For Mother Jones, in a Sept. 24 article headlined “,â€� journalist Evan Mandery named ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ as an outlier — for its emphasis on meaning and purpose. Mandery writes that a focus on finding meaning “suffuses the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ curriculum,â€� unlike many other elite colleges that he covered in his story.

In looking beyond the classroom, Mandery points again to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½: “One notable exception is the Center for Purposeful Work at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College, launched in 2017 and framed around principles of developmental psychology. The center’s work is predicated on a simple premise: ‘If you’ve got wellbeing in your career,’ explained director Allen Delong, ‘you are twice as likely to have wellbeing in all the other areas of your life.’â€�

The article points to the college’s commitment to supporting students seeking meaningful work, noting that ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ subsidizes around 600 internships each year, “about as many as Harvard, though its endowment is less than 1 percent as large,â€� and notes that this commitment shows up in outcomes: “15 percent of its 2023 graduates went into education (five times the rate of Harvard grads), 16 percent entered the health field (more than twice the rate of Harvard grads), and 5 percent joined nonprofits.â€� 

With the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art’s Ralph Steadman exhibition due to close on Oct. 11, interviewed co-curator Andrea Harris about the exhibition. Harris co-curated the exhibition, “And Another Thingâ€�, with Steadman’s daughter, Sadie Williams. Not quite a retrospective, the exhibition spans 65 years and is drawn from 15,000 works of art. The reporter asked Harris, “How did you get this to come to little old ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College in Lewiston, Maine?â€�

“Well, Ralph is all about collaboration and he gets around,â€� Harris said. “He’s been to the United States several times and has been meeting people throughout his career. One of the meetings he had, he was up in Aspen, Colorado, where he met with Dan Mills, who was the director of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art. And Dan was always a fan of Ralph’s, had always had a great feeling that bringing the art to Maine would be an incredible experience for the community. “

Initially the exhibition was slated to open in 2020 but was delayed because of the pandemic. “And here we are having this incredible opportunity in Maine and it’s been wonderful,â€� Harris said. “The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Museum of Art is this beautiful space. It’s just absolutely incredible for the college students, for the community, and again, available to everyone to come out and enjoy.”

The exhibition opened in June and will close on Saturday, Oct. 11. Harris will offer a lecture to the public on Friday, Oct. 10 at 4 p.m. and will be present on the closing day to engage with visitors. The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Stephanie Kelley-Romano, professor of rhetoric, film and screen studies, was featured on The Chronicle of Higher Education’s podcast College Matters, a series that examines “how higher education pushes students to wrestle with big ideas.� Kelley-Romano’s popular course, “Conspiracy Rhetoric: Power, Politics and Popular Culture,� was highlighted in the podcast episode “� as one of  “the most intriguing and popular courses on the nation’s college campuses.�

 â€œConspiracy Rhetoric,â€� which Kelley-Romano is teaching again this fall, focuses on the ways that rhetoric — the art of effective (and often persuasive) communication —  shapes conspiracy theories. Kelley-Romano explains that “when students understand how things function rhetorically, then they can see and create rhetorical campaigns.â€� She told the Chronicle that the course often helps students understand that “when more people have more rights and more support, the entire society does better.â€� 

Leigh Weisenburger, vice president for institutional affairs and secretary to the Board of Trustees, was featured in a Portland Press Herald article about ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ dropping its application fee for all students. (In the past, students could ask for a waiver for the fee based on their financial needs). In , Weisenburger, who played a role in the elimination of the application fee, said, “It just seemed like the right moment to press play on something that we know to be a barrier and will provide relief, economically for families, but also de-escalating any stress a student might have in the process.â€� ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ anticipates more applications in the coming year, following a record 10,029 applications in 2024, and is prepared to accommodate the potential increase with a higher number of adjunct readers. 

Vice President for Finance and Administration and Treasurer of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Geoff Swift was recently featured in the Sun Journal’s .â€� Swift was interviewed about Lake Andrews, his role in nurturing the campus’ physical environment, and ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ responsibility for the wildlife that makes its home around the Puddle. “We’re stewards of this place,â€� Swift said. “ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ sits on 133 acres, much of them occupied by residential buildings, sports fields and academic facilities. But the green spaces, from the quad to the wooded areas, are also under our charge and we take that seriously. Respecting wildlife is part of that. There are limits to what we can or should do.â€�

Sports Business Journal of Jeff Price ’87 ±Ê’29 as the inaugural CEO of the Heisman Trophy Trust. Prior to this role, Price served as chief commercial and philanthropy officer for the PGA of America. “I see plenty of opportunity to build a larger commercial enterprise and support the Trust’s charitable goals, which were also a passion of mine at the PGA,” Price told Sports Business Journal. Price, who played football at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ — as quarterback and wide receiver — is also a parent of a student in the Class of 2029. Price was recently on campus for the 150th Football Celebration at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. 

News of Associate Professor of Art and Visual Culture Carolina González Valencia’s grant of $50,000 to finish her film How to Clean a House in Ten Easy Steps was covered in . The Sundance Institute funded 32 projects this year.

In August, Deadline covered Gonzalez Valencia’s , which supports filmmakers in developing their pitches, and invites them to present their works in progress to a panel of funders and distributors at Camden International Film Festival. The film, which is being shot in the U.S., Colombia, and Mexico, is a “hybrid documentary� in which a domestic worker and her filmmaker daughter co-create the fictional character of a writer to uncover the slippage between truth and fantasy. It tells a story about immigration, labor, dreams, and the power of fiction to spark emancipation.

