Short Term 2009 - Vol 1, Issue 1
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Dear Friends,
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Welcome to the first issue of the Harward Center's
electronic newsletter. We plan to publish
three issues a year, offering news about community partnerships, faculty engagement,
student public work, and the Center's own doings. Our goal is to give you useful and
scintillating stories that will appeal to campus, community, and national
readers alike. Let us know how we can
make this newsletter as valuable as possible.
As I write this, on the first balmy day of spring, we are nearing
the end of a busy year. Last June saw
the opening of "Weaving a World," a historical exhibition about Lewiston's textile
millworkers, the product of a three-year partnership between Bates and the
exhibition sponsor, Museum L-A. In the
fall, the Downtown Education Collaborative, a joint venture with six other local
educational and community partners, opened a storefront center in Lewiston's
downtown neighborhood. Here at the
Harward Center, we are launching a new student leadership program, with the
indispensable aid of the Bonner Foundation.
And we have inaugurated a new Civic Storytelling initiative, using
video, new media-and this newsletter--to document public work at Bates, in
Lewiston-Auburn, and at our Center.
The stories, announcements, and reflections included here are
no more than teasers-at least we hope so.
To learn more about the Harward Center and civic engagement at Bates
College, please visit our website. You can also download our annual Year End Summary.
We would love to hear from you: to hear your suggestions
about this newsletter and your thoughts about our work. In the meantime, enjoy!
All my best,
David Scobey
Director, Harward Center for Community Partnerships
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Harward Center Awards Celebration
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Sixteen
individuals and organizations are the recipients of the third annual Bates
College Harward Center for Community Partnerships Awards. Recipients were recognized in a
celebration at the Edmund S. Muskie Archives on May 8, 2009.
Firmly
rooted in the academic purpose of the College, the Harward Center serves as a
focal point for connected learning that fuses academic discussion and
community. In union with this mission,
award recipients connect Bates with the larger community through collaboration,
research and service.
The
following individuals and organizations were honored:
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Rick Speer, recipient of the 2009
James and Sally Carignan Award for Career Achievement;
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Jess Adelman, Bates class of 2009,
and Erin Bond, Bates class of 2009,
recipients of the 2009 Harward Center Student Award for Outstanding
Community-Based Academic Work;
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Michelle Ladonne, Bates class of
2009, Julie Miller-Hendry, Bates
class of 2009, and Erin Sienkiewicz,
Bates class of 2009, recipients of the 2009 Harward Center Award for
Outstanding Community Volunteerism and Student Leadership;
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Assistant Professor of Dance Carol
Dilley, recipient of the 2009 Harward Center Faculty Award for Outstanding
New Community Partnership Initiative;
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Associate Professor of Anthropology Elizabeth
Eames, recipient of the 2009 Harward Center Faculty Award for Sustained
Commitment to Community Partnership;
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Holly Lasagna, Director of the
Service-Learning Program, recipient of the 2009 Harward Center Staff Award for
Outstanding Support for Community Partnership;
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Ed Plourde, Budget Manager,
recipient of the 2009 Harward Center Staff Award for Community Volunteerism and
Leadership;
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Shayna Malyata, recipient of the
2009 Harward Center Community Partner Award for Outstanding New Initiative;
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Ron Hood, recipient of the 2009
Harward Center Community Partner Award for Sustained Commitment to Partnership;
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The Gov. James B. Longley Elementary
School, recipient of the 2009 Harward Center Award for Outstanding
Community Project/Partnership;
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Lucy Neely, Bates class of 2009 and Janneke Petersen, Bates class of 2009,
recipients of the 2009 Bates-Morse Mountain Award for Environmental
Stewardship;
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The Androscoggin Land Trust,
recipient of the 2009 Bates-Morse Mountain Award for Environmental Lifetime
Achievement. |
Partnerships: Lewiston Housing Authority
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The
collaboration between the Lewiston Housing Authority (LHA) and the Harward
Center has a long, rich history. Initial
projects included one of Lots to Gardens' first community gardens and an
afterschool program started by an Anthropology class, the goal of which was to
increase interaction between the newly arrived Somali immigrants and LHA's
Hillview public housing community. Since
then, our nearly-10-year collaboration has become multi-faceted and complex,
with hundreds of community-work-study, volunteer, summer fellowship,
service-learning, and senior thesis students taking part in a variety of
programs and projects at Hillview, an LHA low-income housing complex, and Blake
Street Towers, an LHA senior and younger-disabled building. "I can't begin to say what a difference Bates
students have made, what an impact they have had, on our programming," says
Carla Harris, manager of resident services for Lewiston Housing Authority. "Bates students have become part of the grain
of LHA."
