May 2006

Dear Colleagues:

While it seems like only yesterday that Fall Welcome Weekend was in full swing and our new first-year students were settling in, we find ourselves with just a week of classes left in the spring semester. It has been a great academic year, filled with all of the individual and collective successes that make the University of Maine such a wonderful place. Having recently completed my first year as UMaine's president, I want to thank each and every one of you for your hard work and commitment to UMaine, especially to our students. During the next few days, we will honor many of those students who have achieved at exceptional levels and we will congratulate those who graduate on May 13. I recognize that every member of our faculty and staff has played an important role in helping those graduates achieve their goals. I hope you join me in taking a measure of satisfaction in their accomplishments.

I certainly look forward to the upcoming commencement event. We estimate that more than 2,000 people will receive a UMaine degree a week from Saturday. If that number holds, it will be the largest class in UMaine history. Former North Carolina senator John Edwards, who visited campus during the 2004 campaign, will return to UMaine to deliver the commencement address. We look forward to presenting honorary degrees to UMaine Professor Emeritus Katherine Musgrave and to James Knott, best known for being the inventor of the wire lobster trap. We will also honor Maine construction and engineering legend Herbert Sargent, who was approved for an honorary doctorate but who passed away in April. Above all, though, commencement is about those 2,000 students who will proudly join the ranks of University of Maine alumni.

As we prepare to hand diplomas to the Class of 2006, we are also thinking seriously about the class that will begin studies at UMaine in the fall. Our admissions staff has been working hard and it's reflected in the statistics. You may recall that last fall we enrolled the largest number of in-state and the largest number of out-of-state students in many years. As of now, we are just slightly ahead of last year in the in-state category, and we are running another 11 percent ahead in out-of-state confirmations. This reflects good admissions work, effective marketing and a real, widespread understanding of the quality and value of a UMaine education.

During the past several weeks, I have spent a good deal of time traveling to visit with great University of Maine friends who are interested in helping secure UMaine's future through donations to our comprehensive fundraising campaign. I have been gratified by the reaction, and we are beginning to see results. Our fundraising is running well ahead of last year at this time, and we are looking forward to significant continued growth in the future. As I have written before, this campaign is focused primarily on creating endowments for things like scholarships, professorships and faculty chairs -- all the things that will have a very large impact on UMaine's ability to maintain academic excellence well into the future.

We have had a series of impressive visitors to UMaine in recent days -- candidates for important UMaine positions including provost, College of Natural Sciences, Forestry and Agriculture dean, and athletic director. We should all take note of the fact that some highly accomplished people, all of whom have had successful experiences at outstanding academic institutions, are interested in taking leadership roles within our community. As with students who choose to enroll here, or people who contribute to our fundraising campaign, these candidacies indicate an appreciation for the great things UMaine has to offer.

I would also like to note one important addition to our community. Elaine Clark has joined us, as associate vice president for administration and finance. For the past eight years, Elaine has had vast responsibilities as director of the state's Bureau of General Services. She is highly capable, and is already proving to be a tremendous asset to UMaine.

I truly enjoy using this monthly forum to point out a few of the accomplishments of the great people who make up the UMaine faculty and staff. This month, I will start with one that reflects well on a great many people in our community. That is the recent designation of UMaine as a Silver Well Workplace by the Wellness Councils of America. UMaine's outstanding work in developing wellness programs led to this recognition, which was a key factor in helping the Bangor region gain designation as the country's first "Well Region." On May 4, we will celebrate this great achievement with a series of fun and educational events between 11 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. at Memorial Union's Maine Marketplace. Congratulations to the many UMaine people involved in our wellness programs.

Several UMaine faculty members have received notice for their academic contributions during recent weeks.

Paul Mayewski, director of UMaine's Climate Change Institute, has been selected to receive the Medal for Excellence in Antarctic Research from the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR). Paul has led more than 30 Antarctic expeditions, researching climate change and atmospheric chemistry. he will receive the award at a July conference in Tasmania.

Laura Kenefic, a faculty associate in UMaine's Dept. of Forest Ecosystem Science, recently received the 2006 Mollie H. Beattie Young Forester Leadership Award from the New England Society of American Foresters.

Raymond Hintz, from the School of Engineering faculty, has been awarded the 2006 Earl J. Fennel Award from the American Congress on Surveying and Mapping. The award is presented each year to recognize outstanding contributions to the organization and to the surveying and mapping professions.

Mary Bird, and instructor in science and environmental education in UMaine's College of Education and Human Development, has received UMaine's Geddes Simpson Award for contributions at the intersection of science and history. An expert on the legacy of legendary UMaine professor Edith Marion Patch, Mary made a presentation on Prof. Patch at the April 26 event at which she received the award.

