Andrew Kennedy, Gabrielle Chua ’18, and �ֲ���ý students

Molecule created by �ֲ���ý students could lead to more effective treatment for cancer and Alzheimer’s patients — Multiple outlets

A variety of news organizations reported the invention at �ֲ���ý of Bobcat339, a molecule created by students that could have implications for research and treatment of cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.

Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Andrew Kennedy and seven students co-authored a paper describing the molecule, which inhibits the ability of a certain enzyme to regulate genes. This class of so-called TET inhibitors could one day limit the aggressiveness of cancers.

With their professor, Andrew Kennedy (right), three of the seven student coauthors of the scholarly article describing Bobcat339 posed last May in a Dana Chemistry lab: from left, Michael Bennett, Haoyu Sun, and Nathanael Kuzio, all ’19. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Gabrielle Chua ’18 was the student who ultimately structured the molecule.

“It’s big for the field of epigenetics, it’s big for cancer research, and it’s big for the field of memory,” Kennedy told local NBC affiliate WCSH-TV, whose segment on the molecule was shared on Facebook by “NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt.”

Read the stories: 

• “,” WCSH-TV, Oct. 25, 2019 
• “,” Maine Public, Oct. 30, 2019

Holly Ewing

�ֲ���ý snags federal cash to help study Lake Auburn — Sun Journal

Steve Collins of the Sun Journal reported that the college will receive $842,000 of a $6 million National Science Foundation grant to figure out how to track and predict cyanobacterial blooms in lakes.

Holly Ewing, professor of environmental studies and the Christian A. Johnson Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, is key to the investigation, which is led by Alberto Quattrini Li of Dartmouth College.

Often important sources of drinking water, U.S. lakes are experiencing increases in cyanobacterial blooms, says Holly Ewing. The NSF project will allow better water-quality monitoring than ever before.

The multi-institution, multidisciplinary team will use boats and aerial drones to collect a wide variety of data on several lakes, including Lake Auburn. The project requires understanding communities’ relationships with their lakes, Ewing said.

“Understanding people’s values with respect to how we pay attention to lakes, how we interact with lakes — there’s definitely a cultural and place-based component to that,” she said. “And all of this is intimately related to the science.”

Read the story: 

• “,” Sun Journal, Oct. 25, 2019

Ryan Smith

Auburn’s Ryan Smith wins marathon, qualifies for U.S. Olympic Trials — Sun Journal

�ֲ���ý staff member Ryan Smith talked to the Lewiston Sun Journal’s Adam Robinson about his victory in the Hartford Marathon in October, which qualifies him for the U.S. Olympic Team marathon trials.

Smith, manager of purchasing, accounting, and licensing for �ֲ���ý Information and Library Services, ran the marathon in 2 hours and 18 minutes.

He’s now headed to Atlanta for the Feb. 29 trials, where he hopes to break the top 50 (the top three in each gender make the Olympic team).

“I’m certainly excited to see the full-time professionals, as always,” Smith said. “In terms of nerves, I think the pressure of trying to qualify is much more nerve-wracking than actually competing there. I’m just going to try and beat as many people as possible.

“That sounds more fun than nerve-wracking, especially because it’s a hilly course and I’m really good on hills.”

Read the story: 

• “,” Sun Journal, Oct. 18, 2019

Nolwazi Nosisa Ngwenyama ’16

UCT’s 2020 Mandela Rhodes scholars — University of Cape Town News

The University of Cape Town announced that Nolwazi Nosisa Ngwenyama ’16, a �ֲ���ý graduate and graduate student in gender studies, has won a prestigious Mandela-Rhodes scholarship.

Nolwazi Ngwenyama ’16 listens to a speaker at the Office of Intercultural Education at �ֲ���ý in 2014. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

The scholarships are awarded to African citizens with “exceptional leadership capacity” and provide funding for postgraduate study in South Africa.

Ngwenyama triple-majored in politics, anthropology, and women and gender studies at �ֲ���ý. A native of Eswatini, she volunteers with the United World Colleges Eswatini National Committee.

Read the story: 

• “,” University of Cape Town News, Nov. 7, 2019

Rebecca Herzig

For Millennial women, body hair presents a complicated choice — HuffPost

In the HuffPost, Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies Rebecca Herzig helped guest writer Sofia Barrett-Ibarria round out her argument that while choosing not to remove body hair might be a “feminist” choice, body hair is more complicated than a “to shave or not to shave” binary.

In 2014, Rebecca Herzig heads to the lectern to deliver a talk. (Sarah Crosby/�ֲ���ý College)

Herzig is the author of Plucked: A History of Hair Removal. In the HuffPost, she pointed out that while there is some mainstream acceptance of body hair on women, the stigma around body hair can have real, negative consequences, especially for women who are not “able-bodied, white, young, thin and toned, expensively dressed, etc. — in every other way,” she told Barrett-Ibarria.

Read the story: 

• “,” HuffPost, Nov. 5, 2019 

Peter Weyand ’83

Inside the six-figure project to solve the mystery of NBA flopping — The Guardian

It’s a phenomenon that baffles and frustrates basketball fans: flopping. And from a science perspective, Peter Weyand ’83, a professor of applied physiology and biomechanics at Southern Methodist University, knows more about it than almost anyone, writes The Guardian’s Patrick Hruby.

Funded by Houston Rockets owner Mark Cuban, Weyand and his team set out in 2014 to measure how much force it takes to knock someone over and what it looks like when a basketball player is genuinely set off balance, vs. embellishing a light hit or straight-up faking a foul — that is, flopping. They ran tests using first a dummy, then real people wearing heavy padding.

Turns out, it doesn’t take much force to knock someone over. “In many cases, if the defender just doesn’t move their feet, then down they go,” Weyand said. “I’ve been through thousands of charge-block collisions, and never realized how easy it was.”

A rather obvious indication of a flop, the SMU team found, is when players stick their arms straight up as they go down — that doesn’t happen naturally.

Read the story: 

• “,” The Guardian, Oct. 30, 2019

Renee Leduc ’98

Will 5G Affect Weather Forecasts? — BBC Click

The program quotes Renee Leduc ’98 on how a recent Federal Communications Commission action could harm meteorologists’ ability to forecast the weather, including dangerous hurricanes.

The issue has to do with an FCC decision to auction off specific wireless radio frequencies to commercial wireless providers for next-generation 5G networks.

The scientific community, including Leduc, opposes the move. They say that giving these frequencies to 5G networks will interfere with unique measurements from weather satellites that are very important to weather forecasting models, the two most well-known being the American model (GFS) and the European model (the ECMWF). The FCC says the interference is not a threat.

Renee Leduc is quoted in this BBC Click story about how turning over specific radio frequencies to wireless providers could harm weather forecasting.

