We
are pleased to announce our January issue of COPC
News. The
intent of this newsletter is to inform our COPC
community about news, events, projects, and each
other.
The HUD COPC initiative,
funded by the Office of University Partnerships at
the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development, is a long-term effort to build strong
and sustainable partnerships between the University
of Maine and Bangor.
The three-year
grant is designed to build and grow opportunities
for partnerships between the community and
university. The
Bangor-UMaine partnership focuses primarily on three
areas: Community Inclusion, Youth Empowerment, and
Affordable Housing.
For a visual narrative, please see our
diagram and exhibit
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Monthly
Feature: Manna
Soup Kitchen Photo Essay |
New Media
Senior Lecturer Bill Kuykendall shares his student’s
work produced for his NMD 201 Photo Reporting &
Storytelling class. In
Life, Loaves,
and Hope C. Paige Madeira poignantly depicts all
angles of the Soup Kitchen, its volunteers, guests and
owner so that the reader comes to understand Manna as
more than just a place that serves hot meals. “The
atmosphere is like a family kitchen full of laughter,
conversation and sharing.
Many come for the society that it fosters as
much as for the food.”
Owner
Bill Rae credits his experience working with Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr. during the 1960’s Poor People’s
Campaign which taught him that everyone at some point
needs help in some way or another. Though Bill
Rae is driven by his  love
of helping people, he would be happier if there was no
need for soup kitchens like his. “I love
people and I love seeing the smile and thrill on
someone’s face when they realize that they have made
it—that they can take care of themselves and their
family members without federal assistance or the help
of a soup kitchen.”
Read
more about Manna Soup Kitchen in Life,
Loaves, and Hope (.pdf).
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Student
Highlight:
Abigail
Stiers
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Abigail
Stiers is a graduate student in the Masters of Fine
Arts’ program with a concentration in New Media
Studies. She joined the CYBER Project (formerly
called Project Life) last fall and since then she’s
been working alongside fellow graduate student Scott
Clement at two project sites in Bangor. Using
new media technology, Abby captures the attention of
the middle school students while also working to
foster notions of career and college planning.
Abby is very excited
to be working on the CYBER Project and feels strongly
that all youth should have access to the opportunities
that new media can bring:
 Having taught video to
teenagers through the youth outreach program for
public access television in Ithaca, NY as well as at
various summer camps and after school programs, I
believe that teenagers can gain new perspectives on
themselves and their role in the world through
digital art and media projects. Learning
to use media allows them to gain confidence with
technology and gives them skills that will be useful
in any field. It
also lets them reach new audiences, feel like they
can make a difference, have opportunities to be
creative, think outside the box, express themselves,
and explore ideas that are important to them. In
turn, they inspire us with new ways of thinking.
After graduation, Abby
plans to continue teaching video and media skills to
children.
| Campus
Profile: News & Information Survey |
In the fall of
2007, PhD Communications & Journalism student
Jessica Brophy embarked on a news and information
survey of downtown Bangor to better understand how its
occupants gather news. A
total of 110 surveys were hand distributed to
businesses and city offices.
Better than half of the surveys were returned,
for a sampling of 59 individuals. All
age groups responded (18 to 61+ years), but most were
between the ages 46-60 years.
Newspapers came in first as one of the dominant
modes of news gathering followed by word of mouth, and
television.
Jessica is still in the process of analyzing the data,
but she hopes to further investigate various
relationships such as age and media gathering
practices among the survey results. Since
the internet was not among the top rated
news-gathering modes, Jessica hopes to explore the
possibility of drawing more people to this resource.
| Partner
Profile: A documentary on violence and movies |
Recently,
Abby Stiers and Scott Clement of the CYBER project
challenged their students to create an interesting
“movie” that did not rely upon violence for  entertainment.
The 30
minute documentary shows the students interviewing
each other, and asking questions about violence.
“Why
is it important to have violence in movies? What
makes something violent?
Can a movie be interesting without violence?
Can you name one movie that is interesting but
does not contain violence?”
Students were unable
to name a “good” movie which did not contain overt
violence. They
were certain that violence made movies interesting and
fun, but could not articulate why it was entertaining.
The documentary concludes with the students own
reflections on links among age, gender, and violence,
inadvertently proving to them that “movies” can be
interesting without violence.
2007
Conference Report: New Times Demand New Scholarship
II: Research Universities and Civic Engagement —
Opportunities and Challenges www.compact.org/initiatives/research_universities/
New
Book: Educating for Democracy: Preparing
Undergraduates for Responsible Political Engagement
Nov. 2007 www.indiana.edu/~mpsa/Publications/MPSANews1-7/
elibrary_pdf_671.pdf
Check
our website for a list of civic engagement news in
higher education—conferences, awards, and forums!
www.umaine.edu/mcsc/copc/news.htm
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