: Carl Sheline, Mayor of the City of Lewiston, and Jeff Harmon, Mayor of the City of Auburn
• From the academy: Wendy E. Raymond, President and Professor of Biology, Haverford College

What is the difference between an inauguration and an installation?

“Inauguration� usually refers to the entire suite of ceremonial events celebrating the new president’s investiture. The “installation� (or “investiture�) usually refers to the specific ceremony, in this case the one beginning at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, May 4, 2024.

What will President Jenkins’ inaugural address focus on?

For that, we welcome you to join the livestream — or watch it afterward — to hear the message in his own words.

What is the academic procession during the installation ceremony?

The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ faculty, trustees, and college leaders march in the procession, all wearing whose colors reflect academic institutional affiliation. 

Having assembled at Commons, the academic procession will be led to Merrill by a musical ensemble, Raging Brass, playing a traditional New Orleans brass band march.

The procession is similar to the one at a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Commencement: time-honored, upbeat, and colorful, except bigger, thanks to the many delegates who will travel to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ to support the new president, and in a slightly different order.

What is the order of the inauguration procession?

Like Commencement, the inauguration procession is led by the faculty mace bearer and senior member of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ faculty, Professor of French and Francophone Studies Mary Rice-DeFosse.

But unlike Commencement, where the president is at the front of the procession with the mace bearer, he will be at the end of the inaugural procession and the final person to enter Merrill Gym. Before President Jenkins arrives, these members of the procession will enter the gymnasium in this order:

• Mace Bearer
• Board of Trustees
• Former Trustees
• Deans and Vice Presidents
• Faculty Marshals
• Faculty Members
• Academic Delegates
• Student Delegates
• ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Presidents Emeriti
• Greeters and Presenters of Symbols of Office
• Chair of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Board of Trustees
• President Jenkins

Is there significance to the musical selections by the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Orchestra and Maine Music Society Chorale?

The two performances highlight the contributions to American music by William Grant Still (1895–1978), known as the dean of African American composers and the recipient of an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in 1954.

The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Orchestra will perform Still’s Festive Overture (1944). The Maine Music Society Chorale will perform “I Dream a World” with music by André J. Thomas and words drawn from the poem “I Dream a Worldâ€� by Langston Hughes.

Hughes originally wrote “I Dream a World� as the libretto for William Grant Still’s opera Troubled Island. In later years, Hughes often incorporated a reading of “I Dream a World� into his public appearances, reflecting his vision and activism for social justice.

Who will introduce President Jenkins?

Jenkins will be formally introduced by Joan T.A. Gabel, chancellor of the University of Pittsburgh. She worked with Jenkins when she was president of the University of Minnesota and he was dean of the Minnesota Law School.

What symbols of the office are presented to President Jenkins during his installation?

Presiding over the installation will be Gregory Ehret ’91, chair of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Board of Trustees, who will guide the presentation of three symbols of office to Jenkins.

Presidential Medallion: Representing the authority vested in the president by the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Board of Trustees, presented by Associate Professor of Mathematics Katy Ott and Sabeeh Khan ’24, an economics major from Islamabad, Pakistan.

Record Book: Containing the minutes of the corporation’s first meeting, on April 5, 1855, symbolizing the longevity and historical legacy of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College, presented by Andrea Conklin Bueschel ’90, a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ trustee. (As a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ senior in 1990, she offered student greetings to President Donald Harward, the college’s sixth president, at his installation.)

Keys of the Office: Representing the passing-down of authority through the college’s presidential lineage, presented by Susan Nattress, who manages the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ electronic access system.

What are “delegates�?

Delegates officially represent colleges, universities, or other learned organizations at a college inauguration.

Sometimes they are the presidents of the institutions, but can have other affiliations such as being a graduate or a professor. And they can have connections to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ as well. For example:

• Valerie Smith, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ ’75, is representing Swarthmore College, where she is president.
• Marge McCormick Davis, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ ’76, is representing Vanderbilt University, where she earned a Ph.D. in English.
• Clarisa Pérez-Armendáriz, a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ associate professor of politics, is representing Pomona College, where she earned a bachelor’s degree.
• Jon Lee, who is Garry Jenkins’ husband, is representing the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where Lee earned bachelor’s and law degrees.

They are called “delegates” because they represent and personify the institutions they represent, having been appointed and delegated certain authority and responsibility vested in them by their institutions.

How many delegates will be at President Jenkins’ installation ceremony?

From invitations extended by ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, 61 institutions have appointed delegates for the Jenkins inauguration. They represent institutions as far away as the California Institute of Technology (2,620 miles) and as close by as Bowdoin, about 18 miles.

How many presidents has ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ had?

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ has had nine presidents: 

• Oren Burbank Cheney, 1864 (when ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ became a college) to 1894
• George Colby Chase, 1894–1919
• Clifton Daggett Gray, 1920–1944
• Charles Franklin Phillips, 1944–1966
• Thomas Hedley Reynolds, 1967–1989
• Donald West Harward, 1989–2002
• Elaine Tuttle Hansen, 2002–2011
• Ava Clayton Spencer, 2012–2023
• Garry William Jenkins, 2023–

Where did ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ hold installation ceremonies before Merrill Gymnasium was built?

Hathorn Hall, Gomes Chapel, and Alumni Gym have all been sites of past presidential installation ceremonies.

How does the ceremony conclude?

The ceremony concludes with a benediction by the Rev. Brittany Longsdorf, the college’s multifaith chaplain, and the recessional, during which the platform party and other participants depart the gymnasium ” performed by the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Jazz Band.

During her first semester at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, Hannah McKenzie ’21 co-taught a class at Lewiston’s Immigrant Resource Center of Maine for English-language learners.

Her fellow teacher was Hamza Abdi, an academic administrative assistant at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. In the middle of each class, Abdi would leave and then reappear with two cups of traditional Somali tea. “Flavored with spices like cinnamon and cardamom and sweetened in condensed milk,” McKenzie remembers. “I loved that tea.â€�Ìý

She assumed he was making it in the break room, only to learn months later that he was buying it in the market downstairs. She told Abdi that she didn’t want him spending his money on her. “After all, if I come to the center twice weekly for four years, that’s a lot of money.”

Abdi laughed, pointing out a cultural pride point. In Djiboutian and other Eastern African cultures, he said, money is best for gestures of sharing andÌý appreciation.

“Someone in his culture doesn’t ‘lose’ money,” McKenzie learned. “People essentially take turns paying for their friends.â€�

Flash forward to the pandemic summer of 2020. Supported by the Harward Center for Community Partnerships, McKenzie is now a Bonner Leader who splits her time between two remote summer internships, with IRCM and another agency that supports new Mainers, the Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project.