Founder and principal of the consulting firm Narayan Strategy, Leduc is a member of the American Meteorological Society’s Board on Enterprise Economic Development and its International Affairs and Radio Frequency Allocation committees.

She told The Washington Post that it’s “crucial” that the question of interference is “decided in a way that is informed by atmospheric science since the measurements are so crucial to sound weather predictions.”

The issue is front and center at the World Radiocommunications Conference, which ends Nov. 22 and where “for the past month they have been working to coordinate the deployment of 5G technologies across the world,” Leduc tells �ֲ���ýNews.

Read the stories:

• “,” The Washington Post, March 8, 2019
• “” Nature, Nov. 22, 2019

Carrie Jones ’93

The unstoppable Carrie Jones; New thriller ‘In the Woods’ released — Mount Desert Islander

Down East arts journalist Nan Lincoln spoke with author Carrie Jones ’93 about her new young-adult thriller, In the Woods.

The novel, co-written with Steven E. Wedel, follows a teenage girl as she investigates possibly paranormal events. The two writers’ conversation, however, ventured into Jones’ other projects, from the children’s book festival she helped organize to her prolific books and blogs.

“I have to write — all the time,” Jones said. “If I don’t get my ideas onto the page they pile up. But I love seeing where my characters will take me. It’s always a new adventure.”

Read the story: 

• “,” Mount Desert Islander, Oct. 27, 2019 

Matt Moretti ’06

Pioneering mussel farmer buys rival, plans expansion — Portland Press Herald

The Portland Press Herald reported that Bangs Island Mussels, a Portland, Maine-based producer of rope-grown mussels, bought local competitor Calendar Island Mussel Co.

Bangs Island Mussels is owned by Matt Moretti ’06.

In 2016, Matt Moretti ’06 feeds mussels into a machine that works to break apart tissue connecting many of the clusters. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ���ý College)

The company produces mussels by growing them on ropes suspended from rafts, selling the product to Portland restaurants as well as wholesalers. The key to sustainable mussel farming, Moretti told PPH reporter Peter McGuire, is scale, and with the new acquisition Bangs Island Mussels can double its production and workforce.

“The economics of it are such that the faster you can add on volume to your production, the sooner your costs drop and profits go up,” he said.

Read the story: 

• “,” Portland Press Herald, Nov. 18, 2019  

Elizabeth Strout ’77

Oprah reveals Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout as new book club pick — CBS This Morning

With bestselling author Elizabeth Strout ’77 sitting next to her, Oprah Winfrey announced on CBS This Morning that Strout’s new novel, Olive, Again, is her new book club selection.

Olive, Again is the sequel to Strout’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel Olive Kitteridge.

Winfrey said she admires Strout’s ability to take “the simplest of things and turn them into something that feels real to us.”

Oprah Winfrey talks with Elizabeth Strout ’77 on CBS This Morning.

Melissa Wong ’01

Women Of The C-Suite: “Fear is a liar; fear will tell you the craziest things” with Melissa Wong, CEO of Retail Zipline — Authority Magazine

Carly Martinetti of Authority Magazine, a publication on the platform Medium, interviewed Melissa Wong ’01, co-founder of Retail Zipline.

Building a company, Wong said, requires fearlessness — even when you think you should be afraid.

“Fear is a liar,” she said. “Fear will tell you the craziest things. When I first started, I legitimately feared our company would fail. … When you’re in the moment, don’t let feelings of fear lead your actions or choices.”

Working in communications for Old Navy showed Wong how hard it is for large retail brands to get their own stores to implement ideas. So she and a co-founder started Retail Zipline, which streamlines that kind of communication.

Read the story: 

• “,” Authority Magazine, Nov. 3, 2019 

Olive Kitteridge, the cranky-but-lovable titular character in the novel that won Elizabeth Strout ’77 a Pulitzer Prize in 2009, is ”very much a part of the Maine landscape, in her particular Olive barnacle-like way,” she told �ֲ���ý President Clayton Spencer.

Even so, the idea to write a sequel to Olive Kitteridge came to Strout in a cafe in Norway — and in that sequel, Olive, Again, Olive takes a trip to that country.

Reprising held at �ֲ���ý during Reunion 2017, Strout joined Spencer in front of a packed Olin Concert Hall to read from Olive, Again, which a Washington Post reviewer called “stunning work — arguably better than the original.”

The appearance by Pulitzer Prize–winning author Elizabeth Strout ’77, interviewed by �ֲ���ý President Clayton Spencer, filled the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall on Oct. 21. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Like Olive, Strout herself is inseparable from Maine. In previous interviews, she’s described how a solitary childhood in small Maine and New Hampshire towns sparked her imagination. Much of her fiction takes place in Maine’s seaside villages, mill towns, or cities.

At �ֲ���ý, professors like the late Jim Hepburn, professor emeritus of English, and Martin Andrucki, the Charles A. Dana Professor of Theater, encouraged her writing and introduced her to works that inspired her.

To-the-point and often evoking audience laughter, Strout went into detail about her writing process and offered some advice to aspiring writers. Here are eight takeaways from the conversation.

Write in scenes

“I just make a mess,” Strout told Spencer, who had asked her if she had a writing routine. “I’ve learned at this point that I don’t write from beginning to end — because I can’t. It becomes too wooden. So I’ve learned to write by scenes.”

“If I can make a scene that is real, then I leave it on the table. If I don’t, it gets tossed on the floor. That continues until eventually the scenes that have what I consider a heartbeat will start to connect.

“That’s why I never worry about plot, because it will take care of itself.”

Look to theater

Strout’s two favorite classes at �ֲ���ý were a criminology course with sociology professor Sawyer Sylvester, and a theater class with Andrucki, who guided his students through the work of classic American playwrights like Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams.

Elizabeth Strout ’77 greets Dana Professor of Theater Martin Andrucki, one of her formative �ֲ���ý professors, following her talk in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall on Oct. 21. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

“He loved those people so much that I loved them,” Strout said.

And she learned a valuable lesson from their plays. “Reading dialogue was very helpful,” she said.

“When you write dialogue in a story or a novel, there has to be a translation between what people are actually saying to the page. You can’t write what people are actually saying, because it’s too boring. There are too many ‘uhhs.’ You’ve got to translate it to the page in a way that sounds authentic.”

Embody others

“My entire life, I have always wondered what it felt like to be another person,” Strout said.

“I was rather young when I realized, I’m never going to know. I’m only going to see things through my own eyes, and you’re only going to see things through your own eyes. I was so frustrated by that, and I’m still frustrated.

“I have always wondered what it felt like to be another person,” Strout said during her appearance at �ֲ���ý. “That is the engine that has propelled me forward in my life.” (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

“That is the engine that has propelled me forward in my life. I have listened unbelievably carefully. I have observed all the time, I’m listening and I’m watching and I’m thinking. Even on the subway, I watch somebody and I think, ‘Physically what does that sweater feel like?’ It’s so automatic with me.

