Basketball (and family) history makes TV and newspaper news

During a 70-66 overtime win against the University of Southern Maine, Elsa Daulerio ’26 became the 22nd ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ women’s basketball player to score 1,000 career points, and the  and all reported on the event. Her teammates swarmed the court after the game to celebrate Daulerio, who is the 2025–26 team captain.

The achievement has made Daulerio and her mother, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Associate Director of Athletics Adrienne Shibles ’91, the second-documented mother-daughter duo in the country to both earn 1,000 career points at the same institution. 

“It means so much,� Daulerio told the Kennebec Journal/Morning Sentinel. “I love her so much. She’s been my idol since I was a little girl. I always looked up to her, and she’s been my No. 1 supporter, along with my family. It’s just so special and I’m honored to be up there with her. She’s the hardest worker I know.�

Like her daughter, Shibles was team captain at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ — twice. She ended her college career with 1,005 career points and went on to coach basketball at Swarthmore, Bowdoin, and Dartmouth before returning to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½.

A ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ alum talks to national press after her reality show jackpot

In November, Perla Figuereo ’21 was featured in an after winning Squid Game: The Challenge Season 2, a competitive reality television show based on the fictional thriller Squid Game. Figuereo entered the game with her twin brother Jeffrey Figuereo and her “gameplay came down to being her ‘most authentic self’ and tapping into her emotions,� Marie Claire reported.

The prize for winning the show was $4.56 million, which Figuereo plans to split with her brother. As , Figuereo “was made to play against her brother Geoffrey [sic], putting them both in a difficult position. He decided not to take part, instead encouraging his sister to go on and win the game for the both of them. And she did just that.�

In an, Figuereo discussed her win and reminisced on her time in Lewiston, which she calls her “second home.�

“My strategy was just to be myself,� Figuereo told the Sun Journal. “I’m a very social person. Genuinely one of my passions in life is people, so my strategy was just to get to know people like I do in my everyday life.�

The show, , and , among other outlets, also covered the news.

Francesco Duina visits Maine Calling to talk about inequality

Francesco Duina, professor of sociology, was featured on Maine Public’s Maine Calling program on December 2.

Duina’s new book The Social Acceptance of Inequality: On the Logics of a More Unequal World analyzes the ways in which people think about economic inequality—and the reasoning that leads many to accept the disparities around us. Co-edited with Luca Storti, an associate professor of economic sociology at the University of Turin, Italy, Duina’s collection includes voices from across the globe contributing their perspectives on why we justify and accept economic inequality.

Maine Calling host Jennifer Rooks asked Duina why he chose to look at the logics, or justifications, people have for the great inequality in the world now. 

“The logics or the justifications, are drivers or these inequalities,� Duina responded. “So if we want to understand where they come from or why they are sustained, we want to understand why some people are okay with them. A surprisingly large number of — and diverse — number of people support, to varying degrees, inequalities. We are talking specifically about economic inequalities here. Inequalities of wealth or income.�

Rooks asked Duina about his process, including how he challenges his ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students to consider the topic. “I suspect that people, sometimes, if they are asked, outright, ‘Do you support income inequaity’ might have a different answer then the answer you get when you start to dig down,â€� Rooks said. 

Duina agreed. “Most people, I think, would probably say ‘No,’� he said. “Though some people will say, ‘I’m perfectly comfortable,’ for whatever reasons. But it’s also true that, as I investigate with students, and I kind of challenge them, it’s also true that most people don’t want perfect equality either. So then the question is, at what point do people become uncomfortable, and at what point do people continue to accept economic inequalities?�

To listen to the full conversation, which included two guest panelists,
Marc Dixon, professor of sociology from Dartmouth College and Megan Tobias Neely, assistant professor of sociology, University of Colorado, Boulder, visit ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ News interviewed Duina about the topic in November.

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ football success featured in the Portland Press Herald

Head Football Coach Matt Coyne was featured in which ran in the Maine Trust for Local News publications, including the Portland Press Herald, in late October. Coyne noted that ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ football is at a turning point this year. “We’ve played, you know, much better complementary football across the board, offensively and defensively,â€� Coyne said. “I think the biggest thing is in critical moments in some of those games against the top-half teams, we made the plays against Amherst and Tufts; then in some other games, we didn’t.â€� Coyne pointed to the team’s depth in both offense and defense calling out junior linebacker Ryan Rozich of Cromwell, Conn. leading the NESCAC with 89 tackles, and sophomore Carmel Crunk of Chatsworth, Calif. with 63 tackles.

