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On behalf of the University of Maine Graduate Student Government, I am pleased to announce the 2013 UMaine Graduate Student Exposition. Over the course of two days - 28-29 March, 2013 - graduate students from all disciplines will present their research, artistic works, projects and collaborations. In addition to competing for thousands of dollars in cash prizes and recognition for their work, students will be able to interact with representatives from industry and government. This exposition will coincide with the unveiling of the University of Maine’s new Innovative Media, Research and Commercialization Center. The building will be open to the public during the Expo, and graduate students and faculty will be present answer questions and demonstrate the features and facilities housed in the new center.

As in years past, the GradExpo will feature disciplinary sessions with poster and oral presentations featuring students in the Physical Sciences & Technology, Natural Sciences, Humanities and Social Sciences. Graduate student artists at the University will be presenting InterMedia art projects, fine art works and performances.

We are excited to announce that we are requesting submissions for several new interdisciplinary sessions that have been added to the GradExpo this year. These sessions will feature research focused on Canada and Canadian-Americanism and on the culture, science and policy of the Gulf of Maine.

Presentations will include traditional short oral presentations and poster sessions, as well as innovative art installations, informal slide-shows and the PechaKucha competition where students from every discipline will present their work in a rapid-fire talk and slide show lasting less than seven minutes. Winners from other campus competitions will be announced at the Expo as well.

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Channel 8 (WMTW) in Portland reported on the selection by National Geographic magazine of University of Maine marine scientist and cold-water diver Rhian Waller for a select list of New Age of Exploration scientists to be profiled. Waller, an assistant research professor in the UMaine School of Marine Sciences, has been on 40 expeditions around the world and is a cold-water coral expert.

Maine news organizations, including the Portland Press Herald, Bangor Daily News, Channel 2 (WLBZ), Channel 5 (WABI) and Channel 7 (WVII), spoke with members of the University of Maine women’s basketball team on its return to Maine after a bus crash Feb. 26 on Interstate 95 in Georgetown, Mass., which left several members and the coach, Richard Barron, with minor injuries and the driver in a Boston hospital. On Feb. 27, news organization from around the country continued reporting on the crash. They included the Idaho Statesman, The Republic in Indiana, the San Jose Mercury News, and the Edmonton Journal in Alberta, Canada.

A short film produced and directed by University of Maine Intermedia MFA graduate student Neil Shelley with student actors and crew has been accepted into the third annual Lewiston Auburn Film Festival, April 4–7.

Shelley, who is from Gray, Maine, created the 28-minute film “Telling Hannah” in a Year in Film class with assistance from his brother, Ryan, and faculty member Sheridan Kelley. The film is about a relationship that develops when a young woman, Hannah, goes to live with her uncle after the death of her father. Shelley says it is a story of deception, honesty and ultimately redemption.

More than 1,000 people attended last year’s Lewiston Auburn Film Festival, which screens as many as 75 films in a variety of Lewiston and Auburn venues, says Shelley, who manages the Collaborative Media Lab at Fogler Library and is a teaching assistant for professional video production at UMaine.

Dozens of University of Maine students will spend spring break March 4–15 in far-away places doing volunteer work in schools, hospitals, animal shelters, orphanages, nature preserves, farms and building housing and a Honduran village’s first sewage system.

Here is a partial list of places and projects.

• Honduras — Five student members of the UMaine chapter of Engineers Without Borders will return to Dulce Vivir on the outskirts of Dulce Nombre in Honduras to complete work started in 2008 designing and building a sewage collection system for a village of 120 people struggling with water contamination from overflowing latrines during the rainy season.
• Nicaragua — REACH (Respect Education Action Community Hope) at UMaine is sending 12 students to Jinotega, Nicaragua March 2–15 under the auspicious of the Circulo de Amigas organization to help with library repairs and encouraging children to read. They’ll also help out in a home for disabled children and a maternity home.
• Costa Rica — REACH (Respect Education Action Community Hope) at UMaine is sending 12 students to Mastatal, Costa Rica March 3–16 to assist local farmers with aquaponics and organic farming.
• Belize — Thirteen students in the UMaine School of Nursing are partnering with International Service Learning to offer medical assistance in rural clinics in San Ignacio, Cayo District of Belize. They’ll work with physicians providing health care to underprivileged families and children.