“When I was young and reading fiction for the first time, I read something — I don’t remember what it was — but I thought, ‘I’ve had that thought.’ I recognized myself in the character that I was reading. I understood through fiction that we get a chance to understand what it’s like to be another person. That’s what I’m trying to do.”

Let characters show up

An audience member, picking up on how Olive Kitteridge came back to Strout in Norway, asked if that’s how she comes up with all of her characters.

Yes and no, Strout said. “Even within a story, the characters will differ in how they show up. Pete Barton showed up ever so gently, because he’s such a gentle person. He just hung out quietly next to me for a long time and I realized — ‘Oh, okay, Pete, let’s wash the windows.’ Olive, because she’s so Olive, showed up with a force. It’s because that’s who she is.”

Keep writing and keep failing

A �ֲ���ý student asked Strout how she persisted in her writing, when many young writers struggle to wrangle themselves into a routine.

“You just have to fail,” Strout told him. “Believe me, I know that because I failed for years and years and years. I couldn’t believe how long I kept failing. I really was a little bit intrigued by it. But I kept going.”

Elizabeth Strout ’77 and President Clayton Spencer enjoy a light moment during the Oct. 21 conversation in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College).

But Strout described her own writing process as an abiding need, not something she has to force herself to do.

“It’s funny,” she said. “This woman came over one time when I had first moved to New York. She saw the typewriter on the dining room table and the messy handwriting, and she said, ‘I really admire your discipline.’ It didn’t feel like I was disciplined. It just felt like I needed to do it. There’s a difference.

“I think of discipline as someone saying, ‘Okay, I am going to exercise five days a week no matter what.’ I don’t have that discipline, you see. Writing is, I just had to do it. I had to do it. So I kept doing it.”

Let sentences rise to meet you

“I don’t want to get you in trouble,” Strout told Mark Su ’22, of Beijing. Su, an English major accustomed to close, analytical reading of text, had asked her how best to read a book.

“Well,” Strout corrected herself, “I won’t get you in trouble — but I don’t want to get your professors in trouble. I think the best way to read something is to just read it.

“As a child, I would wander through the library. I had no idea who these different writers were, but I would pull a book from the shelf, and once in a while it was almost like the text of the page would rise up to me.

During the Q&A portion of the evening, Mark Su ’22 of Beijing asks Strout the best way to read a book. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

“Years later, I would realize that’s Norman Mailer. It was interesting, that sense that sometimes these sentences would rise to meet me, and I’ve never forgotten that.

“I think that when you read something, allow yourself to think, ‘What am I feeling? What’s the experience that I’m having? Are these sentences rising to meet me, or not?’

“If they’re not and you’ve got to write a paper about it, good luck.”

Let books teach you about others

Su also asked Strout about the characteristics of a good book.

“For me, the characteristic of a good book is to feel that I have been in the company of another person who allowed me to realize things about myself but also allowed me to see things about other people, that I would not have known about other people,” Strout replied.

Don’t stop writing

What advice would you have for young writers? asked an admiring audience member, who happened to be Strout’s friend Janet Mills, the governor of Maine.

Elizabeth Strout ’77 talks with Prisca Mbunga ’21 of Greene, Maine, after signing a copy of her novel Olive Again. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Strout didn’t skip a beat. “If you really want to be a writer, then you just do it,” she said, “and you just keep doing it and you never ever stop doing it.

“I would just keep writing, and writing, and reading good sentences, and write, and read, and write, and read, and do not stop.”

And, Strout concluded, “If you do stop, then I guess that’s okay, because you probably didn’t really want to be a writer. But if you really want to be a writer, don’t stop.”

Elizabeth Strout ’77

Elizabeth Strout on Returning to Olive Kitteridge — The New Yorker

Elizabeth Strout ’77 thought she was “done” with Olive Kitteridge, the central character in her 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name. Until, she told New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Triesman, one day in a European cafe when Olive “just showed up.”

Pulitzer Prize–winning author Elizabeth Strout ’77 stands with President Clayton Spencer following her 2017 Reunion discussion with Spencer. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Olive, Again, will be published in October. The sequel features Olive as she ages and her interactions with other characters deepen and change.

The books’ Maine setting, Strout told Triesman, is inextricable from its characters. “Olive — my Olive — would not be Olive if she lived anywhere but Maine,” she said. “She is like a barnacle clinging to the rock of the place.”

Read the story:

• “,” The New Yorker, July 29, 2019

See also:

• “,” Portland Press Herald, Sept. 1, 2019

Michelle Greene

�ֲ���ý College receives its largest-ever federal grant — Multiple outlets

Maine and national outlets covered the announcement that �ֲ���ý received a $3.97 million National Science Foundation grant to build a video database to support research in fields that rely on the analysis and recognition of images, such as neuroscience, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence.

Assistant Professor of Neuroscience Michelle Greene, the principal investigator for the grant, will lead the creation of a Visual Experience Database comprising some 240 hours of video clips that depict everyday human activities and, importantly, simulate human vision and track head and eye movement.

Assistant Professor of Neuroscience Michelle Greene (right) works with student researcher Hanna De Bruyn ’18 to prepare an EEG test in March 2018. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

As Greene told Maine Public, the process of collecting video clips for the database will involve trained members of the project team, including �ֲ���ý students, “going out into the world wearing head-mounted cameras, like a GoPro. We’ll be recording what the world looks like as we engage in some common, everyday activities.”

Read the stories:

• “,” Sun Journal, Aug. 16, 2019
• “,” Maine Public, Aug. 16, 2019
• “,” The Associated Press, Aug. 16, 2019

Peter Goodrich ’89

Timeout: 9/11 still a painful day for those who knew Peter Goodrich — Sun Journal

On the 18th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Sun Journal sportswriter Tony Blasi returned to the story of Peter Goodrich ’89, the track and field All-American who died on Flight 175.

Blasi had interviewed, written about, and gotten to know Goodrich as a student as he racked up track and field awards and majored in math and physics.

Peter Goodrich ’89, shown throwing the shot put for �ֲ���ý, “was a gentleman,” said classmate Greg Nespole ’89. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)

This year, Blasi talked to Goodrich’s classmate Gregory Nespole ’89. “Peter was a kind, thoughtful man who was modest, though highly exceptional as a student and athlete — a gentleman,” Nespole told him.

A lawyer, Nespole has long worked in Lower Manhattan, and his office is near the 9/11 Memorial. “I lost many friends,” he said. “It is still a painful day.”

