University of Maine News

The Bangor Daily News spoke with George Markowsky, associate director of the UMaine School of Computing and Information Science, about the three-day 2013 regional Northeast Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition that begins Friday, March 8. Ten teams will compete in UMaine’s Neville Hall by defending against computer hacking attempts made by national cybersecurity professionals. Markowsky, who organized the event, told the BDN, “We have some great hackers involved.”

CompositesWorld spoke with UMaine’s Advanced Structures and Composites Center Director Habib Dagher about the center’s efforts to develop a scale model of a floating wind turbine for testing off the coast of Maine. At the Offshore Wind Power USA 2013 conference in Boston on Feb. 26–27, Dagher said the test turbine is progressing well and deployment is expected later this year.

The Bangor Daily News reported on the March 4 episode of Comedy Central’s “Colbert Report” that featured a segment about a November incident in Somesville in which a bucket of scallop innards to be used for research was mistakenly placed in the wrong car. Skylar Bayer, a marine biology graduate student at the University of Maine’s Darling Marine Center, and Gail Garthwait, a faculty member in the College of Education and Human Development, were featured on the show and in the article.

The Portland Press Herald spoke to Rick Wahle, research associate professor in the University of Maine’s School of Marine Sciences, about Maine’s early lobster season. Wahle explained that in 2012, the season for soft-shell lobsters started four to five weeks early when there weren’t enough buyers, which brought the price down. Wahler warned lobstermen that if prices stay in decline they will have only two options: to stop fishing or fish harder.

The Bangor Daily News featured a story on University of Maine associate philosophy professor Kirsten Jacobson’s time spent sailing around the world. Jacobson, who became fascinated with an adventure on the high seas after seeing the movie “Master and Commander” 10 years ago, is spending half of her sabbatical year living and working on the tall ship Picton Castle. Jacobson and her 40 shipmates have visited places such as Mangareva in French Polynesia, the Galapagos Islands and Panama, but have spent most of their time navigating the Pacific Ocean with no land in sight.

Corey Conner of the University of Maine set a new school record Saturday in the 5,000-meter race during the Columbia Final Qualifying Meet in New York City, the Bangor Daily News reports. The senior from West Townsend, Mass., covered the 5k in 15:55.60, breaking her previous time by more than 10 seconds. Conner now ranks 13th in the NCAA Division I rankings, which could put her in position to compete in the NCAA Championships March 9–10 in Nampa, Idaho.

The Portland Press Herald and the Bangor Daily News reported on the Univeristy of Maine women’s basketball team’s decision not to play in the America East tournament in the wake of the team’s bus crash Feb. 26 on I-95 in Massachusetts. Athletic Director Steve Abbott and Coach Richard Barron talked with players Monday before deciding to end the season. Robert Dana, UMaine’s vice president for student affairs and dean of students told the media it has been a difficult time for the women and the university’s focus will continue to be the health and well-being of the players.

On March 4, Comedy Central’s Colbert Report reported on the November incident in Somesville in which a container of scallop innards collected for marine research was misplaced and found. A scallop diver delivering the bivalve parts to Skylar Bayer, a marine biology graduate student at the Darling Marine Center, mistakenly put the container in a university vehicle driven by Gail Garthwait, a faculty member in the College of Education and Human Development.

Michael Eckardt, Vice President for Research, has announced the recipients of the 2013 Regular Faculty Research Funds Awards, 2013 Scholarly Materials and Equipment Award, and the 2013 Summer Faculty Research Awards. Recipients are selected based on recommendations by the Faculty Research Funds Committee. The Faculty Research Funds Program is part of a broader investment strategy designed to assist faculty and encourage research and other creative achievements.