The UMaine Bodwell Center for Service and Volunteerism and UMaine Alternative Break are organizing dozens of students planning spring break trips in the United States. Projects include:

• Helping children victimized by domestic abuse in Virginia
• Improving housing conditions for low-income families in the coal camp communities of West Virginia
• Assisting at a rescue camp for neglected and abused animals in Pennsylvania
• Providing respite in Florida for vacationing families of children with terminal illnesses
• Helping with disaster relief and rebuilding of homes in New Orleans
• And maintenance and trail restoration in the Grand Canyon in Arizona and in the Moody Forest Natural Area in Georgia.

Contact: George Manlove, 207.581.3756

Dozens of Maine schoolteachers attending the 26th Expanding Your Horizons conference March 14 at the University of Maine will have two new learning opportunities added to the program this year.

At 9 a.m. in 100 D.P. Corbett Business Building, they will gather for a Maine Girls Collaborative Project panel discussion about working with girls with disabilities in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields. At 1 p.m. in D.P. Corbett, an afternoon workshop will explore strategies for encouraging Native American girls to pursue STEM subjects in school. Both sessions are free and public.

Joining the discussion about working with girls with disabilities will be Janet May, coordinator of transition and adults at the Center for Community Inclusion and Disability Studies at UMaine. Maria Girouard, assistant coordinator of student development and outreach at the UMaine Wabanaki Center and a Native American history and culture educator, will participate in the afternoon session on guiding Native American girls toward STEM careers.

Cosponsored by the UMaine Women’s Resource Center, Division of Lifelong Learning, University of Maine Cooperative Extension and Maine EPSCoR, the conference will host the teachers and more than 500 seventh- and eighth-grade girls for the daylong event, held to introduce girls to STEM subjects. Students with UMaine guides will participate in various STEM workshops on campus throughout the day.

The underpinning of the conference is to address a shortage of women in STEM fields. Conference participants will have opportunities to meet and hear stories from successful women working in science and math fields.

Expanding Your Horizons has been successful in giving seventh- and eighth-grade girls a better understanding of relationships between math and science and possible career choices and informing them about nontraditional or less-publicized career choices, according to the Women’s Resource Center.

The center’s director, Sharon Barker, says the event literally expands girls’ horizons and understanding of the wide range of STEM careers available to them.

For additional information or to request disability accommodations, contact Faye Boyle, 207.581.1508 or 207.581.1501.

Channel 5 (WABI) interviewed University of Maine Cooperative Extension Executive Director John Rebar for a report on Gov. Paul LePage’s proclamation designating Feb. 26 as 4-H Day in Maine. A ceremony celebrating the 100-year anniversary of 4-H, a program of UMaine Extension, took place in the Hall of Flags in the State House in Augusta.

Channel 7 (WVII) aired the second segment in a two-part profile of Habib Dagher, director of the UMaine Advanced Structures and Composites Center, who discussed his interest in science and inventions as a child in Lebanon. Dagher today is considered an international leader in research and development of offshore floating wind turbine technology. The profile is part of a “Maine’s Most Fascinating People” series.

Lewiston’s Sun Journal reported that Maine State Climatologist George Jacobson, professor emeritus of biology, ecology and climate change at the University of Maine, will speak at noon, Feb. 27 at the University of Maine Farmington as part of a forum, “State of the Planet, Intergenerational Justice and Our Collective Future.”

The Washington Post, Boston Globe and the Boston Herald were among dozens of news organizations to report on the crash Feb. 26 on Interstate 95 of the coach carrying the UMaine women’s basketball team to Boston for a game Feb. 27. The bus driver was seriously injured. Other injuries, to Coach Richard Barron and at least one player, were described as not serious. The game has been canceled because of the incident. The Bangor Daily News, Portland Press Herald, Channel 2 and CBS Boston also carried reports.

Reservations are still available for the 2013 Maine Vegetable and Fruit School March 12 at the Seasons Conference Center in Portland and March 13 at the Bangor Motor Inn. The conferences, from 8:30 a.m.–4 p.m., are sponsored by the University of Maine Cooperative Extension and the Maine Vegetable and Small Fruit Growers Association. A $35 fee includes lunch. Program information is on the UMaine Extension Highmoor Farm website. Registration is encouraged as soon as possible. For disability accommodations, call Mark Hutchinson, 800.244.2104, at least seven days in advance.