Read the story:

• “,” Sun Journal, Sept. 11, 2019

Christopher Petrella ’06

Colin Kaepernick wants you to know your rights — PAPER magazine

Chris Petrella ’06 had a in a recent issue of PAPER focusing on human rights.

The issue, called a “,” by the New York Daily News, carried the theme “Know Your Rights” and featured Q&A interviews with 10 black thought leaders, including 2018 �ֲ���ý Commencement speaker Bryan Stevenson.

Christopher Petrella ’06, director of engagement at American University’s Antiracist Research & Policy Center, makes a point during a meeting of the college’s Justice and Equity Reading Group in 2017, when he was a �ֲ���ý faculty lecturer member of the Office of Intercultural Education staff. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

The issue’s lead story, “Colin Kaepernick Wants You To Know Your Rights,” was written by Petrella along with radio host Miabelle Bocicault and scholar Ameer Hasan Loggins. The trio also wrote the introductions to each Q&A story.

The entire issue was guest-edited by Kaepernick, the football player-turned-social activist, whose current efforts with his Know Your Rights camps teaches young people their legal rights and, importantly, how to exercise them.

A friend and part of Kaepernick’s inner circle, Petrella is director of engagement at American University’s Antiracist Research & Policy Center.

Read the stories:

• “,” PAPER Magazine, Fall 2019

Michael Rocque

The U.S. Attorney got the numbers wrong. Here’s a look at D.C.’s actual incarceration rate — DCist

A recent debate in Washington, D.C., saw criminal-justice reform advocates saying that D.C. imprisons more people than any of the 50 states. At the same time, the district’s U.S. Attorney said the opposite, that it sends fewer people to prison than any state.

The news website DCist turned to criminologist Michael Rocque, associate professor of sociology at �ֲ���ý, to untangle the numbers.

Michael Rocque, associate professor of sociology. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Ultimately, you can’t compare D.C. statistics to state statistics, said Rocque, “just as I would caution against comparing NYC to Maine.”

The contrasting data points were bandied about during a public debate over a D.C. Council bill that would “expand opportunities for certain violent offenders to petition for a reduced sentence,” according to the DCist story.

After its initial claim, the U.S. Attorney backtracked and admitted that it had used federal data that only counted inmates at the D.C. jail as opposed to D.C. inmates held by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons in federal facilities across the country.

Read the story:

• “,” DCist, Sept. 10, 2019

Edmund Muskie ’36

During his 1972 presidential race, Maine’s Edmund Muskie faced at least three death threats — Sun Journal

FBI files related to Edmund Muskie ’36 and released to the Sun Journal revealed that Muskie received three death threats while campaigning for the 1972 Democratic nomination for president.

“It doesn’t appear from the 1,038 pages of material released to the Sun Journal that the FBI ever tracked down two of the culprits,” wrote the paper’s Steve Collins, who obtained the files through a Freedom of Information Act request. “Federal prosecutors opted not to charge the other, a mentally ill man quickly found by agents.”

Edmund Muskie ’36 and supporters at a 1968 campaign event, location unknown. (Burton Burinsky / Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)

Collins also learned that Muskie had a police record (sort of). “On Dec. 28, 1965, in the tiny town of Centreville on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, Muskie was issued a criminal summons at Broadwater Farms for ‘attempting to take migratory water fowl with the aid of bait,’�ĝ writes Collins.

Muskie paid the $25 fine.

Read the story:

• “,” Sun Journal, Aug. 31, 2019

Clifford Odle

‘The Petition’ addresses black liberation and white allyship in the Old State House — WBUR

Jerome Campbell of Boston public radio station WBUR sat in on a performance of The Petition, a play by Lecturer in Theater Clifford Odle that explores the contradictions of the American Revolution when it comes to slavery.

The immersive play, in which audiences sit around a table in the Old State House Museum in Boston, is about Prince Hall, a free black man who unsuccessfully petitioned the Massachusetts assembly to abolish slavery.

Lecturer in Theater Clifford Odle (right) talks with Professor of French and Francophone Studies Kirk Read during Opening Convocation on Sept 3. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

In the play, Hall’s friend and ally Joseph Warren encourages the petition but ultimately prioritizes the “liberation” of white colonists from British rule.

It’s an example of the harm of white inaction, Odle told Campbell. “Unless you are arguing and agitating for people to have the same rights that you already have, unless you are willing to put your privilege on the line, the job is not done.”

Read the story:

• “,” WBUR, Aug. 27, 2019

Julia Sleeper-Whiting ’08

Local people who are all about the work share what motivates them — Sun Journal

A Lewiston Sun Journal article on what motivates community members’ work featured Julia Sleeper-Whiting ’08, co-founder and executive director of Tree Street Youth.

Julia Sleeper ’08 (right), co-founder and executive director of Tree Street Youth, speaks in 2016 with then-Lewiston High student Binto Matan and Gene Geiger, who supported an expansion of the youth center. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

“Work is about creating solutions to things happening around us and solving challenges in the world,” Sleeper-Whiting told reporter Beth Herman. “As long as your focus remains on the greater purpose, the work itself remains relevant and meaningful.”

Read the story:

• “,” Sun Journal, Aug. 31, 2019

Ann Kranjec Fortescue ’84

New IMAS exec seeks cross-culture experiences — The Monitor

Francisco E. Jimenez of The Monitor of McAllen, Texas, profiled Ann Kranjec Fortescue ’84, the new president and executive director of the International Museum of Art and Science.

Fortescue said her 35-year career in museums was inspired in part by a �ֲ���ý course on 19th-century European history that included a visit to a historical farm.

“We spent two days on this farm, harvesting rye with a scythe and experiencing what it was like to live as closely as we could to 19th-century peasant farmers,” she told Jimenez. “That was when a switch went off in my head in terms of, ‘I could actually work in a museum and teach with objects.’”

Read the story:

• “,” The Monitor, Sept. 3, 2019

�ֲ���ý College

New students at �ֲ���ý College told to become activists — Sun Journal

The Sun Journal covered �ֲ���ý’ Opening Convocation, in which labor activist and civil rights leader Dolores Huerta received an honorary degree and delivered the keynote address.

The 89-year-old co-founder of the United Farm Workers told the incoming Class of 2023 to learn their history and engage politically to get the country “off the road to fascism.”

Dolores Huerta acknowledges applause as she’s given an honorary degree at Opening Convocation. Ready to present her with the honorary hood is Michael Murray, Phillips Professor of Economics. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

“The wonderful thing about a democracy is that we can change things,” she said. But “nothing is going to change unless you decide to change it.”

Read the story:

• “,” Sun Journal, Sept. 3, 2019

See also:

• “Convocation speaker Dolores Huerta to the Class of 2023: ‘We have the power,’�ĝ �ֲ���ýNews, Sept. 4, 2019

James F. Amaral ’80

“We want people to bake”: Baker, food writer team up to publish book — The Lincoln County News

Jessica Clifford of Maine’s Lincoln County News interviewed Borealis Breads owner Jim Amaral ’80, who wrote a cookbook with food writer Cynthia Finnemore Simonds.