In the Sun Journal, Darby Ray visualizes a community gathering spot

Lewiston community members are considering the future of The Red Shop at Simard-Payne Memorial Park. Built in 1938, the building was once a machine shop for the mill. Discussions about the possible uses for the building are underway. Darby Ray, who serves as director of the Harward Center for Community Partnerships and is the Donald W. and Ann M. Harward Professor of Civic Engagement, was interviewed in a , where she shared her ideas for the future of the building. Ray imagines people coming together at The Red Shop–for family reunions and other celebrations, saying “I think we need more spaces where folks can come together on a chilly winter day like today and maybe share ideas about something, have a forum or a conversation or a square dance. We need places to gather that are easily accessible and low barrier in terms of expense.�

Kamal Kariem in The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education

Kamal Kariem, assistant professor of anthropology who joined the faculty at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ this year, was . Kariem, a graduate of Connecticut College, earned his masters and PhD at Princeton University in anthropology. Kariem is noted as a scholar of global Indigeneities and “comparative imperial formations as these intersect with nature protection.â€� Kariem is currently teaching “Cultural Anthropologyâ€� and “Indigeneity Today.â€� He shared that he looks forward to working with students to consider their own engagement with Indigenous scholars, considering “convergences and divergencesâ€� that emerged in his own work studying Indigenous peoples in the U.S. and Russia.

Muncie’s Star Press features alum’s appointment at Ball State

Bette Smith ’87 was of Muncie, Ind. for her new appointment at Ball State University. Smith was named director of Ball State University’s Center for Innovation and Collaboration. Originally from New York, Smith was a Russian major at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ before earning a masters in sociology at University of Colorado, Denver. Smith has spent more than two decades working in higher education, and will use her experience to focus on organizational change and partnership development. In her new role, Smith will help shape the center’s initial organizational structure and expand Ball State University’s partnerships with the community and local industry. Smith has served as principal of Destra Consulting Group since 2013, supporting clients on transformation initiatives, stakeholder engagement, and leadership alignment.

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ was recently honored as one of 48 colleges with in the 2020 presidential election.

With 84.9 percent of eligible students heading to the polls in 2020, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ garnered a platinum seal from the ALL In Campus Democracy Challenge, a nonpartisan national awards program that recognizes colleges and universities for their commitment to increasing student voting and civic engagement.

Forty-eight colleges earned the platinum designation for achieving voting rates over 80 percent.

“The cultivation of ‘informed civic action’ is a pillar of our institutional mission,â€� said Darby Ray, director of the Harward Center for Community Partnerships, which oversees the nonpartisan voter mobilization effort, known as ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Votes. “Voting, including voter education, registration, and mobilization, is a crucial form of civic action and the very foundation of a thriving democracy.â€�

The 2020 edition of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Votes was coordinated by students Amalia Herren-Lage ’22 of Shoreham, Vt., and Ashka Jhaveri ’22 of Chappaqua, N.Y., with expert advice and guidance from Peggy Rotundo, who retired in 2021 as the Harward Center’s director of strategic and policy initiatives.

Rotundo was the ideal role model and mentor, said Herren-Lage and Jhaveri. 

“Her confidence, experience, and incredibly kind guidance created a beautiful working environment for us to experiment with ideas and execute our goals in a professional and enthusiastic manner,� said Herren Lage. “That’s something I hope to bring into all my future endeavors.�

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Votes is a grass-roots effort that leverages peer-to-peer engagement and the willingness of many campus partners among students, faculty, and staff. “It’s an all-college effort — all hands on deck,â€� says Ray.

Vote Captains, students who are trained by Harward Center staff on how to register and educate voters, engage students in a massive outreach campaign through clubs, organizations, athletic teams, residence halls, classes, and friends groups. Plus chalking — lots of chalking — all around campus, exhorting folks to vote. 

For Herren-Lage and Jhaveri, who are close friends, the experience with ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Votes offers a model for purposeful work — “a professional, enthusiastic partnership,â€� said Herren Lage. 

In 2020 as with other elections, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Votes and the Harward Center supported a range of voter-education programs, dubbed the Election Connection. ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ faculty members added their expertise and insights, including two roundtables that shared scholarly insights into election results, as well as the video series Democracy QuickBites, featuring insights from ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ people and invited guests, including U.S. Sen. Angus King of Maine.