An article coauthored by Esperanza Stancioff, a climate change educator for the University of Maine Cooperative Extension and Maine Sea Grant, about citizen scientists helping environmental researchers monitor the effects of climate change on plants and animals was published in the January 2013 issue of the Journal of Extension. The article is titled “Nature’s Notebook and Extension: Engaging Citizen-Scientists and 4-H Youth to Observe a Changing Environment.”

Andrei Alyokhin, associate professor and graduate coordinator, University of Maine School of Biology and Ecology, will be sworn as the member of the Governor’s Integrated Pest Management (IPM) Council March 26 in the Deering Building, Maine Department of Agriculture, Food and Rural Resources in Augusta. The IPM Council was established by the Maine Legislature to promote, expand and enhance integrated pest management within the state with the goal of having a less environmentally damaging and more economically sustainable approaches to preventing pest damage. The council serves both advisory and coordination roles in the effort. Alyokhin’s research interests include potatoes and insect pest management.

University of Maine women’s basketball player Milica Mitrovic sustained a broken hand and a bus driver was injured after the bus transporting the team to a game in Boston went off Interstate 95 near Georgetown, Mass., at approximately 8:30 last night.

Head coach Richard Barron also was treated for minor facial lacerations. All the players and staff on the bus were taken to three area hospitals for observation and were released early this morning.

The bus driver was lifeflighted from the scene.

The team will be traveling back to Orono today. Tonight’s game against Boston University has been canceled.

The bus was southbound when it left the highway, crossed the median and the northbound lanes, and came to a stop in a wooded area. No other vehicles were involved in the accident.

A bus driver and University of Maine women’s basketball coach Richard Barron were injured when a bus transporting the team to a game in Boston went off Interstate 95 near Georgetown, Mass., at approximately 8:30 p.m., Feb. 26.

The bus driver was lifeflighted from the scene. Coach Barron was being treated for minor facial lacerations.

Three team members were transported to an area hospital for observation — players Ashleigh Roberts and Corinne Wellington, and Samantha Wheeler, the team’s director of basketball operations.

According to a UMaine staff member at the scene, the bus was southbound when it left the roadway, crossed the median and the northbound lanes, and came to a stop off the tree-lined shoulder. No other vehicles were involved in the accident.

“We’re very thankful that this accident was not any worse than it was,” says Robert Dana, vice president for student affairs and dean of students. “The thoughts of the entire University of Maine community are with the bus driver and the team as they contend with this very frightening event.”

Channel 7 (WVII) aired the first of a two-part profile of Habib Dagher, director of the UMaine Advanced Structures and Composites Center and leading authority of offshore wind energy research and development. The station’s Feb. 26 newscast will include more about Dagher and how his personal interest in the technology developed.

A Bangor Daily News article about a new Project>Login initiative designed to attract more students in Maine to information technology programs at the University of Maine and other colleges and universities in the state included comments from University of Maine President Paul Ferguson, Harlan Onsrud, a UMaine professor of computer science and information technology, and several UMaine students. The initiative is part of a collaborative effort to address what the U.S. Department of Labor predicts will be a shortage of trained IT professionals in the future.

The San Francisco Chronicle was among news organizations to publish an Associated Press article about dozens of UMaine students leaving over spring break March 4–15 to do volunteer work in Central America and across the United States, helping in schools, health clinics and orphanages, and buildings homes and a sanitation system. Channel 5 (WABI) and Channel 2 (WLBZ) also carried the report. A UMaine news release has additional information.

Hundreds of water resource professionals, researchers, regulators, planners and the public from throughout the state will gather March 19 at the Augusta Civic Center for the 2013 Maine Water Conference, founded in 1994 by the University of Maine’s Senator George J. Mitchell Center. The daylong event begins with registration at 7:30 a.m., with the first in a series of workshops, presentations and panel discussions starting at 8:30 a.m. The event also will include a juried poster competition and exhibitors’ tables. Topics range from groundwater management, sustainability and municipal decision making to the status of Maine’s water resources, fisheries habitat and nonsource point pollution and emerging contaminants. For additional information, including registration fees and disability accommodations, visit the Senator George J. Mitchell Center, or call the center at 207.581.3244.

The second annual University of Maine BearFest Dance Marathon at the UMaine Field House Feb. 23–24 raised $46,000 in pledges to benefit the Bangor area Children’s Miracle Network and the pediatric wing at Eastern Maine Medical Center — far exceeding the goal of $35,000 — according to the Eastern Maine Healthcare System Foundation. Hundreds of UMaine students danced overnight for the fundraiser.