Amaral told Clifford that the goal of the book, Borealis Breads: 75 Recipes for Breads, Soups, Sides, and More, is to encourage people to bake, even if it costs him business at his popular bakery.

“It’s hard not to feel good about yourself when you bake a loaf of bread, no matter how it turns out,” Amaral said. “It’s a life-affirming thing when you bake – you’re nourishing yourself, you are nourishing your family.”

Read the story:

• “,” The Lincoln County News, Sept. 9, 2019

�ֲ���ý professor tells story of Malaga Island, including its dark chapter of forced exodus — Portland Press Herald

The Portland Press Herald covered an unusual gathering on Malaga Island, off the coast of Maine, envisioned and organized by �ֲ���ý professor Myron Beasley.

The event to create a memorial to a dark chapter in Maine history: the forced eviction of an interracial community from Malaga in July 1912.

Beasley, a professor of American studies, invited 47 participants — one for each evicted Malaga resident — to the island for the “performative dinner in the form of memorial,” prepared from ingredients and recipes the Malaga residents might have used.

With stunning art direction by Michael Reidy, managing director of theater and dance, the public installation told the story of Malaga and its people, who were evicted by the state for reasons related to racism and eugenics.

During the performative dinner, each guest "was charged with calling out a name of a former islander as the dinner was served, standing in for the people of Malaga. It was a memorial and a celebration of not forgetting," wrote Portland Press Herald reporter Mary Pols. (Jop Blom)

Reidy based the cutout representations on archival photographs of the islanders. (Jop Blom)

Held on Malaga Island off the Maine coast on July 12, the performative dinner "re:past" was created by Myron Beasley, professor of African American and American cultural studies. (Jop Blom)

During a performative dinner, “the food becomes both the object and subject, to make known the cultural politics surrounding the object — in this case, the food,” says Myron Beasley professor of African American and American cultural studies. (Jop Blom)

Forty seven participants — one for each evicted Malaga resident — attended the performative dinner. (Jop Blom)

During the meal, each guest “was charged with calling out a name of a former islander as the dinner was served, standing in for the people of Malaga. It was a memorial and a celebration of not forgetting,” wrote reporter Mary Pols.

Reidy, whose production team included recent �ֲ���ý grad Saleha Belgaumi ’18 and others, created physical representations of the structures Malaga residents used and of the residents themselves.

The meal was the culmination of years of learning and preparation by Beasley, who first heard the story of this dark chapter in Maine’s history on the day he moved to the state.  “This is a moment that I could finally really do something with it,” Beasley tells Pols.

In producing the event, Beasley worked in cooperation with the Maine Coast Heritage Trust, the conservation group that owns the island.

Beasley’s performative meals have included one at nearby Nezinscot Farm, in 2014, and in 2008, in the �ֲ���ý Mill Complex, as a memorial to mill workers, in which students interviewed local citizens to gather stories, histories, and recipes to learn about hunger, poverty, and food insecurity in Androscoggin County.

The public installations are akin to performance art. Rather than the artist as focus, it is “the food [that] becomes both the object and subject,” Beasley explains, “to make known cultural politics.”

In New Hampshire, the Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist pulls into a long-forgotten station — The National

In an Amtrak’s onboard magazine, Elizabeth Strout ’77 recalls the wave of nostalgia as the train she was riding, the Downeaster, pulled into the station in Durham, N.H., her childhood home and where her father taught biology in Nesmith Hall at the University of New Hampshire, visible from the station.

That summer feeling of sitting on the lawn of Nesmith Hall is what assaulted me the most that first day I sat on the train, now so many years later, and saw it from this point of view. I had been so happy on that lawn! Turning cartwheels and lying in the grass, I had felt safe, waiting for my father to be done in his office, to call to me through the window, and then I would run inside and sit in his swivel chair and chatter to him while he strolled about gathering his things to take home. It was a happiness that I would not have remembered had I not seen it from the train.

Elizabeth Strout ’77 speaks during a Q&A with President Clayton Spencer at Reunion in 2017. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

With comedy, movement, and music, ‘The Lectern’ explores all the rules that govern us — MaineToday

Bob Keyes of MaineToday “The Lectern: rule by rule by rule,” which was performed in July at the . The piece, created by Sara Juli and Claire Porter, “takes viewers on a funny spin around the rules and laws that govern our every existence and also what happens when we choose to bend them,” Keyes writes.

The piece took the form of a series of vignettes about rules surrounding “graduation ceremonies, eulogies and sporting events,” as well as “rules about tattoos, rules about fashion, rules about eating at the table.”

“Rules are everywhere,” Juli told Keyes. “Pay attention. Be careful. Some rules should not be negotiated, like stopping at red lights. And there are a whole bunch of rules coming our way that we need to take a look at. Claire and I both use comedy as a way to look underneath some things.”

Pediatrician’s legacy lives on at Mercy — Portland Press Herald

In an for the Portland Press Herald, Dr. Robert McAfee ’56 P’83 recalled one of his role models, a Portland pediatrician who kept an office at the bottom of Munjoy Hill from the early 1920s until his death in 1963.

Dr. Harry Davis showed deep dedication to the community by looking after its health, wrote McAfee, a vascular surgeon and former president of the American Medical Association.

“During the Depression, he spent his own money to ensure that every child in Portland was vaccinated, a practice he continued long after the economy rebounded. He served as the Portland city physician as well as the team doctor to many high school sports teams.”

McAfee wrote his essay as Portland’s Mercy Hospital, where Davis practiced, celebrates the centennial of its founding.

As president of the AMA, McAfee successfully led efforts to frame domestic violence as a medical issue. He received an honorary degree from �ֲ���ý in 1995.

What Can Lunar Eclipses Do For Science? — Sky & Telescope

Ahead of a July 27 lunar eclipse, Graham Jones of the magazine Sky & Telescope , the project scientist for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission, about what we can learn from lunar eclipses.

Noah Petro ’01 represented NASA at a minor league baseball game that took place during the solar eclipse in August 2017. This July, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, the spacecraft for which he is a project scientist, collected data during a lunar eclipse. (Photograph by W. Hrybyk / NASA)

The LRO has had a spacecraft orbiting the Moon for nearly nine years. During the eclipse but before it reaches totality, on-board instruments can measure temperatures, helping scientists “infer the properties of the regolith of the Moon — the surface of the Moon — based on how quickly or slowly it cools,” Petro said.

Why the Moon at all? “The Moon itself records the processes that have affected the entire solar system: impact craters, volcanism, tectonism, interactions with the space environment,” Petro said. “They’re all recorded on the lunar surface.”

