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Winter 2012 - Vol 4, Issue 2
In This Issue
Sustained Partnership: Museum L/A
Introducing C.A.M.P.: College Access Mentoring Program at DEC!
Student Perspective: A Community-Based Senior Thesis
2012 Community-Based Research Fellows
A First Year Seminar Success Story - Identity: Self and Community
What Are Our Community Partners Saying?
Support our Bonner Leader Program!
Join Our Mailing List!
Quick Links
Students' work recognizes beauty of the Androscoggin

Greetings!

Before winter got underway officially and ice pellets began to Georgia Nigroappear in forecasts with alarming frequency, the Harward Center said goodbye to an old friend and made a new one. On the same Sunday in December, Estelle Rubinstein stepped down as executive director of Androscoggin Head Start and Child Care after more than four decades of service to the agency, and Clayton Spencer appeared before throngs as she was introduced as the eighth president of Bates College. I shuttled between events, in awe of these two fine educators and proud to be associated with both.

 

Not only did I get the opportunity to meet our new president this winter, but I traveled to Washington to attend a conference sponsored by Bringing Theory to Practice, an organization started by former president Donald Harward. Don was the consummate host as he welcomed college presidents, vice chancellors, deans, faculty members, and students to two days of discussions about strengthening our campus cultures for learning, civic development, and psychosocial well-being of students. The conference used the theme of bridges to encourage talk about connecting students' development inside the classroom to their lives outside. A suggestion to anyone contemplating a BTtoP conference: look up the definition of "eudemonic" before you go. It's one of Don's favorite words.

 

This issue brings two reports on student development. Director of the Downtown Education Collaborative Sherry Russell writes about her first-year seminar on identity and community. Along with a half dozen colleagues from all over the college, I visited the seminar one day for a session about the development of a professional identity. The students peppered us with questions about what set us on and kept us moving along our professional paths. Senior sociology major Pamela Mejia introduces us to graduates at least five years out of Bates who had been involved with civic engagement through community work-study, summer grant opportunities, or as student volunteer fellows. Through stories and numbers, Pamela learned much on the impact of civic engagement years after Bates.

 

This time, it really is the case that I will return to my home department soon. The search for a director of the Harward Center has begun with the formation of a search committee on campus. If you are a prospective candidate or you know someone who should be, please be alert for the job announcement, which will appear soon. We believe that this is a plum of a job for someone with a deep commitment to undergraduate education and community partnerships. Spread the word!

 

As always, we welcome your news and feedback. Please drop us a line or drop in if you are on campus.

 

Best wishes,

Georgia Nigro

Interim Director

Sustained Partnership: Museum L/A
Submitted by Holly Lasagna, Associate Director, Community-Based Learning Program

For over ten years, the Harward Center has worked in collaboration with Museum L/A to help document and create the story of work and daily life in our community. David Scobey, past director of the Harward Center, worked with the museum director, Rachel Desgrosseilliers, to establish sustained projects and programming that supported the goals of the Museum as well as advanced the academic work of Bates students and faculty. During this sustained collaboration, Bates students and faculty have developed archives of oral histories of mill workers and shoe workers and have helped create traveling and permanent exhibits in collaboration with Museum L/A staff and community members.

 

During the past academic year, Bates students, faculty and staff have collaborated with Museum L/A on a number of projects. During the fall term, students from Professor Mara Tieken's Education/Sociology course, Race, Pluralism, and Equality in American Education conducted interviews with community members about their experiences attending local parish schools. These oral histories will be the foundation of a new archive focused on local church-based education for the museum.

 

Currently, Museum L/A is in the process of preparing a three-year exhibit, "The Power of Music," which will showcase how music was a rich, varied and important cultural aspect to daily life. During this winter term, four students from the American Cultural Studies course, Community Studies, are doing background research about music in the local Franco-American community. Their research will lay the groundwork for further work on a long-term project that will engage Bates faculty and students over the next three years including Dale Chapman, a member of the Music faculty. Professor Chapman is working with museum staff to help plan this three-year, six-series exhibit highlighting the rich history of music in the Twin Cities. The series will launch in late July with "The Power of Music: Photographic Portraits of Americans and their Musical Instruments, 1860-1915." It will continue chronologically with five more exhibits through April 2015. Students and faculty from a range of academic disciplines will continue to be involved in this project.

Introducing C.A.M.P.: College Access Mentoring Program at DEC!
Submitted by Sarah Vazquez, AmeriCorps VISTA

The Downtown Education Collaborative announces an exciting and unprecedented cross-campus pilot program! C.A.M.P. (College Access Mentoring Program) is a cross-campus program in which college students serve as mentors to a cohort of 10-15 Lewiston Middle School students to promote college access and success. Working with four of DEC's member institutions, the program will develop a sustainable infrastructure for recruiting and training college student as mentors on an ongoing basis.