Some 844 two- and four-year U.S. institutions of higher education and more than 9.2 million students are now part of the ALL IN Campus Challenge program, which gathers its voting data from the .

Here are a few 2020 student voting facts from ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ and nationally:

• 66 percent of college students voted in 2020, an all-time high and a 14-point increase from 2016.
• ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ student voting rate of 84.9 percent was 7.3 percentage points higher than 2016.
• 93.7 percent of students registered to vote, 2.2 percentage points higher than 2016.
• Due to the pandemic, only 117 students voted in person in 2020. In 2016, the number was nearly 600. (Students cast in-person votes at the Lewiston Armory.) 

The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ voting rate of 85 percent means that 1,459 of 1,718 eligible ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students voted.

On Election Day, Herren-Lage, Jhaveri, and their fellow ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Votes volunteers chalked tally marks on the pavers in front of Commons showing the number of students who told them that they’d voted.

 â€œWhen we went home around 8 o’clock, after the polls closed, we had something like 1,100 marks on the ground,â€� recalls Herren-Lage. “We were convinced it was a huge overestimation — no way that many people had actually gone out to vote.â€�

Fast forward to fall 2021. “We learned that closer to 1500 students voted. And that feels amazing.�

Herren-Lage and Jhaveri emphasize that casting a vote is just one way of effecting change, and not always the most effective. “At ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, there are so many ways to be involved in social change in our community of Lewiston-Auburn through the Harward Center.â€�

Still, the right to vote is precious. “There’s a reason so many people have fought for and to protect voting rights. A lot of people find a sense of power in being able to cast a ballot, particularly in a country where citizenship is such a privilege. That sense of power matters, because I think it can be an avenue for hope.�

During a Nov. 9 virtual awards program honoring Maine colleges involved in the ALL In Campus Challenge, Rotundo, former longtime Maine legislator, received a lifetime achievement award.

The event’s featured guest, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, called Rotundo “a true trailblazer and champion of civic engagement� in Maine.

As she accepted the Maine Campus Voting Legacy Award, Rotundo, who co-founded ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ community-engaged learning program with the late Jim Carignan ‘61, didn’t sound like a woman ready to talk about her legacy.

“What an honor to work with you all,â€� she said. “And boy, this work is more important than ever, right?â€� The folks on the Zoom call nodded, nearly in unison. “But we’re up to the task. We’re going to keep our democracy strong. We’re going to do what needs to be done.â€�

Bellows announced that the Maine Campus Voting Legacy Award will be named for Rotundo going forward. “Peggy is a reliable champion for civil rights, for voting rights, for education, and for student engagement,� she said. “Her commitment to civil rights and voting rights is a true inspiration.�

Her mentees in 2020, Jhaveri and Herren-Lage, couldn’t agree more.

“Learning from such an experienced, wise person was special,� said Herren-Lage. “Peggy always let Ashka and I take the lead on our projects, and really made it possible for us to make our visions a reality. I hope that I’ll be able to emulate her quiet, supportive leadership style.�

The awards event was attended by representatives from Maine colleges that participated in the first biennial Maine Campus Voting Challenge: ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, Bowdoin, Colby, Saint Joseph’s, College of the Atlantic, Husson University, Kennebec Valley Community College, University of Maine, University of New England, and the University of Southern Maine.

Launched in September 2020, the Maine Campus Voting Challenge is cosponsored by the nonprofit Maine Students Vote and the Office of Maine’s Secretary of State, in partnership with ALL IN Campus Challenge. 

Assistant Professor of Education Mara Tieken, shown leading her “Perspectives on Education” class in 2014, has won a national award honoring early-career professors who practice community engagement as they teach, research, and serve. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Like the third-grade teacher she once was, Assistant Professor of Education Mara Tieken communicates in simple terms.

That’s especially — and perhaps surprisingly — true when it comes to her academic work, a burgeoning body of research on rural schools and related topics that is bridging the traditional divide between academics and practitioners.

For that accomplishment, Tieken recently won the for the Scholarship of Engagement for Early Career Faculty, a national award honoring professors who practice community engagement as they teach, research, and serve.

The award shines a light on the “two commitments that characterize Mara’s life and work,� says Darby Ray, a faculty colleague of Tieken’s. As director of the Harward Center for Community Partnerships, Ray nominated Tieken for the Lynton Award.