Recalling tea time with Abdi three years ago, McKenzie has still found ways to support and connect with the local immigrant community in person, including making regular stops at Lisbon Street’s Heritage Restaurant for a cup of tea — a small purchase that reminds her of that early and big cultural lesson she learned as a first-year.

Since she will live off-campus and cook for herself in the fall, “I look forward to getting whatever groceries I can here,� she says. And she’ll keep getting tea at the Heritage Restaurant.

“I really appreciate the culture of collectivity that surrounds it. These kinds of cultural lessons are what have made my experience of Lewiston and my studies of anthropology at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ so eye-opening and so meaningful.â€�ÌýÌý

Here’s what other ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students with ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½-funded summer internships and academic fellowships said about how those in-person experiences have been guiding forces for what they want to do in life.

Anna Maheu ’21 of New York City

Major: Religious Studies

Project: St. Mary’s Nutrition Center, a food security organization for food insecure and otherwise vulnerable families, with integrated programs including urban community gardens, children’s gardening and cooking programs, cooking and nutrition education programs, youth leadership programs, food access initiatives, and a food pantry.

Funding: Harward Center Summer Civic Fellows funded through the Harward Center for Community Partnerships

Focus: Supporting the Nutrition Center’s various gardens throughout Lewiston-Auburn, maintaining educational gardens, assisting the food pantry in its efforts to adapt to COVID-19 through food deliveries, and the Good Food Bus.

Location: Lewiston, Maine

Student says: Living and working in the Lewiston community has taught me a lot about what it really means to invest in the place one calls home. I’ve had the opportunity to work so closely with individuals who have committed themselves to connecting community members to food, land, and each other. I’ve also been given a ground-level look at the myriad ways that food justice and access is pursued.

ÌýThe experience has reaffirmed how fundamental food and soil are to the lives we live, the power structures we must work against, and the relationships we cultivate.

Josiah Krul ’21 of Rockport, Maine

Major: Psychology

Project: Points North Institute, an organization that hosts the annual Camden International Film Festival, the primary project he helped to produce.

Funding: Purposeful Work initiative

Focus: The usual venue for the Festival’s event, the Camden Opera House, closed temporarily due to the pandemic, so PNI decided to build a drive-in movie theater, creating a newÌý venue for the 2020 festival.

Location: Rockport, Maine

Student says: I’ve learned to be comfortable rolling with the punches.

After a rapid few weeks of planning and construction, the Shotwell Drive-In opened on July 16, offering the Mid-coast community a fun and safe social activity outside the house.

ÌýThe Purposeful Work-funded internship provides challenges that push the team and me to discover innovative and efficient solutions. The internship has encouraged me to learn new skills, whether it be coding new pages for the website, constructing panels for a drive-in movie screen, or organizing volunteer opportunities for events.

ÌýWorking with PNI has further shown me how much I enjoy working with community members to provide people from all walks in life with a reason to smile.

Georgia Moses ’21 of Arlington, Mass.

Major: Politics

Project: Working with Hillview Family Development, a public housing community in Lewiston that provides affordable housing and a variety of resources for the families that live there.

Funding: Harward Center Summer Civic Fellows funded through the Harward Center for Community Partnerships

Focus: Developing and leading socially-distanced art programming with children at Hillview and planning for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ student remote engagement with the organization in the fall.

Location: Lewiston, Maine

Student says: Many of the kids I’m working with haven’t participated in activities in a structured way since March. I’m learning that they are incredibly eager to put their minds to work and spend time outside around others. I’m not sure they miss school per se, but they’re itching to do things. It’s been exciting to watch and has made the project successful.

ÌýI’ve learned that working with kids during a pandemic is a challenge. I’ve had to set a lot of ground rules in order for the programming to run smoothly and safely, from distancing to mask wearing to hand sanitizing. That said, I’ve been really impressed by the level of understanding these kids have. They clearly know the importance of keeping themselves and their communities safe and healthy.

Gabriele Gucagaite ’21 of Kaunas, Lithuania

Major: Chemistry

Project: Visualizing Engrams

Funding: Faculty Grant

Focus: Working with Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Andrew Kennedy to create slides and images that show, through fluorescent imaging of brain proteins, actual mouse memories, such as a specific taste or smell. The research also involves altering or enhancing the memories that a mouse has.

Location: ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College

Student says: It is awe inspiring to be able to look at a neuronal network coding for a specific learning experience. It feels like looking at a map of someone’s mind, even if that someone is a mouse. I wonder what kind of map my memories of this research formed.

James Calhoon ’21 of Menlo Park, Calif.

Majors: Biology and Economics

Project: Species Interaction in a Changing Ocean

Funding: ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Environmental Internship

Focus: Studying the feeding preferences of green and red sea urchins, and how those choices might be affected by an invasive brown seaweed, Sargassum muticum.

Location: Friday Harbor Laboratories is a marine biology field station of the College of the Environment, University of Washington, located on San Juan Island.

Student says: The labs buzz with scientific curiosity, and everyone is very invested and interested in other people’s research, making it a welcoming community. Above all I really appreciate the resources that [Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology] Katie [Dobkowski] and the labs have provided in allowing me the freedom and creativity to set up and conduct my own independent research. I have never before been the lead researcher on a project and it has been extremely valuable in thinking through a project from start to finish.

Hannah Golub ’21 of Bellaire, Texas

Major: Psychology

Project: St. Mary’s Nutrition Center, a food security organization for food insecure and otherwise vulnerable families, the Nutrition Center’s integrated programs include urban community gardens, children’s gardening and cooking programs, cooking and nutrition education programs, youth leadership programs, food access initiatives, and a food pantry.

Funding: Harward Center Summer Civic Fellows funded through the Harward Center for Community Partnerships

Focus: With the arrival of the pandemic, Golub’s original summer assignment to run the children’s gardening program changed. She has helped to distribute food by packaging hundreds of bags filled with produce and perishables and staffing a mobile farmer’s market. She’s alsoÌý prepared at-home activities for summer school students. And spent a great deal of time outside, being essentially an urban farmer.

Location: Lewiston, Maine

Student says: This summer certainly looks a lot different from what I expected. I did not realize how many gardens I would get to work in and how that would enrich the experience.

ÌýI feel like I have the best of both worlds because I still get to spend a lot of time in the gardens, but now I’m learning and taking part in the food security and distribution programs of St. Mary’s.

Hannah McKenzie ’21 of Stevenson, Md.