President Spencer and Elizabeth Strout ’77 talk with audience members after their interview.(Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

The characters in Anything Is Possible are connected to the characters in My Name Is Lucy Barton. Did you know as you were writing Lucy Barton that this was lurking in the wings?

There are many parts of this book where the scenes are just exquisitely drawn. You write this about Kathie Nicely’s daughter Patty: “She parked, checked her lipstick in the rear-view mirror, gave her hair a bounce with her hand, and then heaved herself from the car.”

As a writer, it seems you’re either this authoritative narrator, or the characters and their conversations are carrying the action forward. You’re never in between. How do you think about that?

At �ֲ���ý, were you a theater major involved in English? Or an English major involved in theater?

Is there any line we can draw from your theater experience here to how you write about scenes?

What did your English classes contribute to this mix?

“I am really interested in time and place,” Strout tells her audience. “We all come from a place. And we all come from a certain time in history. And those two factors determine much of what happens to us.” (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Even in that first semester?

Really?

Your books are often about the leavers and the stayers, and there’s not much in between. In this book, there’s a category of leavers that seem especially complicated: mothers who leave.

Have you thought about a more permissive, contemporary structure regarding staying and leaving?

Where do you get your character names?

You mention time and place. I’m curious what got you from a kind of romantic Maine with a dark side to the Amgash, Ill., of My Name Is Lucy Barton and Anything Is Possible.

Audience members react as President Spencer interviews Elizabeth Strout ’77. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Do you consider yourself a visual person? And is being visual necessary to being a good fiction writer?

How do these novels come to you? You’ve said that Olive Kitteridge came to you.

Can you describe that?

What’s the process by which you were led to unpack all the threads of Olive for the book?

How is what you’re doing in Anything Is Possible different or the same from Olive Kitteridge?

Coming out of the unlikely mouth of Vicky, Lucy’s sister, in this book is the sarcastic reference to the “truthful sentence.” Lucy Barton talks about that also. It seems that you are on an inexorable quest for the truthful sentence.

Is a truthful sentence saying exactly what you mean? Or does it mean saying exactly what the character means to say?

“I think I was born with intuition,” Elizabeth Strout ’77 said. “I could understand things, like about the human heart, from a very young age.” (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Your writing has the precision of an X-Acto knife. When we read a scene, are we reading the 23rd written draft? Or do your draft 22 times in your head and put it on paper once?

“In my head, it’s like I have a bolt of material unfolded on my table, and on it I can see a constellation.”

You make the reader your co-conspirator in actually knowing more than the characters. So when Angelina is visiting her mother, Mary, in Italy, she says, “You want to hear a little gossip?” You almost create an omniscient reader.

Do you have a daily routine?

Do you go back to the writing after lunch?

You never talk about a book in process. Why?

So we can assume you won’t be describing your next book.

Is there one?

Last question: Is it hard to write in this distracting moment in our national life?

That’s a serious question.

You have a “now more than ever” sense.

How do you believe your creativeness was created?

Have you ever thought about writing a play?

What writers are your major influences?

How did your early experiences in Maine affect your writing and what you write about?

“A writer has to have those inner resources because it’s a lonely job.”

Do you consider yourself a female writer?

Do you think about different gendered characters differently?

Elizabeth Strout ’77 signs a copy of Anything Is Possible for a Reunion-goer. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Jim Hepburn is quoted as saying to you, at graduation, “Once you’re out of here, nobody will care whether or not you write another word.” How did you take that?

That has always been my driving force: What does it feel like to be another person?

The New Yorker said, in simple terms, that you can take the girl out of Maine, but you can’t take Maine out of the girl. Since we’re in Maine, what is it that you carry with you, when you are in New York City, from this northern, mostly white, rural state?

Do you spend time on characters who don’t work out?

Family gives record-setting donation to liberal arts college — The Associated Press

The public launch of The �ֲ���ý Campaign and the surprise announcement of the $50 million gift from Michael ’80 and Alison Grott Bonney ’80 on May 16 garnered national media coverage.

The Associated Press story, “,” was picked up by many media outlets including ABC News, CNBC, Fox Business, Yahoo! Finance, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Seattle Times, Houston Chronicle, The Roanoke Times, The Washington Times, and US News & World Report.

In addition, original news stories appeared in , , and the .

McDreamy receives an honorary degree from �ֲ���ý College — The Boston Globe

Actor, philanthropist, and Lewiston native Patrick Dempsey, at �ֲ���ý to receive an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree last Sunday, caught the media’s attention, including , who writes the paper’s Names column.

“It was a homecoming of sorts for Dempsey,” wrote Shanahan.

Kate Berger ’17 (center) of Newton, Mass., and classmate Sadie James of Avon, Maine, take a selfie with actor and philanthropist Patrick Dempsey as graduates line up on Alumni Walk on Commencement morning. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

�ֲ���ý honored Dempsey for his efforts to create the Dempsey Center in Lewiston. In partnership with Central Maine Medical Center, the center provides education, wellness services, and other forms of support to anyone affected by cancer.

Dempsey’s honor, and quoted Cara Starnbach ’19 of Needham, Mass., who talked about Dempsey’s involvement with the annual Dempsey Challenge fundraiser each October.

“He always stays involved on an annual basis, and his successes are something celebrated in Lewiston,” said Starnbach.

Patrick Dempsey tweeted his degree: “Such an honor.”

Elizabeth Strout ’77

Elizabeth Strout’s follow-up to Lucy Barton is a master class on class — The New York Times

Myriad news outlets have glowingly reviewed Elizabeth Strout’s new novel, Anything Is Possible.

The novel “might look like a sequel” to Strout’s My Name Is Lucy Barton, says , but “it’s actually something far more complex, reaching across space…and through layers of memory.”

that the prose is “wrenchingly lovely. It almost always is with Strout,” adding that one reads a Strout novel “for the same reason you listen to a requiem: to experience the beauty in sadness.”

“confirms Strout as one of our most grace-filled, and graceful, writers.”

Her Pulitzer Prize-winning Olive Kitteridge mined the depths of regret, “of the pain that comes from knowing that many things, even most things, are not in fact possible,” the Globe notes.

Yet there’s also in Strout’s work “unbidden, shattering grace,” says the Globe, “what Flannery O’Connor called ‘the almost imperceptible intrusions of grace’ into human lives. In these moments, a deeper knowledge of self becomes possible; radical change — from selfishness to selflessness; from bitterness to love — becomes imaginable.”

Do good looks mean better job opportunities in China? — Radio Taiwan International

The Radio Taiwan International program Margaret Maurer-Fazio about on how attractiveness influences people’s chances for job interviews.