The first is a “commitment to social justice in a diverse democracy,� Ray says. “The second is ‘reciprocal partnership’ — that is, she includes community partner voices and desires at every stage of her work.�

What Tieken does today also pays homage to her first job after graduating from Dartmouth in 2001 with a social psychology major and education minor: teaching in Vanleer, Tenn., population 398, for three years.

“I did worry that I was giving up,â€� Tieken says of her decision to leave elementary school teaching in 2005. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

While the work in Vanleer was rewarding, she says, teachers and staff “felt overlooked and misunderstood by researchers who never wrote about rural schools, who misunderstood their experiences and were oblivious to the distinctive character, challenges, and strengths of rural education.�

When rural schools weren’t being ignored, she says, they were treated as something that needs fixing, and the fixes tended to be “ill-fitting, urban-centric education policies that endanger schools and, therefore, communities.�

So Tieken left Vanleer to do something about it.

“I did worry that I was giving up,� she says of her decision to leave for the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 2005. “But I wanted to do something about that gaping hole� — the lack of books and research that might speak to the challenges of her rural classroom and rural schools.

Tieken’s book, Why Rural Schools Matter was published in 2014 by the University of North Carolina Press.

Tieken earned a doctorate in education in 2011 and, in 2014, published her book, , which shows the harm of those ill-fitting policies, like school consolidation, which states undertake as a response to declining enrollments and the pressure to cut spending.

That tactic sounds sensible, she says, but consolidation can inflict huge costs on rural communities.

In the case of Delight, Ark., for example, school consolidation reversed the long-standing reality of desegregation as families self-selected new schools along racial lines. “A desegregated district vanished, the lines of race redrawn,� wrote Tieken.

Appointed to the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ faculty in 2011, Tieken came to the right state to continue her and her students’ examination of both rural and urban schools.

“My courses focus on fieldwork,� she says, and in the last five years, the 500 students in her courses have contributed more than 15,000 hours of tutoring, mentoring, teaching, researching, and organizing to Maine’s second-largest urban area.

In one recent example, Tieken and students in her qualitative methods course (a course that she created) partnered with two Lewiston nonprofits that support teen parents, Goodwill Take Two and Advocates for Children.

Helping the nonprofits do what is often hard — find the time to measure and catalog their successes and challenges — the students developed methods, collected data, and presented findings that “were used by the organizations in grant applications and for strengthening programming,� Tieken says.

And while one in five children in the U.S. lives in a rural area, in Maine that figure is closer to one in two. That means the stakes are high when it comes to rural education in Maine, as Tieken found when she researched her most recent article, “,� published in the Peabody Journal of Education in May.

Visiting rural Maine towns to learn about college aspirations, Tieken interviewed and observed various stakeholders including high school guidance counselors, visiting college admissions officials, and the staffs of community-based organizations.

Tieken found that students hear one message over and over: A college education means a job. Yet there’s a downside when communities frame higher education that narrowly, says Tieken. A jobs-focused mantra can “exclude other benefits� of a college degree, such as higher life satisfaction or the social benefits of an educated citizenry.

Further, “the ubiquity of the [jobs] message may cause students to be pressured into too-early career choices that leave them with few options later in life as industries change.�

“College Talkâ€� is a good example of Tieken’s plainspoken and distinctive approach to her scholarship. Known as “,â€� it’s a method of social-science inquiry using close observation, engagement, and partnership to tell a story.

Indeed, “College Talk� begins the way few scholarly articles do, putting the reader right into a rural community on the day of a college fair at the local high school:

By the end of October, the trees edging town already stand as bare as telephone poles. Leaves lie in long, windswept drifts along the road, and soon there will be snow. But, for now, it is still fall: a season of football games played under bright stadium lights, pumpkins growing orange and fat on thick brown stalks, and weekends filled with deer hunting and bonfires.