Major: Anthropology

Project: The Immigrant Resource Center of Maine and Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project

Funding: ÌýHarward Summer Civic Fellows funded through the Harward Center for Community Partnerships

Focus: For IRCM, working primarily with Executive Director Fatuma Hussein, providing grant-writing assistance for culturally-specific, gender-based violence prevention and survivor support programs. Also, continuing to teach IRCM English Class, which she has taught since her first semester at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. For ILAP, working under the guidance of staff attorney Alice Kopij, primarily researchingÌý conditions in immigrants’ countries of origin to be used for developing legal cases. She’s also worked on a self guide for people making pro se citizenship applications.

Location: Lewiston, Maine

Student says: We’re in a time of multiple crises, and it’s felt incredibly valuable to be a part of the Lewiston community’s response to them. I’ve seen how refugee and immigrant staff from IRCM are working so tirelessly to support their community—responding to needs, from advocating for local government health support to coordinating rides for their neighbors to go to the doctor for COVID-19 tests when they can’t drive themselves.

It’s been inspiring to see, too, how these local organizations partner together; often, I’m in a Zoom meeting and notice that my supervisors from both organizations are present on the call. I’ve seen how Lewiston communities collaborate and help each other, and that’s given me hope.

I’ve also spent a lot of time this summer thinking about what my role is—and what it can’t be—in work supporting the refugee community. This is not my community as it is for the staff with whom I work at IRCM. I’m learning to be an advocate responsive to community needs and direction. It’s a lesson I’ll take with me wherever I go in life

Katrina Johnson ’21 of Stratham, N.H.

Major: Biology

Project: Species Interaction in a Changing Ocean

Funding: Hoffman Research Support Grant

Focus: Investigating the little-known feeding preferences of the graceful kelp crab

Location: Friday Harbor Laboratories is a marine biology field station of the College of the Environment, University of Washington, located on San Juan Island.

Student says: Being from the East Coast, I had never studied West Coast ocean ecosystems in person. To snorkel and see seals playing in kelp forests underwater is extraordinary. Living and working at a world-renowned lab, I have been able to meet and talk with many scientists, but I have also formed lasting relationships with the other student researchers who have made these crazy COVID times a whole lot easier.

There is a special sense of passion towards all things ocean at Friday Harbor Labs. To work alongside scientists with such passion, like my advisor Katie Dobkowski, has invigorated my own sense of excitement about my thesis research and the research I will conduct as a scientist in the future.

Professor of Psychology Krista Aronson is a key figure in the creation of the Diverse BookFinder, a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ resource that tracks how diversity is represented in thousands of children’s picture books.

She’s also the mother of two daughters. One daughter is in preschool. A teacher there recently told Aronson, “I actually knew you before I knew you” — and the connection was the .

In Ohio, where the preschool teacher had lived previously, her son’s middle school had based a classroom project on the DBF, and even used a beta version of its Collection Analysis Tool to audit the children’s book holdings in the school library. “I was flattered and excited,â€� says Aronson. “And I love to hear new ideas and new spins on our work.â€�

The episode illustrates the success attained by the DBF, a resource that identifies what groups — among Black and Indigenous People and People of Color, as the DBF mission statement says — are represented in a given book and, importantly, what messages the book conveys about those groups.

Since its launch in 2017, the DBF has broadened the reading choices for countless children and parents, thanks to its powerful Search Tool for multicultural picture books. It has also helped nearly 200 libraries analyze their picture book collections, enlarged its own collection from 2,000 to 3,000 books, established a newsletter and social media channels, and .

“We have thousands of people who on a regular basis pay attention to the work that we’re doing, which is really wonderful,â€� Aronson says.

The DBF website, which was redesigned a year ago, makes clear the accessibility of the resource for parents of young children, librarians, researchers, and folks in publishing. And new developments this fall promise to further the reach of the DBF and its goal of giving a richer view of diversity to the youngest readers.

In December, after months of pilot testing, the DBF will officially unveil its . Essentially, the CAT makes publicly accessible the engine that has powered the BookFinder right along: an analytical method that uses book-specific data, meticulously compiled from the DBF’s books by Aronson’s team, to assess how any children’s book collection represents different groups.

Professor of Psychology Krista Aronson reads in Ladd Library with her daughter Hope in 2017. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Moreover, the Diverse BookFinder team recently launched a program to help Maine libraries use the CAT to assess their children’s book collections for diversity — and, through a competitive grant process, provide successful applicants with $300 grants to buy books that will help balance those collections.

That effort has been made possible through a partnership with the and a $50,000 grant from the Brooks Family Foundation of Portland, Maine. The grants will target underresourced libraries, as determined by number of librarians or collection budget relative to community size. (Mayo Street Arts, in Portland, and Lewiston’s Literacy Volunteers–Androscoggin will share $1,000 of the Brooks Family funds for development of their children’s libraries.)

Applying for the grant is a fairly straightforward process, says Aronson. First, a library needs to use the CAT, , to analyze their picture book collection. (Creating an uploadable list of relevant ISBNs, or standardized book IDs, is the only tricky bit, she says, but there are tutorials online.)

A selection of picture books at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, Mass. ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ photographer Phyllis Graber Jensen took the photo during a Short Term 2017 visit to the museum by Krista Aronson and her students in a course related to the Diverse BookFinder. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

“Within minutes, you’ll have your report,â€� she says. Then, to apply for the $300 grant, “you write 300 words or less about what you learned from your CAT report, and upload that and a list of books that you want to purchase.â€�

With the humanities council administering the application process, the program is accepting the first round of grant proposals now, with a Dec. 2 deadline. A second application period will begin during the winter.

“I hope that we can use the model that we’re creating with these funds to do something on the national level with additional support,â€� Aronson says. It’s one thing to raise consciousness and help librarians better understand their holdings, she explains, but ultimately there’s no better way to diversify a collection of children’s books than to help buy books.

To date, between beta testing and a soft launch earlier in the fall, about 195 libraries have used the CAT. The DBF team will start promoting the tool in December.

Matt Schlobohm ’00 reads a book with his son Avery, 6, in Ladd Library during a 2018 MLK Day workshop titled “Friends Across Difference.” The workshop used artmaking and picture books to explore cross-cultural relationship-building. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

One of the 195 is the Kennebunk Free Library in Kennebunk, Maine, which pilot-tested the CAT last spring. “It is so meaningful to see, with concrete numbers and graphs, how our collection represents all children,â€� says children’s librarian Maria Richardson. “It’s enabled me to develop our collection more mindfully.â€�

Among other results, the report prompted the library to expand its assortment of books about First/Native Nations/American Indian/Indigenous peoples, which had been underrepresented in its collection.