LHA
is one of our major "collaboratories," partnerships that integrate
teaching,
research and community aims in co-created, long term undertakings.
Current
activities include: faculty research in the area of economic
self-sufficiency;
Developmental Psychology students coordinating an after-school
aspirations program for female Somali middle-schoolers; community
work study students overseeing an after-school homework help program;
student
volunteers implementing social activities for seniors at Blake Street
Towers; and
summer fellowship students coordinating programming for children and
adults. In addition to providing hands'-on help and
valuable research, Bates students have also brought financial resources
to LHA
through small grants administered through the Harward Center. "We
would not be capable of doing everything
we do without all of these different resources," Harris says.
While
Harris stresses the value of Bates students to LHA, the LHA collaboratory has
been invaluable to the education of numerous Bates students, many of whom begin
in their first years as volunteers and wind up basing much of their coursework,
including senior theses, there. Much of
this is due to the fact that Harris acts very much as a co-educator for students. "I look at students as assets," says Harris,
who is as concerned about what she can give to the students as what they can
give to her. "You get back from students
the time that you put in with them."
Aubrey
Nelson, a recent Bates graduate and currently working as a VISTA for the Harward
Center, has spent much of the past year helping to organize a boys' aspirations
program at Hillview. She too attests to
the value of Hillview to Bates students.
"It allows students to connect with different generations and different
cultures," she says. And on an even more
basic note: "You get free hugs and
people who are so excited to see you." |
Shortridge Summer Residency
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This summer season will mark the initiation of the Summer Residency
at the Shortridge Coastal Center. Five
student interns will be working on various environmental projects, including
research, service and program development.
With the technical and financial support of the US Fish and
Wildlife Services, Elyse Judice and Carter Kindley will monitor salt marsh restoration
in the Sprague River Marsh at the Bates-Morse Mountain Conservation Area
(BMMCA). Their research will determine
the efficacy of methods to restore the marsh's hydrology and food web, and
their data will be analyzed with the help of geology professor, Bev
Johnson. Kurt Schuler will be working
with Mike Retelle, also from the Geology Department, to continue documenting
and monitoring barrier beach processes on Seawall Beach at BMMCA. Kurt's work is funded by a grant from the
Small Point Association for on-going research designed to understand
environmental influences on the area's coastline.
Alex Hernandez will be working with Laura
Sewall, Director of BMMCA, to develop a comprehensive management plan for the
area. Alex's work will primarily consist
of mapping and describing, for management purposes, plant communities and other
environmental features of the area.
Emily Grady will be working with Julie Rosenbach and Laura Sewall to
develop an environmental leadership program for Bates college students.
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What Are Our Community Partners Saying?
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"I finally got to the office and saw what you had all done for us. The
collection is now useable and I will be able to add to it. Out of
confusion and chaos has come order and beauty...It is like Genesis all
over again. You and Pat and the students and other faculty have given us
an invaluable gift. It was beyond me to know what to do. Thank you for
all the time and expertise you have invested in the Friends of Seguin. "
--Ken Young, Friends of Seguin Board of Directors
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French Professor Recognized for Integrating Service, Teaching
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Alexandre Dauge-Roth, an assistant professor of
French at Bates College, is one of three Maine college professors to
receive a 2009 Maine Campus Compact award for infusing public service
and civic engagement into their teaching. Dauge-Roth will receive a Donald Harward Faculty Award for
Service-Learning Excellence in the Maine Campus Compact's eighth annual
faculty and student awards ceremony on April 16 at the Maine State
Museum.
Dauge-Roth researches the Rwandan genocide of 1994, exploring
personal, literary and film narratives created since Hutu extremists
massacred as many as a million Tutsi and moderate Hutu. In the four
years since he came to Bates, Dauge-Roth has fostered a correspondence
between Bates students and survivors of the genocide.