2013 Regular Faculty Research Funds Award and Scholarly Materials and Equipment Award recipients:

Benildo de los Reyes (SBE) “Genetic Network Rewiring During Oryza Evolution”

Shawn Ell (PSY) “The Enhancing and Impairing Effects of Stress on Cognition: An RO1 Pilot Data Proposal”

Andre Khalil (MAT) “On the Improvement of Early Breast Cancer Detection”

Adrienne White (FSN) “A Clinical Intervention to Address Childhood Obesity Using Self-Determination Theory in a Rural Maine Setting”

2013 Summer Faculty Research Funds Award recipients:

Laura Artesani (SPA) “Integrating Music with Maine Studies and LD 291 in Maine’s Public and Private Schools”

Charlsye Diaz (OEH) “Using Conflict to Spur Creativity: Comparing a Meta-Analysis of Quantitative and Qualitative Research to Popular Belief and Practice”

Dylan Dryer (OEH) “Using Corpus-Analysis to Validate ‘Construct-Representation’ As the Fitting Aim of the TA-Practicum Graduate Course”

Brian Dzwonkowski (SMS) “Developing a Regional Climate Change Index for Maine’s Coastal Ocean”

Nathan Godfried (HTY) “Fellow Travelers of the Air: Labor-Left Radio Commentators and American Politics, 1935–1960”

Paul Grosswiler (CMJ) “The Role of Communication Practices in the Global Crisis of Electronic Technology Waste”

Jason Harkins (MBS) “Exploring the Role of Salespeople in New Ventures: Who Hires Them and Do They Make a Difference?”

Rebecca Holberton (SBE) “Learning to Use New Tracking Technology to Determine Spatial and Temporal Movements and Habitat Use”

Kimberly Huisman (SOC) “Using Public Sociology to Engage Maine Communities: Examining the Challenges and Successes of the Maine Mother-Daughter Project”

Jessica Miller (PHI) “Enhancing Cooperation Between Intensivists and Organ Procurement Coordinators by Creating Moral Space for Principled Ethical Disagreement”

Susan Pinette (FAS) “Transnational Belonging or “Le Quebec d’en bas”: Franco-America in the Quebecois diaspora”

Mary Shea (NUR) “The Experience of Near Elderly Uninsured Women in Downeast Maine”

Nominations are being accepted for the annual Steve Gould Award. The award was created in 1981 in memory of Steve Gould to honor his honesty and compassion for others. The President of the University of Maine gives the award to people or organizations that have demonstrated superior qualities of unselfishness and compassion in the course of service to the university and its ideals. Students, staff, faculty members and organizations serving the University of Maine community are eligible. The award will be presented by President Paul Ferguson at the Employee Recognition Reception on May 21. Deadline for nominations is April 1. For information or to submit nominations, contact Christi Renzi at the president’s office, 207.581.1512.

A story by the Portland Press Herald on the demands facing Maine high school principals cited a University of Maine study that came out last fall. The Press Herald spoke to George Marnik, an author of the Maine Principal Study and a lecturer in UMaine’s educational leadership program. Marnik said the study found almost 40 percent of Maine principals reported they felt overworked. The study also found that in 2011 the average Maine principal was responsible for 69 more students, had 53 more staff members and worked 12 more hours a week than in 2005.

The Bangor Daily News, Portland Press Herald and Channel 2 (WLBZ) spoke with members of the University of Maine women’s basketball team and coach Richard Barron four days after a bush crash Feb. 26 on Interstate 95 in Georgetown, Mass., which left several members and the coach with minor injuries and the driver in a Boston hospital. Despite the crash, the team opted to play the final game of their regular season against the University of New Hampshire on Saturday, determined not to let their season end with a bus crash. The team lost 86–63.

A Bangor Daily News article on the University of Maine offshore wind team’s international race to develop a system to measure winds high above oceans using a buoy-based light detection and ranging system, or LiDAR, included comments from UMaine’s Advanced Structures and Composites Center Director Habib Dagher. UMaine’s School of Marine Science’s Physical Oceanography Group hopes to deploy the LiDAR in the Gulf of Maine by late May or early June. The group has been measuring wind, wave and atmospheric conditions in the Gulf of Maine for more than a decade and the data they have collected has been used by many mariners and gives UMaine a lead in the global race to implement these systems.