In fact, while the DBF is impressively inclusive in the attributes it measures, two sets are central to its workings. First, there are seven demographic categories (First/Native Nations being one of them). Then there are nine story types, which provide a lens for understanding what messages are conveyed about different demographic groups. Richardson, for one, has found the story types “extremely valuable,â€� she says. “I’ve started to use them when identifying books for purchase.â€�

Parents, like librarians, seeking diverse picture books find a robust helper in the DBF. Thanks to wide-ranging filters in the , you can tailor your search closely to your family’s circumstances. For instance, if you seek a book in the Folklore story type and the Asians/Pacific Islanders/Asian Americans demographic type — and you select Buddhism from the Religion category, too — the DBF will show you seven books. And even give you more information about each.

The Diverse BookFinder’s physical collection at Ladd Library in 2017. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

DBF project coordinator Andrea Breau is encouraged by the amount and kind of feedback she’s getting about the DBF from parents, via social media and directly from folks who sign out DBF books at Ladd. “We’ve heard from parents who have prepared for the arrival of a new baby by ‘registering’ for books they’ve found using our Search Tool’s filter functions to home in on their family’s own racial, cultural, and religious identifications,â€� she says.

“We’ve heard from those who follow our newsletter and blog posts to learn how they might use a picture book to discuss issues of race and racism that their children are currently facing at school. And, of course, there are those who follow us on social media to get book ideas when their creativity is running low or to keep up with what’s happening in the broader diverse books movement.”

Aronson points out that as soon as new books are added to the collection in Ladd Library, the DBF team (this year including sophomores Ojochenemi Maji and Isabella David)‚ codes them for the database. The website reflects this constant updating in a feature called , which “are a first in the field,â€� Aronson points out. “And ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ is a part of it.â€�

For Aronson, the accessibility of the DBF data beyond academe satisfies another deeply felt goal. “It represents the translation of research-based academic data into something that’s useful and usable for the public. When you think about how we engage and share out with people, how we move out of strictly academic spaces and interact with people, that’s certainly a good way to do it,” she says.

“It’s really exciting.â€�

You could say that in her written greeting to visitors entering a museum exhibition in downtown Lewiston, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ theater professor Christine McDowell bares her sole.

In an introductory text on a gallery wall, McDowell describes a lifelong interest in shoes that stems from her fascination with the creativity and cultural clues represented in footwear. Her shoe jones, she says, earned her the nickname “Imelda Marcos,� after the Philippine political figure “infamous for having over 3,000 pairs of shoes.�

In collaboration with Emma Sieh, collections and exhibits coordinator at Lewiston’s Museum L-A, McDowell put together the museum’s current gallery exhibition, Footwear: From Function to Fashion. McDowell researched the show, designed it with Sieh and others, and provided shoes to display. (The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Museum of Art and theater department also loaned shoes, as did the Androscoggin Historical Society, in addition to supplying research materials.)

In fact, from platforms to peek-toes and from slingbacks to Spectators, about three-quarters of the shoes on display come from McDowell’s personal collection of 200-plus pairs. Many of them are concentrated in a spectacular “Wall of Shoesâ€� across an entire wall of the gallery.

Associate Professor of Theater Christine McDowell, left, worked with Emma Sieh, Museum L-A collections and exhibits coordinator, to create the museum’s shoe exhibition. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

The exhibition explores the shoe as a medium for social history, the stunning range of footwear styles, and the craft and artistry of shoemaking. And of course, fittingly for a museum dedicated to the history of local industry, spotlights the economic might that shoemaking once wielded hereabouts.

At one point, Auburn, Maine, was the fifth-largest shoe manufacturing center in the U.S. In the peak year of 1922, some 8,000 workers in 12 major factories turned out 70,000 pairs of shoes per day in Lewiston’s sibling city across the Androscoggin River. (Footwear has coincided with Auburn’s celebration of its 150th anniversary this year.)

An associate professor of theater at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, McDowell designs sets and costumes for college productions and teaches various aspects of theatrical design, including fashion. The social and historical meanings of apparel are central to her interest, but she doesn’t overlook another dimension of shoe power.

As a woman standing five feet tall, McDowell states in that prominent wall text, “I readily acknowledge the positive psychological effect shoes can have on those who wear them, and have often felt more confident in a pair of heels.�

Business and brand names associated with the local shoe industry are handwritten on a long strip of paper, displayed with some of the shoes named. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

During a casual tour of the exhibition, which runs through early January, we talked with McDowell about protecting soldiers’ feet from burning desert sand, the last shoemaker standing in Lewiston-Auburn, and, of course, the Wall of Shoes.

You have a lot of shoes.

I never thought of myself as being especially focused on shoes. I collected them as just a natural outgrowth of being a costume designer and being someone interested in clothing as an aspect of social history. I’m fascinated by everyday objects, and how we venerate them and love them. And I can find beauty in any of these particular objects.

Where do you look for shoes?

As the designer for the theater department, a big part of my job is shopping. Every different play presents a different set of challenges, and so you’re always looking in different places. A bunch of the shoes that are on the Wall of Shoes just came from me trolling the racks at Goodwill and Salvation Army, and knowing what to look for.

Footwear has a great century-long timeline of Auburn’s shoe industry, plus other glimpses at local shoemaking, but it’s not purely a historical exhibit. How would you characterize it?

We tried to create an exhibit that would have a broad appeal, that wouldn’t be so narrow that we couldn’t really fill the space, and that would celebrate an everyday pedestrian object, no pun intended, that people don’t normally think about in a museum context. We wanted it to be fun, just celebrating objects — not necessarily steering away from the history, but looking more at something broader and looser.

The Maine shoe industry was known for moccasins and loafers. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Shoes are something everybody is familiar with, but have little aspects that you might not think about. Where does a shoe style come from? For instance, modern wedge shoes were invented in the 1930s by this famous shoe designer, Salvatore Ferragamo, which I never knew until I started doing research. You just assume that styles develop gradually over time. But we can point to Ferragamo and say, “This man invented this particular style.�

The museum has a lot of old lasts, the foot-shaped forms that shoes are built around, and you use them as a design element in the exhibit. What do lasts tell us?

One reason that Maine was so successful in shoe manufacturing was the timber industry, because they could make all of the lasts. That’s an example of the kinds of ancillary businesses that helped make the city successful.

There was a huge turnover in shoe companies here. It was an incredibly difficult business to make viable. But because Auburn had such great infrastructure for shoe manufacturing — it had trained employees, manufacturing spaces, machinery — when a company would go bust, somebody else would immediately come in and buy up all the equipment, rehire the workers.

Holding a Western boot, Christine McDowell poses in front of the Wall of Shoes. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

So many shoes of so many different types were made in Auburn, right into the 1960s, yet locally mass-produced shoes from decades past are pretty scarce.

It was very coincidental that I volunteered to be on the museum exhibition committee two years ago. I think about 75 percent of the shoes that you see here are from my personal collection. So in some ways that shaped the exhibit, because it was available material.