 

The middle grades have a critical impact on the postsecondary success of students because it is here that two factors collide. The middle grades are the intersection of students' needs to "get on track" for college and to determine what they will be like as adults. The decisions made during this time have lifelong consequences about how these students see themselves as learners, engage with learning, and set their goals. Underserved and underperforming middle school students are particularly at risk.  If these students do not receive the support they need to begin thinking of themselves as college-going, once they enter high school they become disillusioned easily, fail to take college preparatory courses and become increasingly less able to access college. 

 

C.A.M.P. provides college student mentors with skills in facilitation and collaborative leadership development. The mentors work together to plan, develop, and co-facilitate college access workshops and campus visits. The group is comprised of students who attend Bates College, USM-LAC, CMCC, and Kaplan University. Through this unique partnership, college students from diverse campuses gain civic engagement experience and skills including collaborative leadership, workshop facilitation, college-positive volunteerism, and cross-aged/ cross-cultural communication.

 

Lewiston youth benefit from this experience as they meet mentors from diverse colleges, backgrounds, ages, and majors. Mentees will develop mentoring relationships and an empowered group identity while exploring their dreams, talents, goals, and aspirations.  As a result of the workshop series, they will learn how college can help them achieve their dreams, understand the relationship between school classes and careers, and come away with a portfolio containing a high school to college plan and checklist. The series culminates in visits to four campuses in April and an awards celebration. To develop sustainability and leadership, participants will be invited to return the following semester as presenters and activity leaders of C.A.M.P.

Student Perspective: A Community-Based Senior Thesis
Submitted by Pamela Mejia '12

Honestly, I was pretty anxious and worried about my thesis prior to my return to Bates to begin senior year. As I said my goodbyes to my family, my mom's words stuck with me: "This is something you should enjoy doing. Don't torture yourself trying to find the perfect topic or something over-the-top and unfeasible. Write about something you can relate to, something that speaks to you or something you are passionate about." And that is exactly what I did. Since freshman year, I have been involved with the Harward Center and the community through various after-school programs, by visiting the elderly and young disabled, and as a Student Volunteer Fellow. It was my volunteering experiences that made me want to explore what Bates graduates, who were involved in community service throughout their college careers, are doing now. I wanted to investigate the relationship between their community service involvement during their undergraduate years and their civic engagement post-graduation (e.g., the career paths they chose, their social responsibility, and their community involvement).

 

My study used data collected from 67 alumni from Bates College in Lewiston, Maine. The instrument employed in this study was a web-based survey that investigated participants' self-reported citizenship in regards to their attitudes, behaviors, and knowledge on issues of diversity and tolerance. Community service involvement was addressed through three different Harward Center programs: Student Fellow Volunteer, Community-Work Study and Summer Internship.  I found that self-perceived service engagement and enrollment in service-learning classes during college were significant predictors of civic engagement during adulthood. The adoption of service-oriented careers among alumni was the most notable outcome of their service involvement during college. Most alumni acknowledged the Harward Center as important in their decision to pursue service-related careers.

 

My study showed how the opportunities offered by the Harward Center have been instrumental in promoting tolerance and understanding of others. As an alumna states, "It made me more selfless, more understanding, and more thoughtful of others-both people I know personally, and those I have never met but may pass on the street. I value and embrace our differences, realizing that our differences make our lives more complete." I will soon graduate, and as I begin a new transition in life, I look forward to doing something I can relate to, something that speaks to me and something I am so very passionate about.

2012 Community-Based Research Fellows
Submitted by Kristen Cloutier, Assistant Director, Center Operations

Students in several departments have the opportunity to do community-based research in courses and for their senior thesis or capstone project. Indeed, some departments now offer research methods courses that focus specifically on collaborating with the community for research. At the Harward Center, we offer support for students engaged in community-based research through the Community-Based Research Fellows Program. Originally funded by a grant from Learn and Serve America, and now funded by a grant from the Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation, the program offers students fellowship support for their community-based research projects and a non-credit seminar, led by Interim Director (and Professor of Psychology) Georgia Nigro, in which the students discuss the principles and practices of CBR as they apply to their individual projects. 

Fellows this semester are:

Nazsa Baker '12: Working with the American Association of Retired People in Portland, Maine and Service and Advocacy in GLBT Elders, Nazsa is collecting and analyzing data from a community needs assessment to better understand the needs of the elder GLBT community in Maine.

