Combined News

Lois Berg Stack, University of Maine sustainable agriculture professor and Cooperative Extension specialist in ornamental horticulture, was interviewed for the Portland Press Herald article “Help for salt-damaged lawns.” Stack says road salt can cause serious damage to plants and suggests planting salt-resistant varieties and avoiding salt-sensitive trees. She also suggests using raised beds or fences to protect roadside plants and thoroughly watering to rid salts from soil.

The Bangor Daily News recently published an op-ed by Liam Riordan, associate professor of history at UMaine and board member of the UMaine Humanities Initiative and the Maine Humanities Council, and Niles Parker, executive director of the Maine Discovery Museum in Bangor. The article included information about the UMaine Humanities Initiative and upcoming events.

The Portland Press Herald recently interviewed University of Maine Forest Manager Alan Kimball about bike trails on university property. Kimball says a group of community members have recently formed a new chapter of the New England Mountain Bike Association and are now more organized when it comes to blazing trails.

Upward of 12,000 people attended the University of Maine’s 211th Commencement at Harold Alfond Sports Arena May 11 and heard remarks by alumnus Lawrence Bender, the producer of films that have won a total of six Academy Awards.®

This academic year, 1,665 students — 1,333 undergraduate and 332 graduate students — earned degrees from UMaine.

A 10 a.m. ceremony was held for graduates in the College of Business, Public Policy and Health; the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; the College of Education and Human Development; and the Division of Lifelong Learning. Graduates in the College of Engineering and the College of Natural Sciences, Forestry, and Agriculture were recognized at a 2:30 p.m. ceremony.

UMaine President Paul Ferguson, who presided over the ceremonies, encouraged the students to invest their talent, success and great achievements in enriching the world and improving the quality of life of those around them. The hope, he said, is that the students’ experiences and education at UMaine have inspired them to dare and to “achieve greatly.”

“You can be confident that your UMaine education represents the very best of Maine and that you, in turn, represent the very best of Maine,” Ferguson said. “It is with great pride that I remind you that UMaine is now forever a part of your identity, just as you are the legacy of the University of Maine.”

UMaine awarded an honorary degree to film producer Lawrence Bender, whose noteworthy projects such as “Inglourious Basterds,” “Pulp Fiction” and “Good Will Hunting” have been honored with 29 Academy Award® nominations, including three for Best Picture. His film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” which raised unprecedented awareness about climate change, won the Academy Award® for Best Documentary Feature.

In his remarks, which included a standing ovation, Bender said he would not have the life he lives today if not for his University of Maine experience, and he urged the students to find success through consistent hard work and persistence.

“How can you achieve greatness? I would say three basic things,” said Bender, who graduated from UMaine in 1979 with a degree in civil engineering. “One, you must find your passion. Two, failure must be a possibility. And three, never give up, especially when you are failing.”

“The ability to allow yourself to fail is the ability to allow yourself to go full on and to break boundaries. Many times it’s only by failing that you find the real truth. And this is not esoteric, this is basic to the heart of all entrepreneurism.”

Other Commencement speakers included students Emma Burgess Roy of Auburn, Maine, a graduating senior in international affairs, with a concentration in women’s studies; and Lindsay LaJoie of Van Buren, Maine, a graduating senior in food science and human nutrition.

LaJoie is the 2013 salutatorian. The 2013 valedictorian is Spencer Hathaway of Turner, Maine, who received two bachelor’s degrees — economics and business administration in accounting.

Also honored at Commencement, as well as at a Faculty Appreciation and Recognition Luncheon today, were four faculty members in physics, insect ecology, finance and computer science. Professor of Physics Robert Lad, director of UMaine’s Laboratory for Surface Science and Technology is the 2013 Distinguished Maine Professor, an award presented by the University of Maine Alumni Association in recognition of outstanding achievement in the university’s mission of teaching, research and public service.

Professor of Insect Ecology Francis “Frank” Drummond is the 2013 Presidential Research and Creative Achievement Award recipient. This year’s Presidential Outstanding Teaching Award recipient is Professor of Finance Richard Borgman. Professor of Computer Science George Markowsky is the recipient of the Presidential Public Service Achievement Award.

University of Maine System Board of Trustees members Samuel Collins and retired Adm. Gregory Johnson, a UMaine alumnus, delivered greetings from the board in the morning and afternoon sessions, respectively.

Alumna Samantha Lott Hale, chair of the University of Maine Alumni Association Board of Directors, welcomed the new graduates to the ranks of the more than 105,000 University of Maine alumni worldwide.