Auburn was once known as the White Shoe City, because there was an early manufacturer here, Ara Cushman & Co., of what we would think of as athletic footwear. It involved a new manufacturing process, so it was a leap of faith, but it was very successful here. But I could not find a single surviving example anywhere of this particular type of canvas shoe.

The big Cushman-Hollis factory was demolished in 1972, and that symbolizes the end of the Auburn shoe industry. But there are still shoe manufacturers in L-A and Maine.

One of them is Rancourt & Co. Shoecrafters. They make high-end shoes in Lewiston, and that’s a really tangible link we have to the history of local shoe manufacturing. Those incredibly handsome men’s shoes that you see in the exhibit are from Rancourt.

Rancourt was incredibly generous. They loaned us materials, loaned us shoes, a video about shoe production that we’re showing. They let us tour their factory, which was such a thrill to me, because I got to see shoes being manufactured.

The Plexiglas display shows the 29 pieces of an “exploded” Rancourt shoe. Intact Rancourts are mounted on the wall at left. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

What are some of your favorite shoes in the exhibition?

There’s a pair of traditional Russian folk shoes made out of a material called bast, which is from tree bark. They were actually hand-woven for me, so it was nice to be able to put them in there.

And there’s one pair that are my oldest and probably most valuable shoes. They are “straights� — there’s no difference between left and right. And they’re embroidered with dyed straw and decorated with metallic threads and lace. I thought originally these were from around the 1830s, but the heels make me think they’re a little bit later, so around the 1850s.

Hand-made shoes, then?

Shoemaking was a really easy industry to have at home. You didn’t need a lot of expensive materials or a lot of square footage. Until the advent of the factories, people would make shoes for their families or the smaller local community. So those could very well have been produced in a small home.

With decorations including straw embroidery, these 19th-century shoes from Christine McDowell’s collection are among her favorites. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

You can find patterns in 19th-century women’s magazines, like Peterson’s Magazine, for slippers and embroidery designs. You could conceivably embroider something to bring to a cobbler for working into a shoe. Or with a soft-enough sole, it would be something a women could sew herself, like slippers for her husband. I’ve seen many, many patterns for crewelwork or petit point, things like that, to make men’s slippers as gifts.

Tell us about the Wall of Shoes.

Kirstin Koepnick ’21 and Jason Ross ‘19 helped me assemble this, along with Aidan McDowell, the assistant technical director in the theater department, who happens to be my nephew. I designed it, he and I engineered it, and then the four of us — it was like a barn-raising, because it was really complicated to get this minimalist object to stand freely in the space.

The Wall just celebrates aesthetically pleasing, interesting shoes from the 20th century. I think all but one of the shoes there are mine. You know, people are always sending you things that are relevant to your industry. So, some of these shoes people actually gave me.

And I also happen to have really small feet [McDowell laughs], which has proved advantageous, because people are like, “I can’t wear these, you can have them.” So small feet and a particular interest have proven to be really beneficial.

The Museum L-A exhibition Footwear includes a display of shoes from non-U.S. cultures. The basket-weave shoe at the left rear of the display was handmade for Christine McDowell in Russia. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

As the sun rose on June 9, a line snaked from Underhill Arena past Merrill Gymnasium to Central Avenue, then up the sidewalk to Lewiston Middle School, a full block away.

Hundreds of people bearing bags, wagons, and cash waited patiently for the start of Clean Sweep, the annual yard sale of items donated by ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students as they left campus for the summer.

Clean Sweep is at once a fundraiser, a drive for local nonprofits, and a way to reduce the college’s and the community’s environmental impact. Two local organizations, John F. Murphy Homes and SHARECenter, organize and run the sale, then split the proceeds. In turn, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ offers the use of Underhill Arena for free.

For everyone involved, the Clean Sweep paid off. ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ saved thousands of dollars on waste-transport fees , the sale raised nearly $33,000 — a record total — and leftover items went to numerous local organizations.

“It’s pretty awe-inspiring,â€� said ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Sustainability Manager Tom Twist, “to see the nonprofits clean and set up and distribute the amount of material that might otherwise go into a landfill.”

After moving through the well-managed line, shoppers who entered Underhill were greeted with a cornucopia of college life. Bedding lined the walls. Bicycles were parked in a row. Buyers walked through a forest of floor lamps, picked through toiletries, or fished for the perfect yoga mat. People who wanted rugs pulled them from underfoot.

Bonnie Mosher, checks her reflection in a mirror at Clean Sweep. (Andree Kehn/Sun Journal)

“It was literally shoulder to shoulder from 8 o’clock to 10:30 before it started to subside,� said SHARECenter director Lisa Rodrigues.

In the weeks before the end of the school year, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students brought items they no longer needed or were too costly to transport home to pickup locations in their residence halls

Volunteers with John F. Murphy Homes, which serves children and adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities and autism spectrum disorders, took the items to Underhill.

Then, Auburn-based SHARECenter, an educational supply unit that collects and distributes items to schools and nonprofits, recruited volunteers from numerous organizations to sort through and price the material — hand mirrors, piles and piles of clothes, an Egyptian drum.

SHARECenter also brought in items from elsewhere, such as filing cabinets from TD Bank and furniture from demolished houses.

Rodrigues, who ran the sale for the first time this year but has worked the event before, said the number of donated mini-fridges shot up this year, as did egg crate mattress toppers. In the years she’s worked Clean Sweep, both the number of physical textbooks and media like DVDs have dropped sharply.

The volunteers organized the items into neat aisles — shelving here, electric kettles there — and managed the sale. Groups such as churches, the Trinity Jubilee Center, and Advocates for Children took clothing, bedding, and furniture that went unsold or were set aside for them.

In addition to the community benefit and reduced waste disposal costs, Clean Sweep serves an important sustainability goal, Twist said. Most items require some form of carbon emission to produce — so if people reuse instead of buying new, the carbon footprint shrinks.

“That’s something we’re really mindful of post carbon neutrality,� he said. “What sort of impact are we having, not just in terms of fuels that we’re burning on campus, but fossil fuels that we’re causing to be emitted somewhere else in the world?�

Rodrigues said she hopes ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students know how valuable their donations are to the local nonprofits and the community.

“We truly appreciate all their generous donations,� she said.

When Gillian Coyne ’19 of New York City started as a language interpreter at meetings between French-speaking asylum seekers and their potential lawyers, she learned to be prepared for anything.

“You have no idea what sort of case you’re getting, what stage of the process they’re in, where they’re from, what their story is,� she says. “You just have to interpret as you go along.�

She is one of a group of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ French and francophone studies students who volunteer to provide a key service to the Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project, which gives free and low-cost legal services to new Mainers. Many of ILAP’s clients need language interpreters during those meetings, which are often the start of a lengthy process to gain asylum in the United States.