I look forward to next month's message, during which I will be able to share information about the UMaine professors we will recognize with our own prestigious annual awards: Distinguished Maine Professor and the presidential awards for teaching, research and public service. Those awards will be presented next week at our Academic Honors Convocation.

Congratulations also go out this month to the UMaine student chapter of the American Marketing Association, which won two intercollegiate awards at the AMA's recent conference in Florida. The chapter received one of five Outstanding Community Service awards and one of three Best Revitalized Chapter awards, recognizing the resurgence of the group as a whole and the services it provides to the surrounding communities. More than 140 chapters competed for these awards. A job well done by the students and Omar Khan, the UMaine marketing professor who advised the group.

We also recently inducted a new group of UMaine students into the UMaine chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, the oldest and the best known academic honor society in the U.S. William A. Klemperer, Erving Research Professor of Chemistry at Harvard, was the guest speaker at the event. We should all be proud of UMaine's association with Phi Beta Kappa. The only other chapters in Maine are at Bates, Bowdoin and Colby.

UMaine's celebration of National Volunteer Week in April shined a bright light on the extraordinary volunteerism efforts that are an important part of our community at UMaine. With the new Barbara Higgins Bodwell Center for Service and Volunteerism as the focal point, UMaine students and others are constantly finding new ways to reach out and help others. Their work reflects the generous sprit of the UMaine community, and it really says something positive about our people. These efforts make a tremendous difference in the lives of those who benefit from those volunteer activities.

Also very impressive is the exceptional creativity and good work displayed by our students involved in research and other creative endeavors. Those efforts were appropriately recognized during Student Research and Creative Achievement Week, which included nearly 20 separate events recognizing the efforts of the more than 3,000 UMaine undergraduate and graduate students who participate this year in research and other academic activities related to creative achievement. Nearly 300 of them described their work through multimedia displays, posters, lectures and other similar means during the week's programming. This activity is extraordinarily impressive, and it underlines the value our students receive from participation in research.

I also wish to congratulate UMaine sociology professor Steve Barkan, whose textbook, "Criminology: A Sociological Understanding," won a Textbook Excellence Award from the Text and Academic Authors Association. Steve's book was singled out as the best textbook published during the year in any humanities or social science field. Steve is another one of the many UMaine scholars who receives well-deserved national and international recognition for outstanding academic work.

On the subject of books, Rich Kent from the UMaine College of Education and Human Development has just published a book, "A Guide to Creating Student-Staffed Writing Centers, Grades 6-12." Based on his own experiences as a teacher in western Maine, Rich has developed great expertise in this area, and he is using that expertise to help schools establish centers where students learn to improve their writing by working with their peers. Brewer High School just opened such a center, with expert assistance from Rich and his colleagues.

I hope that you've seen the new Summer Session poster -- a beautiful artistic depiction of a sailboat. Many of us look forward to the annual unveiling of the new Summer Session poster, which is created each year by Val Williams, the manager of creative services in UMaine's Dept. of University Relations. As has become practically an annual event, UMaine has received national acclaim for the Summer Session marketing materials created through UMaine's Continuing Education Division and Dean Bob White. The 2005 Summer Session Poster recently earned a silver award in the New York Times-sponsored "Excellence in Marketing and Publications Awards" competition. The 2005 Summer Session postcard won a bronze award. Members of the CED/Summer Session staff work very hard on creating effective marketing messages and on implementing them effectively. That's a big reason why UMaine's Summer Session continues to thrive and to provide great educational opportunity for people all over Maine and beyond.

An April UMaine news story really caught my eye, and I'd like to share it here. Wayne Ingalls, who teaches accounting in the Maine Business School, has long been a real innovator with regard to using technology in his teaching. Wayne has created videotaped versions of his lectures, and formatted them so that students can download them to an iPod and watch them wherever and whenever they want. We have many technological tools at our disposal, and it is nice to see Wayne and others applying their creativity to finding new ways to help our students learn.

A recent television story focused attention on another very interesting service learning activity involving UMaine faculty members, staff members and students. Preschoolers at UMaine's Child Study Center, ages 2-5, are visited once a week by UMaine students who are teaching the children some words in Spanish. UMaine professors Marie Hayes and Kathleen March deserve great credit for their creativity and vision in developing this program, which is great for the little ones, while providing a terrific experience for the UMaine students who are involved.

Good luck to all in the final days of the semester. I look forward to seeing you at Commencement.


Sincerely,


Bob Kennedy
President