Tieken learned portraiture late in her graduate work at Harvard; up to that point, she worried that she was becoming the kind of academic her former self would have abhored: someone trained to gain access, collect data, and maintain objectivity — “utilitarian practices that seem to make research a contextless, possibly exploitive process.�

Portraiture gave Tieken a qualitative and “ethically comfortable method to do the work I’d left teaching to do.â€� (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

With portraiture, however, the “standard of rigor is authenticity.� That opens the door for the researcher to “focus on particulars; it is in the details that greater truths reside.� Instead of distance, portraiture “relies upon reciprocal, balanced relationships shared by researcher and participants — genuine relationships based on respect and honesty.�

In the end, portraiture gave Tieken a qualitative and “ethically comfortable method to do the work I’d left teaching to do.�

Ray says that Tieken’s jargon-free approach means that her scholarship has greater value (because it’s comprehensible) outside academe; to that end, Tieken shares her results in “diverse venues and styles� in order to “suit partner needs and to influence public opinion and policy.�

Those venues have ranged from academic journals to recent public radio interviews and to community suppers.

All of which makes Tieken’s voice “exceedingly important,� Ray says, not only in the “academy and in the halls of government and policy development, but also in the diners, school gymnasiums, community centers, and classrooms of rural America.�

In a Q-and-A, Sun Journal reporter Kathryn Skelton asks Darby Ray, director of the Harward Center for Community Partnerships, “If you were a student, what project through the Harward Center makes you think, ‘I’d be all over that'”?

Ray’s answer pointed to a partnership with an elementary school about a mile from campus.

Darby Ray is the director of the Harward Center for Community Partnerships and the
Donald W. and Ann M. Harward Professor of Civic Engagement at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

“Last semester one of the education classes at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ met all semester long at Farwell Elementary School. The students and professor didn’t just visit the school once or twice — they actually held their college course at the elementary school, which enabled an amazing reciprocity of knowledge, insight and energy.

“I love that kind of creative exchange.”

Darby Ray wasn’t considering a career change when she first learned that ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ was searching nationally for a new director of the Harward Center for Community Partnerships. But a personal connection to the center’s namesake, Donald Harward, the college’s sixth president, inspired her to investigate.

Ray, who was a professor of religion and leader of community engagement at Millsaps College in Mississippi, started work as the director of the Harward Center on Aug. 3. She first met Harward, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ president from 1989 to 2002, last fall when he came to Millsaps to discuss civic engagement in higher education.

Darby Ray is the director of the Harward Center for Community Partnerships and the Donald W. and Ann M. Harward Professor of Civic Engagement at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

It was Harward’s dedication to community engagement that prompted ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ to name the Harward Center for him and his wife, the late Ann Harward, in 2002. Since crossing paths last year, Ray and Harward, whom she describes as a “charming, brilliant and thoughtful man,” have become colleagues and friends.

Ray brings to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ more than 15 years of experience as a scholar and leader who bridges thought and action.

In 2000, she directed the Millsaps Faith and Work Initiative and later became the founding director of the 1 Campus 1 Community Center for Engaged Learning and Living, which “builds the capacity of faculty, staff, students, and community members for collaborative learning and problem solving,” says Ray. In 2011, 1C1C became a Presidential Award Finalist on the President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll.

Ray received her doctorate in religion from Vanderbilt University in 1996 and has taught courses in Christian thought, history of religions and the meaning of work. Her books and articles explore how religious ideas and practices relate to the realities of human and ecological suffering and to global forces such as work and the economy.

According to Kathy Low, professor of psychology and co-chair of the search committee, Ray “clearly understands the importance and power of creative collaborations.”

Ray calls directing the Harward Center a “dream job” that combines all of her passions into one position. “It’s ambitious. It’s wide-ranging. It’s complex work with lots of moving pieces.”

Among the Harward Center’s initiatives is the Community-Based Research program, which allows students to connect service and academics. Above, David Longdon ’13 helps lead youth programming with Lewiston-based Lots to Gardens. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College.

The success of that work, she says, requires the support of the entire college community and its leadership.

It also depends on “getting to know people — real people, in the flesh, their stories, their work — and relating to them in a mode of full partnership.”

Likewise, Ray is looking forward to engaging with the surrounding Lewiston-Auburn community. Driving around Lewiston for the first time, she could “see the people” and “imagine the work.”

“I couldn’t live in the town that’s all coffee shops and high-end retail. But a real town, where there’s real work to do, and the college is right in the thick of it? That’s appealing.”

She will have ample opportunity to connect with local organizations and residents while overseeing the Harward Center’s myriad programs in community-based learning, volunteerism and environmental stewardship.

Harward himself is confident Ray will “join the superb tradition of the work and people of the Harward Center — joining faculty, staff and students in exploring the basic purposes and objectives of liberal education.”