“Language is fundamental to everything that we do here, in terms of being able to communicate with clients and create a welcoming space,â€� says Alice Kopij, an ILAP staff attorney who runs the Lewiston office of the Portland-based organization. Ìý

ILAP staff attorney Alice Kopij poses with Gillian Coyne ’19Ìý at the Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project office.

But “as a small nonprofit agency, it can be hard to afford language services,â€� she says. ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students “help us save our resources to provide legal services, but we still get high-quality interpreting.â€�

While ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students have interned or volunteered with ILAP for years, the partnership with French students began in 2015, when Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies Alexandre Dauge-Roth taught a course called “Borders and Disorders in French and Francophone Literature and Film,â€� which explored migration and identity in the French-speaking world.

For the course’s Purposeful Work infusion component — in which professors are encouraged to make connections between the course material and the real world — Dauge-Roth invited ILAP executive director Susan Roche to tell the class about the organization’s work.

The students learned that people often come to ILAP for help seeking asylum, a status under which an applicant can stay in the U.S. if they fear persecution in their home country.

In Lewiston, many asylum seekers come from francophone countries like Djibouti, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi. Some speak very little English; others can understand and speak English but need interpreters to help them grasp complex legal concepts and ensure that their own stories are clear.

Dauge-Roth quickly realized that he had students who could step in. Whether they grew up speaking French, took French courses at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, or studied in French-speaking countries, they had the requisite language skills.

And francophone studies covers a lot more than the French language. With the French colonial legacy encompassing places in North and West Africa, the Caribbean and North America, francophone cultural production “is a lot about multiple identities, migration, displacement, various forms of racial, economic, and gender inequalities and discrimination,� Dauge-Roth says.

“It’s up to you to be able to relay that story and do it justice.�

Dauge-Roth selected students with the language skills and cultural competency to interpret. At the time, ILAP didn’t have an office in Lewiston; staff attorney Meg Moran traveled to the Lewiston Adult Education Center once a week to consult with asylum seekers. (Moran now works at a legal services firm in Boston.)

Gillian Coyne, who started interpreting during her sophomore year, says she quickly picked up the relevant legal terminology in French and English, but she also came to understand her own power as an interpreter.

“As an interpreter, you are being trusted with someone’s story,� she says. “You’re being trusted with someone’s words in a way that is incredibly intimate and profound and leaves the person who is telling you their story in a vulnerable position.

“That leaves you in a position of incredible power, in a position where you really need to pay attention because this person is telling you all of the horrible things they’ve suffered, what they’ve gone through, any persecution. It’s up to you to be able to relay that story and do it justice.�

Gradually, Coyne and some of her classmates began to do more than interpret. During her junior year, Coyne interned with Berman and Simmons, a Maine law firm that works closely with ILAP.

Asylum seekers have to prove that they fear persecution in their home country due to a protected status like religion or political opinion, and that the government of that country can’t protect them — criteria that require a lot of documentation.

Once ILAP has evaluated an asylum seeker’s case, a staff attorney may represent them through the legal process, or they might be referred to a network of pro bono attorneys, including several at Berman and Simmons. Ìý

“Providing translation services makes clients feel welcome and makes clients feel they can express themselves.�

Coyne and her fellow interns would research the conditions in asylum seekers’ home countries and look for French-language social media posts and news reports that could back up an individual’s claim.

In the meantime, ILAP’s presence in Lewiston has grown. In April, the organization opened a full-time office, with Kopij at the helm, expanding the range of legal services and outreach it can provide.

“Providing translation services makes clients feel welcome and makes clients feel they can express themselves,â€� Kopij says. ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students, she says, “bring professionalism, confidentiality. I can count on them.â€�

Through the Purposeful Work internship program, Coyne is working as an intern at the new office. She schedules ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ interpreters, provides interpretation at community workshops, and does country research and some paralegal tasks.

Coyne says her internships at Berman and Simmons and ILAP have sparked an interest in law school and strengthened her resolve to work with migrants in the francophone world.

“It’s given me so much more direction on the work environment that I want to find myself in, the type of people that I want to work with in a professional environment, and the people that I want to work with on a more global scale,� she says.

For author and educator Julie Lythcott-Haims, coming to campus was more than an opportunity to discuss her memoir, Real American, chosen as the Common Read for the Class of 2022.

It also was the first chance in years for her and her family to return to the alma mater of her father, George Lythcott ’39, LL.D ’80, who enrolled at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ after Benjamin Mays, a member of the Class of 1920 and a family friend, encouraged him to attend.

“To arrive here today and see a building with the name Benjamin Mays on it began this process of bringing me back to a place I never knew, to a time when my father walked these pathways,� Lythcott-Haims said during her Sept. 18 visit. “It is such an honor to be here where my own father was once an entering freshman.�

Julie Lythcott-Haims, the author of Real American, speaks at the Olin Arts Center on September 19, 2018. (Theophil Syslo/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Lythcott-Haims is a former Stanford University dean of freshmen and the author of the best-selling How to Raise an Adult. In her second book, Real American, she tells her story of growing up as the daughter of an African American father and a white British mother, navigating predominantly white spaces as a black and biracial woman, and learning to accept herself and become an advocate for black people.

At ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, she spoke with two First-Year Seminars about her book and the process of writing it, and she and several friends and family members, including brother George Lythcott ’69, lunched at Commons. Later, at a talk at the Olin Arts Center, she read from Real American to an audience of primarily first-year students, and she took their questions.

The passages Lythcott-Haims read from her memoir focused on her father, a prominent pediatrician who was assistant surgeon general under President Jimmy Carter. “He was formidable, commanding, gruff, loving, and funny,â€� Lythcott-Haims wrote. “…Daddy was the protagonist, the lead. Daddy was the sun.â€�

The son of a doctor who served the black community of Tulsa, Okla., Lythcott majored in biology at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ and was a sportswriter and sports editor for The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Student. A track standout, he helped Jesse Owens practice for the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

In addition to practicing medicine, Lythcott taught and ran programs at New York University, the University of Oklahoma, Columbia University, and the University of Wisconsin. He also worked with the World Health Organization on a number of projects; in the 1960s, he led the effort to eradicate smallpox in West and Central African countries. He met Lythcott-Haims’ mother, Jean Lythcott, in Ghana, and Lythcott-Haims was born in Nigeria.

Racism is “agnostic to class and to the degrees you have and to who your daddy is.�

In the Department of Health and Human Services under President Carter, George Lythcott Ìý“conducted a major nationwide drive by black physicians to vaccinate minority children against childhood diseases,â€� the New York Times said at the time of Lythcott’s death, in 1995.