Tom Atwell’s Maine Gardner column March 4 in the Portland Press Herald focused on the the Signs of the Seasons program, coordinated by University of Maine Cooperative Extension and Maine Sea Grant. The program that trains volunteers to monitor plant and animal species is led by UMaine Extension Climate change educator Esperanza Stancioff and Beth Bisson, Sea Grant’s assistant director for outreach and education.

Assistant Professor Ann Ross and 15 students will participate in the 2013 American College Dance Festival Association New England Conference at the University of Massachusetts – Amherst, March 14–16. Students will participate in master classes, watch informal and adjudicated concerts, listen to lectures by guest artists and have an opportunity to network. They also will be presenting a dance for an adjudication concert choreographed by students Ava Gordley Smith and Mallory Osbourne. In addition, Assistant Professor of Theatre Dan Bilodeau, Technical Director and Production Manager Joe Donovan and seven students will attend the United States Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT) Conference in Milwaukee, March 20–23. Bilodeau, chair of the New England regional section, will lead a sectional meeting while at the national conference.

Two public sessions are scheduled March 27 to provide preliminary information about the university’s FY14 budget. President Paul Ferguson, Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost Susan Hunter and Assistant Vice President of Financial and Budget Services Claire Strickland will join Senior Vice President for Administration and Finance Janet Waldron as she presents the budget information to the campus community. The two identical sessions will be held 8–9:30 a.m. and 11:30 a.m.–1 p.m., in Minsky Recital Hall.

UMaine Professor of English Naomi Jacobs and University of Delaware Professor of Classics Annette Giesecke have co-edited a new volume of 17 utopian studies essays: “Earth Perfect? Nature, Utopia and the Garden”. The researchers focus on ancient and modern utopian approaches to the garden, “a human creation driven by the desire to find an ideal place in nature — a second, kinder nature as opposed to a nature that can be unpredictable and harsh.” Their work is the inspiration for a June 6–9 symposium at the University of Delaware that showcases the garden as an emblem of the ideal human relation with nature. Giesecke and Jacobs are co-chairing the symposium, which includes tours of important public gardens in Delaware and Pennsylvania. Jacobs, a scholar of utopian and dystopian fiction and utopianism in popular culture, and Giesecke, an expert on ancient Greek and Roman gardens, have been collaborating since 2009.

Click here to view the “Working With Maine Business” video on YouTube.

Click here to view the “How do I tap a Maple Tree” video on YouTube.

Upward of 500 middle-school girls from around the state will spend the day at the University of Maine March 14 for the 26th Expanding Your Horizons conference, designed to introduce youths to careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Cosponsored by the UMaine Women’s Resource Center, Division of Lifelong Learning, University of Maine Cooperative Extension and Maine EPSCoR, the conference this year includes two educational forums for teachers led by the Maine Girls Collaborative Project, in addition to dozens of hands-on experiences in math- and science-oriented fields for the youths, most led by UMaine faculty and staff.

Students will begin their day at 9 a.m. in Hauck Auditorium for an opening presentation and keynote address, then disperse throughout the campus in groups to attend interactive workshops scheduled on the hour from 10 a.m.–2 p.m. A representative from Hardy Girls Healthy Women in Waterville will make the keynote presentation.

At 9 a.m. in 100 D.P. Corbett Business Building, teachers 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.

The panel discussions for teachers are new this year, according to Sharon Barker, director of the Women’s Resource Center at UMaine and event forums coordinator.

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 outreach and student development 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.

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.

Barker says the event literally expands girls’ horizons and understanding of the wide range of STEM careers available to them.

Among the speakers and workshop leaders participating in Expanding Your Horizons and Maine Girls Collaborative Project forums are: Emma Albee, a recent University of New England graduate who was a high school intern at The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor and now has a degree in medical biology; Jackson Laboratory researchers David Bergstrom and Carol Bult; Paige Collins, a resource teacher at Mount Desert Island High School; and Jane Disney, staff scientist and director of the Community Environmental Health Laboratory, MDI Biological Laboratory in Salisbury Cove.

For additional information or to request disability accommodations, contact Faye Boyle, 207.581.1508 or 581.1501.

Contacts: Margaret Nagle, 207.581.3745/207.949.4149; Faye Boyle, 207.581.1508