A January 5 Portland Press Herald “Maine Voices” column by Maine Publishers and Writers Alliance Executive Director Joshua Bodwell mentions Maine’s Poet Laureate and Assistant Professor of English Betsy Sholl. Be sure to read “What could be worse than a dearth of verse?”
Sholl was also mentioned in a January 6 article in The Portland Daily Sun about the poetry demonstration at Longfellow Square.
Professor Emeritus of Political Science Oliver Woshinsky was a sought-after commentator on the past election and was interviewed on October 25 by WMTW-TV Channel 8. (No link available.)
Drawing on her personal experience as an undergraduate, President Botman explains the importance of scholar-teachers in the lives of USM’s students. Read her most recent column in the July 23 Portland Press Herald.
USM’s Political Science Student Associate and Associate Professor Ron Schmidt invite the campus community to join them from 8:30 -10:30 p.m. in Room 113 Masterson Hall, Portland as they watch and discuss President Obama’s 2010 State of the Union Address.
For more information, contact Professor Schmidt at 780-4581 or rschmidt@usm.maine.edu .
On November 16, the Bangor Daily News ran an editorial based on this year’s School of Law Coffin Lecture by Kurt L. Schmoke, dean of the Howard University School of Law and former mayor of Baltimore.
Read about Chancellor Pattenaude’s vision for the University of Maine System and his newly released plan in an article that appeared in the September 13 Maine Sunday Telegram and Kennebec Journal.
Other stories about Chancellor Pattenaude’s plans for the UMaine System appeared September 14 in the Bangor Daily News and on Maine Public Radio.
The 21st-Century USM: From President Selma Botman
In order to move USM forward and to meet the educational aspirations of our students, we will continue to make strategic investments so that USM becomes a 21st-century comprehensive institution offering first-rate academic programs relevant to our region and state.
Beginning this fall, students will be able to major in sport management as part of the School of Business bachelor’s degree program in business administration. USM is the first institution in the University of Maine System to offer a sport management major.
You may recall that we started offering a small academic track of sport management courses and internships in the fall of 2007. The number of students interested in this field has burgeoned. Because we expect more than 100 students to register for sport management courses in the fall semester, we are expanding the program into a major. A search also has been initiated for a faculty member who will join us in the fall of 2010. Congratulations to Associate Professor of Sport Management Jo Williams, Dean Jim Shaffer and others who have been involved in building this program. It will be very attractive to students in terms of offering a foundation of business coursework, combined with specialized sport management courses and extensive internships.
Please visit my Web site for official communications on a range of issues. Please don’t hesitate to contact me directly at president@usm.maine.edu. I also invite you to check out my blog at https://blogs.usm.maine.edu/president.
Visit the Student Success Web site.
Last August, in her first opening breakfast, USM President Selma Botman told faculty and staff, “A college education should transform students’ understanding of the world while equipping them with the knowledge and skills to cultivate productive and fulfilling lives after graduation. This is the implicit promise that we make as a university, and it is our obligation to do our best to deliver on that promise.”
One year later—after analysis and a new USM strategic plan that has student success as a core priority—USM has implemented a reorganization that will be an important step toward delivering on that promise.
The reorganization is based on an external review of advising and career planning services and a review of national research on student success, all of which indicated that integrated, collaborative models such as this improve retention and graduation rates. “The reorganization,” said Botman, “is an important effort to refocus our services in support of student success.”
Specifically, the offices of Academic Advising, Career Services and Professional Life Development, and Early Student Success have been reorganized into a single student success center unit on each of our three campuses. Each center is staffed by a coordinator and student success advisors who can address a range of advising and retention issues in a more coordinated and holistic fashion.
All the staff members in advising, career services, and early student success were invited to apply for the coordinators’ and advisers’ positions. Search committees were established and searches were completed in August. The new center coordinators are Paul Dexter, former director of the Office of Early Student Success; Kim-Marie Jenkins, former director of student services and diversity at LAC; and Rodney Mondor, former associate director of advising services.
The Success Center in Gorham will be located in newly renovated space at 119 Bailey Hall. The Portland center will be in 119 Payson Smith, while the center at LAC will be housed in Room 119.
Susan Campbell, associate vice president for academic affairs, led the reorganization effort along with Vice President for Student and University Life Craig Hutchinson, Dean of Student Life Joe Austin, and other staff members. Staff and faculty also served on an implementation committee.
“I believe passionately that this plan will help ensure that more USM students will leave this institution with a degree, the single most important credential they will earn,” said Botman.
It started simply enough. In 1975, a Portland couple toured an exhibit of rare maps at the British Museum in London. Then, while walking down a nearby street, Dr. Harold Osher and his wife, Peggy L. Osher, entered a small map dealer’s shop and on impulse, purchased a map.
Today, more than three decades after that impulse purchase, preparations are underway to celebrate the opening of USM’s newly expanded Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education (OML).
The opening weekend will feature a free, public lecture Friday evening, October 16, on Thoreau’s little known work with maps, presented by the senior cartographic librarian at the Library of Congress; a cartographic conference on Saturday, October 17; and a public grand opening and library tours on Sunday afternoon, October 18. The open house also will mark the opening of the exhibit, “American Treasures.” Check www.usm.maine.edu/maps throughout the fall for details.
The separate, three-story addition to the Glickman Family Library at the corner of Forest Avenue and Bedford St., Portland, is quadruple the space of the old map library. Its features include much-needed storage space; an exhibit hall; the Cohen Education Center (a multi-purpose room for K-12, university, and conference use), a larger reference room with furniture donated by Thos. Moser Cabinet Makers; and a digital reproduction facility. The exterior features 104 panels etched with the Dymaxion Map, a world map created in 1946 by Buckminster Fuller. The 156-by 26-foot map may be the largest such exterior map installation in the world.
The Oshers donated their collection to USM in 1989, where it joined the collection donated three years earlier by the late Lawrence M.C. and Eleanor Houston Smith. Several other generous gifts from individual collectors, notably Professor Peter H. Enggass, Tony Naden, Douglas Yorke, and Charles Carpenter, have substantially augmented the collections. The combined collections currently number more than 300,000 maps, as separate sheets or bound in atlases and books.
The thousands of treasures include a 1475 map of the Holy Land; Christopher Columbus’s letter of 1493 announcing the success of his voyage to the “islands of the India sea”; Captain John Smith’s 1614 map of New England; the first map of the State of Maine from 1820; and a map used in determining the boundaries of the United States of America at the Treaty of Paris in 1782-1783.
OML is considered one of the nation’s premier rare maps library and one with an even an even rarer mission: to share irreplaceable treasures with K-12 students and the general public, as well as with serious scholars and researchers. The Oshers’ passion for collecting and preserving rare maps is equaled only by their passion for sharing them.
OML has not gone unnoticed in the cartographic community. John R. Hebert, chief of the Geography and Map Division of The Library of Congress, says, “The admirable work of that library is well established throughout the country.”
Harold and Peggy Osher put it best. “We always intended that our collection should be shared, not hidden.”