In 1979, Lythcott wrote an essay for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Magazine “Health Care: A Matter of Priorities,â€� in which he said that efforts to improve access to healthcare among American minorities were “desperately small compared with the need, and speak poignantly of the necessity to change our priorities.â€� He received an honorary degree from ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in 1980.

When Ronald Reagan was elected, Lythcott and his family returned to Wisconsin, where Lythcott-Haims spent most of her childhood.

Hers was a childhood of relative privilege, she said. But racism, she learned, is “agnostic to class and to the degrees you have and to who your daddy is,� she said during her talk.

At ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, where he was one of very few students of color on campus, her father was “a Black man who in the construct of New England in the 1930s had little agency,â€� she wrote in Real American.

“He was a man of great intellect, tall and strong, still subject to being called ‘boy’ by any white man at any moment. He was capable and accomplished, yet subject to being second-guessed or blamed without cause.�

Lythcott-Haims herself, she wrote, grew up feeling like an outsider in her primarily white Wisconsin hometown, whether it was the strange looks she sometimes received while walking with her parents or having her academic achievements questioned. One of the worst instances Lythcott-Haims detailed in Real American was when, on her 17th birthday, someone wrote a racial slur on a decoration on her high school locker.

Julie Lythcott-Haims speaks with Abigail Quinn ’22 of Salisbury, Conn., and Amelia Ingersoll ’22 of Middlebury, Vt., after discussing her book,ÌýReal American, with their First-Year Seminar, “Cultivating Social Justice in Community Gardens.â€� (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

“I was subjected to the things we call these days microaggressions, those small slights and insults which over time can add up and feel like a drainage pipe above my head, dripping onto me, and, over time, with its volume increasing, starting to distort my sense of self,� she said.

By the time she was attending Stanford and then Harvard Law School, her experience of racism had turned into self-loathing, she said.

“I was finally seeing myself for the first time in my blackness.�

“I was outwardly successful, ‘making it,’ attending the so-called right schools with the brand names, corporate lawyer, earning money, university dean,â€� Lythcott-Haims said, “and I’m inhabiting the space of self-loathing, which means I was performing the part I felt I needed to perform so as never to be called the N-word again.â€�

This period of self-loathing lasted for decades, into Lythcott-Haims’ 40s. By that time, she said, with age she had become less concerned with what people thought of her, and at Stanford, an executive coach helped her understand her reactions to others’ racist assumptions and stereotyping.

One day, Lythcott-Haims said she was finally able to admit that “racism had so gotten to me I believed it,� and was therefore able to reject it.

“Admitting that, out loud, was a catharsis that would send me on a trajectory to becoming incredibly self-accepting and self-loving, and ultimately, to be able to share with other black folk and people of color more broadly these things, to write a book,� she said.

Lythcott-Haims noticed a change right away. “I walked on the campus and was greeted by the smiling eyes of one black person after another, after another, after another,� she said. “I was finally seeing myself for the first time in my blackness, and therefore I was able to see them and, more than that, to regard them as the magnificent humans that they were and are.�

Over time, Lythcott-Haims “cultivated a practice� of recognizing her own biases and experiencing and expressing compassion, she said. She also saw her upbringing with a different perspective, which included questioning her parents’ decision to raise her in a mostly white town. And she became more of an advocate for people of color, speaking out in particular against police violence.

Students line up to have copies ofÌýReal American,Ìýthe Common Read for the Class of 2022, signed by the author. (Theophil Syslo/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

“It is our obligation in this country, in this time, to be the people who say, ‘We’re not going to abide by this anymore, that every single human being is a human being who matters,’â€� she said. “We say, ‘Black Lives Matter’ not because we’re black supremacists, but because we simply beg, ‘Can’t black lives matter, too?’â€�

In her talk, she urged people who are “adjacent� to racist thought to sit with friends and family members and work to change their minds. Asked by a first-year student how to spread compassion on campus, she said not to forget the “excruciating level of the one-on-one.�

“This is about individual interactions with one another in the dorms, in Commons, in the classrooms, on playing fields, back at home, at Thanksgiving,� she said. “It is to be that person who is a paragon of kindness and compassion. You will make others want to be around you.

“We as individuals have the power to transform the human experience, if we can start focusing on these things like compassion, kindness, love.�

How colleges help students find purpose in their work — The Chronicle of Higher Education

In a major feature story, explores the value of the college’s signature Purposeful Work initiative.

Now beginning its fifth year of implementation, Purposeful Work helps students “clarify the connections between classroom and career, and to prepare students for lives of meaningful work,” writes Kelly Field of the Chronicle, the leading source of academic news in the U.S.

Purposeful Work stands apart, says Field, for how it “blends the philosophical and the pragmatic.”

Purposeful Work is particularly valuable because it helps to “increase graduates’ confidence that they can succeed in an increasingly technical work force, and to dispel parents’ and policy makers’ doubts about the returns on an expensive liberal-arts degree.”

While many colleges are launching similar programs, Purposeful Work stands apart, says Field, for how it “blends the philosophical and the pragmatic, offering students both concrete skills and an overarching theory of work: namely, that it ought to have both personal meaning and societal relevance.”

Purposeful Work interns in summer 2018, Isabella Del Priore ’19 and Emily Lufburrow ’19 pose outside the Sidney Kimmel Center for Prostate and Urologic Cancers at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York City. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Portland, Maine, is the 2018 Restaurant City of the Year — Bon Appetit

Andrew Knowlton ’97, Bon Appetit’s longtime restaurant editor and now editor at large, , citing the city’s many new openings and the variety of offerings, from “an Instagram-worthy lobster roll and a dozen local oysters� to “the killer pho spot or the guy selling hand rolls out of a Yeti cooler.�

Knowlton brings some subjectivity to the selection. “I’ve got a thing for Maine,� he wrote. “I went to college there, I got married there, I regularly vacation there.� But Portland was not picked just out of “blind favoritism,� he explains, offering a long list of restaurants as evidence.

Among the spots mentioned are ±á³Ü²µ´Ç’s, one of three eateries co-owned by award-winning chef Andrew Taylor ’03, and Allagash Brewing Company, whose brewmaster is Knowlton’s classmate Jason Perkins.

‘Strangers’ creator Mia Lidofsky breaks the mold with queer female narrative — Huffington Post

As the second season of Strangers wrapped, director and producer Mia Lidofsky ’09 talked to about how her own life has inspired the Facebook Watch show and the importance of narratives created by and featuring queer people.

Strangers follows a bisexual woman and her lesbian best friend, a “self-discovery tale against the backdrop of Airbnb,� Wong wrote.