 

Nicolle Bugajski '12: Nicolle is working with the Family Self-Sufficiency Program at Lewiston Housing Authority, conducting qualitative interviews with residents to determine their views on individual versus collective explanations for poverty and their opinions on government assistance.

Catherine Elliott '12:  Catherine is working with the Maine People's Alliance, researching how a community organizing group can facilitate the development of a grassroots narrative that can create momentum for political change.

Reann Gibson '12: Reann is working with Tree Street Youth, collecting data on the creation of a successful discussion program that meets the needs of high school girls living in downtown Lewiston, Maine.

Jake Kaplove '12: Working with Park Avenue Elementary School and Tree Street Youth, Jake is looking at the effect of a school-based youth group on Somali youths' level of acculturation, engagement with ethnic identity, and level of family conflict over a three-month period.

Deborah Mack '12: Deborah is working with Women's Health Associates at St. Mary's Regional Medical Center to improve prenatal medication compliance and understanding among local Somali women through the use of pictograms.

Julie McCabe '12: Julie is working with the Bruce M. Whittier Middle School in Poland, Maine to create a women's studies curriculum for 7th and 8th grade students.

 

Elizabeth (Izzy) McKean '12: Working with the Lewiston-Auburn public schools and United Somali Women of Maine, Izzy is conducting interviews to help develop multicultural competency in the public schools, with a focus on the dynamic between teachers and Somali parents and the challenges faced in facilitating positive interactions among students.

A First Year Seminar Success Story - Identity: Self and Community
Submitted by Sherry Russell, Director, Downtown Education Collaborative and Lecturer in Education 

"The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another."
- Thomas Merton

 

"The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives." 
-
Audre Lorde


This fall's First Year Seminar, Identity: Self and Community, held at the Harward Center, brought together 15 first year students to explore identity and its implications for how we live as individuals and as members of communities. The course guided students in exploring questions such as how we define ourselves, the skills we need to develop to deepen our understanding of self and of other, how we co-create each other within relationships and within community, how we develop empathy, and the implications for how we live and act individually and collectively. The class was divided into three thematic units:

  • Who am I?
  • Who are we?
  • How do we live in community in ways that promote well-being for self, other, and the community as a whole?

We explored these themes through multiple modalities including time for quiet reflection at the beginning of each class; readings from across a variety of disciplines along with discussion, in-class activities and writing; and, interactive service-learning placements within the community. These placements included teaching citizenship classes with the Somali Bantu Youth Association, tutoring at Tree Street Youth or DEC's after-school program at the Lewiston Public Library and working with preschool-aged children at Daisy Garden Childcare Center. Students also engaged in a semester long community-wide Scavenger Hunt that had them exploring shops on Lisbon Street, talking to the Mayor, visiting the Colisee and the cathedral, interviewing professors on campus, attending events at the Ronj and at OIE, and a host of other activities. At the end of the semester, students submitted a portfolio which was a multi-media compilation of Scavenger Hunt artifacts and reflections related to course themes. Portfolio formats included art, reflective writing, poetry, music, videography, an online blog, and sculpture.

 

In the middle of the semester, we hosted a Faculty Panel in which professors from various departments provided students with a provocative look at how different disciplines approach similar questions. Professors from Anthropology, Psychology, Neuroscience, Education, and Sociology, among others, bravely grappled with questions such as: What are some of the different frameworks we can use to describe who we are? How do relationships affect who we become? How do you define a healthy community? How can we value differences while also having a sense of collectiveness? Where does empathy come from? Do you believe we are all interconnected? Do our actions affect our community? It was a dynamic conversation which we all agreed could have continued for all four years.

 

The course demanded much of the students. It asked them to explore essential themes and questions not just intellectually but personally, through introspection as well as sustained interaction and shared reflection. It was a profound learning experience for all of us and as we explored these themes together we also developed a great respect and warmth for each other as well as for our new friends and allies in the wider community.

 

"Our ten minute reflection moments at the beginning of class are so precious amidst the chaos that can be known as college."
- FYS Student

What Are Our Community Partners Saying?

"Thank you to the Harward Center for all that Bates College does in support of Lewiston Public Schools."
- Bill Webster, Superintendent, Lewiston Public School System

Support our Bonner Leader Program!
Bates is actively seeking funds to support its Bonner Leader Program.  If you have questions, or would like to support the Bonner Leader Program, please contact Ellen Alcorn at the Harward Center at 207-786-8235 or Matt Hanson in the Office of Advancement at 207-755-5988.

For more information about the Bonner Leader Program at Bates, please click here to view a short video (note that you will be redirected to the Bates College channel on Vimeo).
Questions?
Please contact Kristen Cloutier or visit us online.