Contact: Margaret Nagle, 207.581.3745

The Bangor Daily News spoke with Nicole Langlois, a University of Maine swimmer, about her battle with breast cancer. Langlois will graduate Saturday with a degree in kinesiology.

WABI (Channel 5) reported on a meeting held in Bangor to inform the public about the University of Maine Cooperative Extension’s effort to bring more fresh and local foods to school cafeterias.

Arbiter Online, Boise State University’s independent student media, reported University of Maine Associate Professor Laura Lindenfeld was invited to speak about sustainability with an interdisciplinary research group at Boise State. On May 3, Lindenfeld spoke about bridging the gap between university studies in sustainability and the community.

Frank Drummond, University of Maine professor of insect ecology and entomology, UMaine Extension professor and bee specialist, spoke with the radio station Q106.5 about the decline of honeybees. Drummond said several factors such as pesticides and a mite that spreads a virus are contributing to the decline.

The Maine Public Broadcasting Network and Recharge News reported on the University of Maine’s unveiling Wednesday of a floating platform of VolturnUS, a first-of-its-kind offshore wind turbine. The turbine will be deployed off Maine’s coast at the end of the month and is expected to be the first grid-connected floating wind turbine in North America and the first concrete-composite floating turbine in the world.

The Bangor Daily News included information on the University of Maine’s 211th commencement ceremonies in an article on college graduations across the state.

The Morning Sentinel reported apple pruning will be the focus of a May 20 workshop in Farmington. The University of Maine Cooperative Extension in Franklin County is offering the workshop, which will be led by David Fuller, agriculture and nontimber forest products extension professional.

Click here to view the “Offshore Wind Technology Unveiled” video on YouTube.

Click here to view the “How to Grow Raspberries” video on YouTube.

When Mainers hear the term “local seafood,” a few words come to mind more than others — healthy, fresh, good, “Maine” and lobster. But ask those same people what they think when they hear the term “sustainable seafood” and the answers are less clear, varying from “I don’t know” and “nothing” to “it takes a long time to get” and “harvested.”

University of Maine Associate Professor Laura Lindenfeld and doctoral student Brianne Suldovsky, who are affiliated with UMaine’s Department of Communication and Journalism and Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center, are conducting a social research project to understand how consumers, especially in inland Maine areas, perceive seafood, and whether they view local and sustainable seafood as important.

The research team, along with Teresa Johnson, assistant professor of marine policy at UMaine’s School of Marine Sciences, also hopes to learn what infrastructure exists for Maine’s seafood market, and how communication can be improved between producers, distributors and buyers.

The one-year Seafood Links Project, funded by Maine Sea Grant, focuses on surveys and interviews with consumers, restaurants, culinary schools and grocery stores in the Bangor and Portland areas.

Lindenfeld says the project is targeting the Bangor area and its connections, as well as looking at Portland as a model city supportive of local seafood.

“By comparing the Bangor area with the Portland area, we can look at a city where restaurants and markets are advancing seafood in interesting ways, with a lot of conversation across the industry,” Lindenfeld says. “What could we do in Bangor that would make sense and how could we learn from that experience to transfer that to other inland areas?”

With a large network of people involved in the seafood industry, the researchers decided to focus on looking into the decision-making process at restaurants, culinary schools and grocery stores.

Lindenfeld says it is important to come into the project with an open mind and not presume to know how the network is working and what consumers want. To get a sense of what questions to ask whom, the team started with a round of consumer surveys.

The team found people were interested in the question of where their seafood comes from.

“People said ‘Wow, I’ve never thought of this before. You’re right, we market beef, we market potatoes and vegetables and fruit with an origin, but we don’t talk about where the seafood comes from in our restaurants.’ Why should seafood be treated differently than other kinds of food?” Lindenfeld says.

Lindenfeld and Suldovsky have found the issue of food origin is complicated when it comes to seafood.

“It’s not as simple as this steer came from that farm in The County,” Lindenfeld says.

Suldovsky says from what she has learned of the process, fishermen come to a dock to sell their product to buyers who then send the seafood out to be processed, most of the time to Canada. Packaging then says the seafood came from Canada when it was actually caught in Maine.

“How do you successfully market that or communicate that it’s processed in Canada, but it’s caught in Maine?” Suldovsky asks. “And do consumers even care? To them is Canada the same thing as local?”

The preliminary round of surveys gave the team a look at the public’s perceptions of sustainable seafood, which is seafood that is either caught or farmed in ways that consider the long-term effects on oceans and the environment.