Lidofsky, who worked on the shows Girls and Nurse Jackie as an assistant to director Jesse Peretz, told Wong she wanted to make women feel “feel more seen, more heard and less alone.�

“I wanted to show queer women in a positive light, and show their hilarity, their beauty and their charisma,� she said. “The more depictions of queer people onscreen by queer people, the better.�

How Matt Golden started a lunchtime mentorship program in Maine that is reaching New Bedford — SouthCoastToday

Brendan Kurie of the New Bedford Standard-Times profiled Matt Golden ’20, who at Lewiston Middle School.

A sociology major and football player, Golden and fellow ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students make regular visits to LMS, where they hang out with students and, importantly, give them a chance to see what it’s like to be a college student.

Matt Golden ’20 of New Bedford, Mass., carries the ball during a 2016 game against Hamilton College. (Josh Kuckens/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

“Students talking to other students is a big thing,� Lewiston Middle School administrator Billie Jo Brito told Kurie.

“It’s so hard for middle school students, many times, to get out of their own way. To be encouraged by a college student and hear about their middle school days and have that fresh face is such a positive thing for them.�

Golden got support from the college’s Harward Center for Community Partnerships, but “this was his initiative,â€� said Martha Deschaines ’75 of the Harward Center. “He’s so enthusiastic and dedicated to this program and helping youth to move forward.”

Women to Watch: Clayton Spencer, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College — Mainebiz

Mainebiz named ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ President â€� in 2018. In a profile, editor Peter Van Allen outlined Spencer’s path from law to higher education, her leadership of the $300 million ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Campaign, and her drive to prepare students for meaningful careers through the Purposeful Work initiative.

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ President Clayton Spencer speaks during Convocation on Sept. 4. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

“Most students realize they’re not da Vinci or Yo-Yo Ma,â€� Spencer said. “They worry they don’t have a passion. But finding your passion is a trap. You have to try things.â€�

“Work can be for pay or not,� she added. “But it has to be purposeful work.�

Here’s why we need to democratize artificial intelligence — Forbes

In an , Sameer Maskey ’02 says the world needs a lot more artificial intelligence professionals than it currently has.

The founder and CEO of Fusemachines, a Manhattan-based AI services and education firm, Maskey argues that students from developing countries should fill the gap — they’re as curious and qualified as Ivy League grads, and “someone who experiences complex problems in his/her own country could be more suited to try and solve those problems with AI.�

Kristyma Alexova ’19 and Sameer Maskey ’02 speaks with Kristyna Alexova ’19 during Alexova’s Purposeful Work internship at Fusemachines, Maskey’s AI company. (Nick Romanenko for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Maskey, a member of the Forbes Technology Council, which comprises world-class CIOs, CTOs, and technology executives, recently started a fellowship program to teach machine learning to students in the Dominican Republic, New York City, Rwanda, and Maskey’s native Nepal.

“If we want everyone to benefit from the development of AI, and not just a few select countries, we need to make AI equally accessible around the world,� Maskey says.

David Bowie welcomes Lewiston High students back for the 51st time — Sun Journal

Bonnie Washuk of the , who has been teaching Lewiston High School students and coaching fellow teachers for 51 years.

David Bowie poses in the hall by the door of his office at Lewiston High School, where he has taught for 51 years. (Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal)

Bowie has witnessed dramatic changes over his five decades in the classroom. Standardized testing became more important, technology progressed — Bowie was one of the first to learn to use computers — and the student population became far more diverse.

Now some of his former students are teachers at the high school, and he sees people he taught at LHS in town. “I usually run into somebody I had in a class, which makes it kind of fun,� Bowie told Washuk.

McCain’s straight talk impressed those on the North Shore — The Salem News

Ethan Forman of The Salem News on the Aug. 25 death of U.S. Senator John McCain.

Pangallo, now chief of staff for the mayor of Salem, was a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ student in 2000 when he worked in New Hampshire for McCain’s first presidential campaign. He wrote that though McCain was the only Republican he ever voted for, he admired the senator’s stance on campaign finance reform, as well as his relationship with the press and, later, his position on climate change and his vote against the repeal of Obamacare.

“Tonight, I’m remembering those cold and snowy nights across countless small Granite State towns, running lawn signs, holding the rope line, setting up stages, handing out palm cards,â€� Pangallo wrote of working on the campaign. “The thrill of being in the vanguard of the Straight Talk Express.”

The comeback kids: how a struggling public school made the grade — The Guardian

Amanda Holpuch of The Guardian Associate Professor of Education Mara Tieken for a story about the school district in Pike County, Ala., which has many students from poor rural backgrounds.

The district closely watches and tries to support its students, and offers programs that allow students to earn college credits and even associate’s degrees in a variety of fields.

Associate Professor of Education Mara Tieken teaches “Community Organizing for Social Justiceâ€� in May 2018. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Tieken praised that dual enrollment program, but offered this caution:

“What I worry about is rural kids, particularly rural students of color, being disproportionately tracked into associate’s degrees, so then they are not able to continue on with education, which we know corresponds with higher earnings and all kinds of other benefits.”

GirlsGetMath engages local high school students — The Brown Daily Herald

Brown University’s student newspaper at the university, directed by Associate Professor of Mathematics Katharine Ott, that teaches high school girls about math and computer science.

Associate Professor of Mathematics Katharine Ott. (Sarah Crosby/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Ott told reporter Cate Ryan that the program seeks to encourage girls to stay engaged with math and science in high school and college and, ultimately, pursue careers in STEM fields.

“There is clear evidence that even though jobs in STEM are growing very rapidly and they pay better than a lot of other jobs, women are very underrepresented in these careers,� Ott said.

The program, GirlsGetMath@ICERM, was hosted by Brown’s Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics.

French schools say ‘au revoir’ to smartphones — what if the U.S. dialed up a similar ban? — KPCC-FM

Schools in France instituted a ban this year on cellphones on school grounds. Larry Mantle of Pasadena-based public radio station KPCC how such a policy might translate in the United States, talking with ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ Anita Charles and the University of Michigan’s Liz Kolb about the effectiveness of cellphone bans.

Anita Charles teaches “Basic Concepts in Special Educationâ€� in March 2018. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Charles, lecturer in education and director of secondary teacher education, told Mantle and several callers that outright bans on cellphones are “seldom effective, it’s unenforceable, and it begs for subversion.�

Whether schools and teachers allow cellphones in the classroom or require students to put their phones in a cubby, they have to develop relationships of trust, Charles said.

“We tend to miss the boat if we’re only about the policy,� she said. “We have to also have the conversations. We have to talk to students about why and how and what are we trying to help them do when they put them in that cubby, and what we hope they’ll learn to understand about appropriate contexts.