USM Public Affairs

SARAH SCHINDLER, professor of law, presented her article, “Of Backyard Chickens and Front Yard Gardens: The Conflict Between Local Governments and Locavores,” at the Association of Law, Property and Society meeting at Georgetown University Law Center in March. She also presented the article at Albany Law School’s Northeast Regional Scholarship and Teaching Development Workshop in February, and again at Florida State University College of Law’s Faculty Workshop Series in March.

BRENDA SCHERTZ, lecturer in linguistics, presented at the ASL Fest in Austin, TX in March.

MARTIN ROGOFF, professor of law, recently became a member of the Comitato di Direzione (Editorial Board) of the series Le Frontiere del Diritto (Frontiers of the Law), published by G. Giappichelli Editore, an Italian publishing house based in Italy. The series consists of 20 volumes, and Rogoff will contribute four on the topic of direct democracy.

BRYNN RILEY, Muskie research associate, and GHASSAN SALEH, Muskie research associate, are the manager and coordinator of the Performance Improvement Team, respectively. The team recently completed nine quality improvement projects and related storyboards as part of a partnership with the Maine Center for Disease Control (CDC) on a federal CDC Public Health Infrastructure Grant.

JASON READ, associate professor of philosophy, presented “’His Subconscious is Militarized’: Mapping Inception” in March on the USM Portland campus.

FIROOZA PAVRI, associate professor of geography, have her co-authored article, “Assessing Land Use and Riparian Buffers along Maine’s Presumpscot Watershed Using Landsat Thematic Mapper,” published in the 2011 Northeastern Geographer. Pavri also published “Institutional Contexts, Forest Resources, and Local Communities in Western India: A Gendered Analysis” in a special issue of the Journal of Resources, Energy and Development (Vol. 8, No. 2) that focused on the forests of South Asia. Along with VINTON VALENTINE, director of geography and anthropology GIS lab, and ABRAHAM DAILEY, Muskie student, Pavri authored “Integrating Multispectral ASTER and LIDAR Data to Characterize Coastal Wetland Landscapes in the Northeastern United States.” The article was published in the December 2011 special issue of Geocarto International (Vol. 26, No. 8).

DAVID OWEN, professor of law, has been contributing posts every other week on environmental law issues to the Environmental Law Professor Blog, a member of the Law Professor Blogs Network. To read some of Owen’s contributions, visit the Professor Blog online. Owen presented his article, “Mapping, Modeling, and the Fragmentation of Environmental Law,” at the Association of Law, Property, and Society annual meeting at Georgetown University Law Center, and “Critical Habitat and the Challenge of Regulating Small Harms” to the United States Department of Justice, Environment and Natural Resources Division, Washington D.C., both in March.

CHARLES NORCHI, professor of law, addressed the Gignoux Inn of Court on International Law and Maritime Piracy on February 7. Norchi delivered four Oceans Law Lectures at City University of Hong Kong, from January 31 to February 4.

SAMUEL MERRILL, Muskie director of the New England environmental finance center, presented “Coastal Adaptation to Sea Level Rise Tool (COAST)” in January and February, once for a workshop run by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council at the Peabody Institute Library in Danvers, Mass., and again at the “Sea Level Rise Planning for Bayside in Portland: A Community Discussion” at the USM Wishcamper Center. COAST helps municipalities visualize the costs and benefits of adaptation actions they might undertake in response to the combined threats of sea level rise and storm surge.

MARK LAPPING, Muskie executive director, presented his work, “What’s Eating Maine? An Excursion Into the Local Food System,” in February at the USM Glickman Family Library as part of the L.L. Bean/Lee Surace Colloquium Series. In January, Lapping presented “Understanding Maine’s Food System: Life at the End of the Pipeline” at the Lewiston Public Library as part of the Great Falls Forum lecture series.