“There’s just no cohesive understanding or meaning with the word ‘sustainable’ and yet you have grocery stores like Hannaford marketing sustainable seafood because consumers are demanding it,” Suldovsky says.

Lindenfeld stresses the importance of knowing how people feel about terms such as “sustainable” and whether it matters for marketing.

“We may be promoting products in ways that absolutely do not resonate with what people care about most,” Lindenfeld says.

The next set of interviews for the project will include a representative sample of people in Maine’s inland areas that remain underserved as opposed to coastal areas.

Lindenfeld says they hope to understand which terms imply what, and what people value and communicate the findings to the seafood industry.

They also hope these interviews will give them a picture of the network of fishermen, buyers and distributors looks like and how these relationships and communication between them can be improved.

Lindenfeld sees communication within the network, especially in the Bangor area and near coastal communities such as Bar Harbor and Belfast, as a possibility for improvement.

“A lot of people (in the Bangor area) will order from Portland or the midcoast area. Individual trucks will drive up, drop the seafood off once a week and go back down when there are suppliers on the coast right here who may not even know who to talk to,” Lindenfeld says. “So to us it’s this big gap in communication that can be overcome. There’s remarkable resources, there are incredible people, well-meaning people who want to support each other, who care about the state and the region. A little bit of communication research could go a long way.”

Contact: Elyse Kahl, 207.381.3747

Leslie Forstadt, University of Maine Cooperative Extension child and family development specialist, is participating in an invitational forum May 13–14 in Philadelphia, Pa., aimed at restoring wellness to children and communities who have experienced trauma.

Forstadt, a co-facilitator of the Maine Resilience Building Network, will attend the National Summit on Adverse Childhood Experiences, where leaders will explore a number of topics, including research, pediatrics, behavioral health and public policy implications.

Forstadt says she looks forward to building nationwide connections and gaining knowledge that can be utilized to benefit Maine children, adults and families.

After conducting a statewide survey with multiple stakeholders, Forstadt and Mark Rains completed a report in 2011 for the Maine Children’s Growth Council titled “Working with Adverse Childhood Experiences: Maine’s History, Present and Future.”

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), include stressful childhood events like physical and emotional abuse and neglect, sexual abuse and exposure to substance abuse. These early experiences increase the risk of a number of causes of premature death and illness when these children become adults, including attempted suicide, drug and alcohol use, depression and obesity, according to the report.

Childhood trauma, Forstadt says, is a human issue as well as a clinical issue.

“This is about opening a conversation not by ‘what’s wrong with you?’” she says. “Instead, it’s about ‘what happened to you?’ Many (adverse) things happen to us as children and many people are incredibly successful and engaged in the world. The story becomes about what happens to help us build resiliency.”

Sue Mackey Andrews, also a co-facilitator of Maine Resilience Building Network, will present “The Maine Event: Addressing and Preventing ACEs Through Enhanced Statewide Capacity” during a policy and advocacy panel portion of the summit.

The Institute for Safe Families and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation are co-hosts of the two-day summit. The American Academy of Pediatrics, Academy on Violence and Abuse, Futures Without Violence, National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare, Prevent Child Abuse America and Scattergood Behavioral Health Foundation are sponsors.

The Bangor Daily News, WABI (Channel 5), WLBZ (Channel 2) and WVII (Channel 7) were among several news organizations to report on the University of Maine’s unveiling Wednesday of a floating platform of VolturnUS, a first-of-its-kind offshore wind turbine. The turbine will be deployed off Maine’s coast at the end of the month and will be the first grid-connected floating wind turbine in North America and the first concrete-composite floating turbine in the world, according to Habib Dagher, director of the UMaine Advanced Structures and Composites Center. North American Windpower also carried a report.

KeepMEcurrent.com spoke with University of Maine Associate Professor of Sociology Kim Huisman about her Maine Mother-Daughter Project. The project aims to provide a framework for healthy relationships between generations and promotes critical thinking for mothers and daughters.

The latest post on the Bangor Daily News blog “Backstage at PTC” announced the Penobscot Theatre Company’s 2013–2014 season. The season will include “One Blue Tarp,” a new play by Travis Baker, Orono playwright and UMaine English lecturer.

The New Hampshire Union Leader reported University of Maine student Molly Mendola was given the Union Leader Hero Award after helping save struggling swimmers at a beach last summer. The award honors New Hampshire residents who risked their lives in the previous year to save someone else.

The Maine Edge reported on the recent visits of therapy dogs to Fogler Library. The dogs were brought in to ease students’ stress during finals week.