A selection of recent mentions of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ people in the news, including coverage of new poetry from a faculty member along with commentaries on the homelessness crisis, the Trump administration’s spending bill, and rural students in higher education.

Myronn Hardy

Deep water: ‘Threshold with Fog,’ by Myronn Hardy — Portland Press Herald

In July, new work from Associate Professor of English Myronn Hardy was . Megan Grumbling, the curator of the Press Herald’s series, describes the poem titled “Threshold with Fogâ€� as “hazyâ€� and praises Hardy’s imagery. “I love this poem’s vivid, dream-like imagery, and how it cross-fades between scenes, leaving us feeling as lyrically displaced and uncertain as the speaker,â€� Grumbling writes. 

Hardy told ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ News he finished writing “Threshold with Fogâ€� about a year ago and that it has been a busy time for him, poetry-wise.  “I’m currently writing poem after poem,â€� he says. As yet, he doesn’t have a new collection in mind. “I don’t know if a new collection is forming. This usually takes years to discover.â€� His inspiration for this poem, he says, was “thinking about being lost in the Leuthold Forest Preserve. And what it may mean to be found and guided by a stranger.â€� (Leuthold Forest Preserve is a spot in the wilds of Maine, southwest of Jackman.)

Hardy’s most recent collection, Aurora Americana (2023), was called “a clear-eyed vantage of Americaâ€� by Rebecca Morgan Frank in her review for the Poetry Foundation. 

Paul Schofield 

The homelessness crisis is a crisis of democracy — Jacobin

Associate Professor of Philosophy Paul Schofield , his for this quarterly magazine and website. For this piece, he interviewed homeless people in Olympia, Wash., offering a political and philosophical analysis of American homelessness and our current at-risk democracy. 

“Homeless people find themselves in what we might call a state of internal exile — cast out of, and excluded from, the society in which they physically remain,â€� Schofield writes. 

The people he interviews speak of horrific, rat-infested, living conditions, the lack of response from law enforcement to violence committed against homeless people, and the double-edged sword of government-provided transitional housing. “If they can tell us we’re not allowed outside, then where are we all supposed to go?â€� one man Schofield interviewed asked, framing the central question of the article. 

Where can people go when the left and right alike are uncomfortable coexisting with them? How can our society fix a problem that we have attempted to resolve using both extreme sympathy and extreme shame? Schofield offers a solution: “What’s needed is a broad, sustained transformational effort designed to bring those pushed to the margins back into the fold and to prevent people from being pushed out in the first place. What’s needed is a politics that is focused not just on keeping people alive, but on enabling everyone to flourish as the social beings they are.�

Geoff Swift 

How Trump’s big bill will reshape the affordability of Maine higher education —  Portland Press Herald 

In July, Geoff Swift, the vice president for finance and administration and treasurer at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, commented on changes in taxation to college endowments under the Trump administration in . The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” ultimately removed taxes on endowments for colleges with fewer than 3,000 students. But under various earlier Republican proposals on endowment taxes, Maine colleges including ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, Bowdoin, and Colby, could have been impacted by the bill. The endowment tax was introduced under the first Trump administration, and it taxed the endowments of private schools with at least 500 students and endowments worth $500,000 per student or more at a rate of 1.4 percent on their annual investment income. That included Bowdoin and Colby colleges, but not ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. Some politicians had advocated raising that tax into double digits, but ultimately the tax was capped at 8 percent on the wealthiest schools.

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ will not be taxed under the bill, but Swift spoke out against endowment taxes in principle, saying they limit opportunities to extend access and aid to students with financial need. “Still, no matter how many students an institution enrolls, taxing endowments is not good policy,â€� Swift told the Press Herald. “While the taxed universities will feel the impact most acutely — it will stress their economics — indirect impacts will eventually reach other colleges, some of which might not have the resources to weather it.â€�

Mara Tieken

— Maine Calling

In late June, Professor of Education Mara Tieken was a panelist on an episode of , Maine Public’s weekday call-in show, focused on rural students. The episode examined the “options and goals� for rural students in higher education.

Tieken studies rural education and students; her book Educated Out: How Rural Students Navigate Elite Colleges—And What It Costs Them, published by the University of Chicago Press and released in May, is a study exploring the ways that geography impacts the experiences of first-generation students from rural communities — from access to higher education, experiences during college, and postgraduation opportunities.

In August, Tieken, who received the 2024 Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching, was , the publication of Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she received both her master’s in education and her doctorate. When asked what she most hoped readers of Educated Out would come away with, Tieken gave this answer:

“I’d like readers to, first, come away with a more nuanced and complex understanding of rural America and a willingness to question many of the rural stereotypes. I also hope that they gain an awareness of how geography shapes college opportunity and, perhaps, some things we can do about that. For rural students reading this book, I hope that it validates some of their experiences. I want them to know that they’re not alone and that any challenges or barriers they face might reflect the larger geography of opportunity, which doesn’t favor folks from rural and remote places. I also want them to know that we — policymakers, practitioners, and researchers — have some real work to do to make colleges more accessible and inclusive, and we’ll need their leadership on this.