During a 2006 trip to Rwanda, he established a network of genocide
survivors who have corresponded in French with students in his seminar
"Documenting the Genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda" to document
survivors' stories. Read Article
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Harward Summer Student Fellowships
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College summers can be tricky: you want to relax, have some
fun, make some money, do something meaningful and interesting that might boost
your resume or advance your studies. For
most students, summer means choosing one or more, but rarely all of these
goals. For Harward Summer Student Fellows,
though, it's a different story: they get to have it all.
These fellowships support students who have designed the
project of their dreams, addressing a community problem locally, domestically,
or internationally. Working with a
supervisor at a service agency site, the student designs an eight- to ten-week
project, outlines job responsibilities, and identifies some of the social
issues that the work will address. Some of these look like
service-oriented jobs (working at a camp for youth with disabilities; running a
community garden at a low-income housing complex) and some are
academically-related service-learning or community-based research projects
(needs assessment with an immigrant community; action research with the local
Community Food Assessment). Students' applications need support from both
the host agency and a faculty member, and students are encouraged to design
plans that make a lasting difference in the lives of their communities.
Funding of up to $3700 is awarded for the eight to ten weeks of full-time
work.
Support for these fellowships come from a variety of
resources: the Harward Summer Student Fellowships are funded through a creative
combination of the Vincent Mulford Fund, the Class of 2000 Fund, and the
Harward Center's operating budget. Those
applicants who are eligible for federal work-study support can receive
fellowships funded by Community Work-Study.
These students must do their projects within the 50 United States,
whereas Harward Summer Student Fellowships can be awarded for in-state,
national, or international projects.
Some of the Summer Fellows choose to intensify their
experience by serving also as Community-Based Research Fellows: these students
come together for dinner every other week to read, talk, and think together
about how our research matters in community, why we want to use academic tools
to solve public problems, and how CBR is similar to or different from
"traditional" academic research. Many of
these CBR Fellows parlay their summer work into a thesis, with exciting
results: one Geology student's research on beach erosion helped a coastal
community learn and make decisions about their property management in face of
changes; a Sociology student explored the experience of food insecurity in a
diverse low-income community, asking (among other things) why Muslim kids are
getting fed ham sandwiches, and how that can change.
This coming summer, the twenty student projects are diverse
and impressive. The Lewiston Farmer's
Market will, as usual, be run by a Harward Summer Student Fellow; the Hillview
Family Development of Lewiston Housing Authority will have an HSSF running
their youth summer program again. But most
projects are new: a student working at a rape crisis center in Alaska; a
student (who is also a veteran of Afghanistan) working with Peace Action Maine
to understand and meet the needs of the Afghan immigrant and refugee community
in Portland; a Mathematics student
helping the Auburn School Department analyze and derive meaning from kindergarten
test score data.
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The Year in PWIPs
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One of our core goals at the Harward Center is to convene discussions
that share the work of campus-community partnerships. Our Public Works In Progress series-or
"PWIPs," in the dialect of the Harward Center-has been a key venue for such
sharing and reflection. Now in their
third year, PWIPs are lunch-hour talks by Bates faculty and staff about
community-based research, project partnerships, or service-learning courses in
which they are involved. The Center
hosted fourteen PWIPs this year. We continue
to draw about twenty-five participants a week, a great mix of Bates faculty,
staff, students, and community partners and friends. (It does not hurt that we offer a free lunch
to all attendees!)
The year in PWIPs included
a diversity of disciplines, projects, and topics, from educational policy
analysis to climate change research on the Maine coast to a video of a
community "performative meal" created in an Anthropology class. We were especially happy to include
presentations not only by Bates faculty and staff, but also by colleagues from
Bowdoin, Colby, and the University of Southern Maine.
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Student Spotlight: Michelle Ladonne '09
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"I have volunteered at St. Mary's Hospital for three years, directly
aiding hospital patients through the Transport Department, and undertaking
projects with hospital administrators.
Volunteering at St. Mary's has been one
of the most fulfilling and exciting aspects of my time at Bates. Bringing a smile to a patient's face and knowing
that I made a small difference gives me a sense of purpose and meaning. Additionally, interacting with other volunteers
has allowed me to build lifelong relationships with community members. Several dozen elderly volunteers now refer to
me as their granddaughter, and I consider them family as well. Volunteering at St.
Mary's consistently reminds me of how much I have been given, and how much I can
give."
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Questions? Please contact Kristen Cloutier at [email protected] or 207-786-6202 Or visit us online.
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