In China, job candidates must include photographs with job applications, which, of course, is “a fundamental difference” from U.S. practices, notes Maurer-Fazio, the Betty Doran Stangle Professor of Applied Economics at �ֲ���ý.

Maurer-Fazio collected stock photo portraits, tested them for attractiveness with Chinese audiences, and then worked with the �ֲ���ý Imaging Center to digitally alter some, making them less attractive.

The photos were paired with mock resumes and submitted to thousands of job openings in China.

The result? “Overall, an unattractive applicant had to put in about a third more applications to get the same number of callbacks,” Maurer-Fazio says.

Boston Cannons draft �ֲ���ý’ Charlie Fay — WCSH-TV

On May 28, the day he graduated from �ֲ���ý, men’s lacrosse standout Charlie Fay of Falmouth, Maine, was drafted by the Boston Cannons of Major League Lacrosse.

Charlie Fay ’17 of Falmouth, Maine, shown competing against Middlebury in May, has been drafted by the Boston Cannons of Major League Lacrosse. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Fay was the fifth selection made by the Cannons and the 59th pick overall, making him �ֲ���ý’ first lacrosse player to be drafted by an MLL team, .

On Tuesday, the with the Cannons’ head coach about Fay’s selection.

Portland chefs Mike Wiley and Andrew Taylor win James Beard Award — Portland Press Herald

The James Beard Award represents “coveted recognition that chefs consider to be the Oscars of the food world,” .

Along with manager Arlin Smith, Mike Wiley and Andrew Taylor co-own three Portland restaurants, Eventide Oyster Co., The Honey Paw and Hugo’s. They won their award in the Northeast category.

Andrew Taylor ’03 poses with one of his restaurants’ seafood providers, Matt Moretti ’06, purveyor of Bangs Island Musssels. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ���ý College)

Local agency adds golf, stresses tourism — Crain’s Cleveland

Sports agent Sam Duvall, who formed Topnotch Management in 2016 after he left Lagardère Tennis, where he was a vice president, wants to enter the golf tourism space, writes Kevin Kleps for Crains’s Cleveland.

Kleps explains that while Topnotch Management may appear to be “a boutique sports marketing agency” with a roster of “13 tennis players, including American star John Isner, and six up-and-coming golfers,” the firm is “really an events, tourism, and marketing company.”

That’s due to Duvall’s partnership with Vermont-based Grand Slam Tennis Tours, which brings “an average of 2,000 clients each year to prestigious tennis tournaments” where customers enjoy perks like “city tours, courtside seating, and meet-and-greet dinners.”

Grand Slam, Duvall tells Kleps, has tennis tourism “down to a science.” Now Topnotch wants to do the same with golf, as “Duvall believes golf tourism is more of an untapped market,” writes Kleps.

�ֲ���ý Sustainability

The Canadian company that makes �ֲ���ý’ biofuel seeks more customers before it can build a Maine plant — Portland Press Herald

Portland Press Herald energy reporter Tux Turkel of why a company that makes heating oil from wood waste is considering expansion into Maine.

�ֲ���ý just started burning a proprietary biofuel, manufactured by Canada-based Ensyn Corp., in one of its three campus boilers, cutting college-wide carbon emissions by 83 percent.

Ensyn makes the fuel in Quebec but intends to build new plants, and Maine would be “an ideal place to locate a facility,” Lee Torrens, president of the subsidiary Ensyn Fuels Inc., told the Press Herald.

The newly installed Renewable Fuel Oil tank is shown on Jan. 19, 2017. Newly clad in siding to match the adjacent Cutten Maintenance Center, it’s surrounded by temporary scaffolding. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

Ensyn would expand only if it can lock in contracts with more Maine companies and institutions, according to the paper. Currently, �ֲ���ý is the only Maine business burning Ensyn’s Renewable Fuel Oil. In fact, �ֲ���ý is the only college in the country burning RFO.

At �ֲ���ý, using Ensyn’s Renewable Fuel Oil is a case of so far, so good, said energy manager John Rasmussen. “They’ve been burning this stuff for 25 years, so there shouldn’t be many surprises,” he told the paper.

Less U.S. spending on foreign aid isn’t good for U.S. defense — The Washington Post

Dean of the Faculty and Vice President for Academic Affairs Matt Auer’s argues that the Trump administration’s plan to cut foreign-aid spending “is actually less-than-ideal news for the Defense Department.”

Auer is a widely recognized international scholar and expert in environmental policy, energy policy, sustainable development, and foreign aid.

“Foreign aid is instrumental to national security. Spent wisely, it fosters economic opportunity and social stability,” Auer says.

‘I have never written anything from beginning to end’ — The Guardian

For the Guardian‘s Books section, novelist Elizabeth Strout about how she creates her Pulitzer Prize–winning fiction.

For one thing, she says, “I have never written anything from beginning to end…. I just collect different scenes, and the ones that aren’t any good to me get slipped onto the floor and eventually into the wastebasket. (There are many of those.)”

While personal, the essay has tips for writers; one is a variation on the rule of “writing what you know”: Write the feelings that you know, Strout says.

“I have learned over the years to take anything that is most pressing to me — it may be as mundane as a concern about upcoming dental work, or as serious as worrying about the safety of my child — and to transpose that emotion into a character. This will give the scene life, as opposed to having it wooden.”

Twins have identical impact on Bobcats — Lewiston Sun Journal

Marcus Delpeche ’17 tells Lewiston Sun Journal writer Randy Whitehouse that he laughed when his high school guidance counselor in Delaware suggested he look at a college in Maine.

He and his identical twin brother, Malcolm Delpeche ’17, are from Wilmington, and Malcolm agrees with his twin. “If someone ever told me I was going to be in Maine of all places, I would have told them, ‘You’re crazy.'”

Marcus Delpeche ’17 (left) and Malcolm Delpeche ’17, identical twin brothers from Wilmington, Del., pose during practice in Alumni Gym. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

That was then. As the Sun Journal feature story makes clear, the basketball-playing brothers and psychology majors consider �ֲ���ý to be a sane and savvy choice.

For evidence, they point to support from head coach Jon Furbush ’05, on and off the court, who “lets us know we’re not just here to play basketball. We’re here to establish a bond that’s going to go on beyond the season and beyond �ֲ���ý College,” said Malcolm.

The Bobcats went 15-10 this year, bowing out in the quarterfinals of the NESCAC tournament. Marcus was a 6-foot-7 forward; Malcolm, a 6-8 center. They were one-two in scoring, with 15.1 and 13.2 points per game respectively.

Betsy DeVos as education secretary is bad news for rural schools — Charlestown (W.Va.) Gazette-Mail

In a Feb. 5 op-in the Charlestown (W.Va.) Gazette-Mail, Assistant Professor of Education Mara Tieken as secretary of education.

Assistant Professor of Education Mara Tieken works with students in Muskie Archives. (Sarah Crosby/�ֲ���ý College)

Noting that DeVos is a “strong proponent of school choice” and of “expanding charter schools and reducing their oversight,” Tieken, who is an expert in rural education, argues that “choice only works when you have options, and many rural communities don’t.”

Most rural communities, “with their small populations and vast geographies…cannot sustain a variety of brick-and-mortar options, public or private.”

The U.S. Senate confirmed DeVos on Feb. 7.

Legal in Maine, pot is still illegal on Maine college campuses, including �ֲ���ý’ — Portland Press Herald

Maine voters decided in November to make marijuana use legal, but that doesn’t change the rules on college campuses, the Portland Press Herald reported, quoting Dean of Students and Vice President for Student Affairs Josh McIntosh.

“The federal law and the state law are in conflict with one another and our perspective is — like many of our fellow institutions of higher education — that we will continue to follow federal law,” McIntosh told the paper.

“Our approach to it and our policies toward it remain unchanged and will likely remain unchanged until that conflict between the state and federal governments gets worked out.”

Massachusetts clergyman elected bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina — The Boston Globe

Samuel Rodman, the newly elected bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina, was for his “exceptional combination of gifts,” reported The Boston Globe.

The Rt. Rev. Alan Gates, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, said in a statement that Rodman, currently a special projects officer for the Diocese of Massachusetts, has a “creative imagination, engaging personal interaction, keen organizing skills and the heart of a pastor. He will be a strong and wise shepherd.”

Ordained in 1988, Rodman majored in English at �ֲ���ý and earned a master’s degree from Virginia Theological Seminary. He previously spent 16 years as the rector of St. Michael’s in Milton, Mass.

A longtime advocate for Lewiston-Auburn now heads its chamber of commerce — Portland Press Herald

Beckie Swanson Conrad ’82, currently vice president for institutional advancement at Maine College of Art in Portland, is the new president and CEO of the Lewiston Auburn Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce.

Beckie Swanson Conrad ’82. (Mike Weymouth photograph)

“We were looking for specific attributes, and one of the biggest is someone who is a relationship builder and collaborator,” said Jen Hogan, president of Community Credit Union in Lewiston and the chair-elect of the board for the L-A chamber. “That’s who Beckie is — it’s her nature.”

Conrad worked at �ֲ���ý for 21 years, including from 1999 to 2003 as executive director of LA Excels, the college’s nonprofit community development partnership in Lewiston-Auburn.

Elizabeth Strout ’77, Litt.D. ’10

In Elizabeth Strout’s new novel, My Name Is Lucy Barton, the author “articulates for her readers — albeit often circumspectly, perhaps the only way — the Gordian knot of family, binding together fear and misery, solace and love,” writes reviewer Claire Messud of The New York Times Book Review.

The setting is a hospital room, where Lucy Barton is recovering from an illness, and her estranged mother arrives for a visit.

That simple premise, The Washington Post‘s Lily King writes, generates “old-fashioned, uncomplicated” storytelling, but only at first.

Befitting the complexity of mother-daughter relationships, the novel soon becomes “smart and cagey in every way…yet nothing is tentative or haphazard. [Strout] is in supreme and magnificent command of this novel at all times.”

Associate Professor of Psychology Michael Sargent

�ֲ���ý psychology professor Michael Sargent “used to think storytelling was a bogus art form for bad comedians,” writes Down East reporter Sara Anne Donnelly.

Holding a bowl with the names of storytelling hopefuls, psychology professor Michael Sargent kicks off an edition of The Corner, an occasional storytelling event at She Doesn’t Like Guthries in Lewiston. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Not now. Sargent, the founder and ringmaster of , which offers storytelling events at She Doesn’t Like Guthries, a downtown Lewiston restaurant, “got hooked” on storytelling shows on NPR, and “wanted something like that in Lewiston. So he made it.”

In a , Sargent tells Donnelly that the experience of storytelling “makes connections sneak up on me. Suddenly I realize that I’m feeling a form of connection that was unexpected, in someone who I might never have even met before then. And it feels good.”

Peter Gault ’11 and Elise Kornack ’09

Peter Gault ’11 and Elise Kornack ’09 were named to Forbes‘ 30 Under 30 list in respective categories: , who is co-founder of an open-source literacy tool, and , co-owner of , a Michelin-starred restaurant in Brooklyn.

Quill has a double dose of �ֲ���ý talent. Ryan Novas ’11 is a co-founder and serves as operations director. Last summer, the founders offered �ֲ���ý Purposeful Work internships to Jane Spardel ’17 of Verona, N.J., and Rebeccah Bassell ’16 of Mechanicsville, Va.

In 2014, Downeast Cider’s Tyler Mosher ’11 and brothers Matt Brockman ’08 and Ross Brockman ’11 earned a nod from Forbes, as did Peter Simon ’10, co-founder of Industry City Distillery, in 2013.

The video clips below feature Hansen introducing the 2010 honorands followed by comments by Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Elizabeth Strout ’77; television journalist Jane Pauley; climate researcher James J. McCarthy; dancer-choreographer Rennie Harris, a recent Guggenheim Fellow; and fertility and oncology researcher Teresa Woodruff.

President Hansen introduces the honorands

Elizabeth Strout ’77

Jane Pauley

James J. McCarthy

Rennie Harris

Teresa K. Woodruff

The 2010 �ֲ���ý honorands are:

• Rennie Harris, the choreographer who brought hip-hop to the mainstream world of dance
• James McCarthy, a scientist recognized internationally for helping to communicate the science of climate change
• Jane Pauley, the veteran television journalist
• Elizabeth Strout, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and 1977 �ֲ���ý graduate
• Teresa Woodruff, a researcher responsible for pioneering work in the care of women who will become infertile due to cancer treatment

Here are their remarks:

Hip hop choreographer Rennie Harris: “Movement is the last manifestation of your reality. What you do is who you are. Not what you say … Take action. Define your reality.”

Climate change scientist James McCarthy: “Balancing on the boundary can be some of the most exciting territory of all … and from this emerges a wonderful gift: New understanding and appreciation of whole worlds of ideas that appear to stand apart, and this can be an extraordinary opportunity for creativity.”

Television journalist Jane Pauley: “How often we get hung up on what we can’t do. Think about what you can. And if you can’t think of anything, keep thinking.”

Elizabeth Strout ’77: “The best part of what waits for you is that liberating prize of life, those remarkable moments when we understand that we are not the most important person in the world. The man on the side of the road is. The person on the airplane suffering is.”

Cancer and fertility researcher Teresa Woodruff: “As �ֲ���ý graduates, you are equipped to tackle the seemingly intractable problems of our day. We are all counting on you to become the thought leaders and doers of the 21st century.”