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Scholastic Art Awards

Artists from Bangor High School and George Stevens Academy in Castine will be honored during the awards ceremony for the Regional Scholastic Art Awards.

The event will be hosted by the Maine College of Art at 1 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 21, in the Porteous Building at 522 Congress St. in Portland.

This year’s art awards brought 364 submissions from 305 young artists representing 11 middle schools and 52 high schools.

Gold award winners proceed to the national awards and compete for more than $1 million in scholarships.

The event also will honor Congressional District Art Award winners, whose work will hang in Washington, D.C., for one year.

The winner for District One is Than Nguyen of Portland High School. District Two’s winner is Megan Glass of Mount Desert Island High School.

A Web site featuring images of award-winning work is at www.meca.edu/scholastics

Bangor High School:

. Flynn Linehan, grade 12, Gold Award.

. Harry Kohles, grade 12, Merit Award.

. India Menninghaus, grade 12, Merit Award.

George Stevens Academy, Castine:

. Jennifer Olivari, grade 12, Gold Award.

. Hannah Gray, grade 12, Merit Award.

. Annika Treyball, grade 10, Merit Award.

Choir, chorale concert

BANGOR – The Bangor Area Children’s Treble Choir and Youth Chorale will present the community with their winter concert at 7 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 21, at First United Methodist Church, 703 Essex St.

The treble choir has 31 youths, and the youth chorale 20 young people. Michele Hall is the director, and Yvonne Drake the accompanist.

The concert is open to the public. Donations will be accepted.

Learning about water

BANGOR – The Maine Discovery Museum will offer an extended weekend of fun and learning about water during Water Weekend, Saturday through Monday, Jan. 14-16.

“Learn about fresh water quality and responsible water use, an all-important matter in our typical hands-on engaging way,” said Trudi Plummer, director of education.

Get up close and personal with H2O. How well do you know your water? Where does water go in the community after it rains or thaws? What affects it? What does the best water taste like? Participants in the program will surf through these watery questions and more with the help of Michael Dennett, a local graduate student and AmeriCorps volunteer.

Dennett will bring with him a traveling exhibit about water. He will facilitate special activities about water geared to all ages, including a game called Be a Drop of Water, which allows kids to move along to various stations where they will learn more about where water ends up, and what that journey is like.

While considering current water quality and splish-splashing through the ways to develop habits of responsible water use, the activities will help everyone move toward improving the quality of water.

Activities begin at 11 a.m., 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 14; 1 and 2 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 15; 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Monday, Jan. 16. All activities are free with museum admission.

Watch for a new Web site design at www.mainediscoverymuseum.org. Call Jennifer Chiarell at 262-7200 for more information.

College Goal Sunday

ORONO – College Goal Sunday, at 2 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 29, is a free group seminar to provide parents and students of all ages with assistance in completing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) form required for all state and federal financial aid programs, including loans.

The seminar is sponsored by the Finance Authority of Maine in cooperation with Maine Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, Maine Educational Opportunity Association, Maine’s TRIO programs, and GEAR UP. For more information, including directions, visit www.collegegoalsundaymaine.com/, or call FAME toll-free at (800) 228-3734.

The College Goal Sunday location in the Bangor area is the University of Maine gym in Orono.

Environmental education

Environmental educator Michael Dennett wants to teach local classes and groups about storm-water runoff. Dennett uses hands-on models and interactive activities to show how runoff from lawns, rooftops and driveways pollutes streams and rivers via storm drains. His program introduces practices and habits that can keep local waterways cleaner.

The Natural Resources Defense Council names runoff one of the worst sources of water contamination – worse than factories and sewage plants. Storm-water runoff collects dangerous bacteria, toxic chemicals, soil and garbage on its way to area waterways.

Dennett is an AmeriCorps volunteer working for University of Maine Cooperative Extension and the Bangor Area Storm Water group.

Focusing primarily on Bangor, Old Town, Orono, Milford, Veazie, Hampden and Brewer, he is seeking schools, teachers, environmental groups, home-school groups, Scouts or other local organizations that want to include watershed and storm-water education in their curriculum or activities. Program activities can be aligned with Maine Learning Results.

Dennett is available through August to do one-time visits, or regular sessions that incorporate more specific aspects of water and water pollution, with the possibility of service-learning activities through a spring stream clean-up or other volunteer service projects.

His programs are tailored to grades five through seven, but can be adjusted to other age groups. Contact Dennett at 581-3213 for more information.

Colleges

Cornerstone University

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. – Jared Davis of Brewer was named to the dean’s list at Cornerstone University.

Johnson & Wales University

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Named to the dean’s list at Johnson & Wales University were:

. Elizabeth Strout of Bangor.

. Kathryn Morgan of Hudson.

. John Garrity of Old Town.

Strout is pursuing a degree in advertising communications, Morgan is pursuing a degree in culinary arts and Garrity is pursuing a degree in sports entertainment event management.

New England School of Communications

BANGOR – In a move termed “long overdue” by faculty adviser Dave MacLaughlin, the New England School of Communications has formed a chapter of the Audio Engineering Society to provide additional perspectives in a field that has become increasingly attractive to students of the school.

At an organizational meeting the students elected Justin Baker of Caribou as chairman, Gordon Fellis of Lamoine and Veazie as vice chairman, Theresa Dziezyk of Swans Island as secretary and Ben Smith-Poulin of Lisbon Falls as treasurer.

The club hopes to provide its members with connections in the audio engineering field and will seek to attract leaders in the industry as featured speakers at group meetings. Advisers for the club are NESCom faculty members David MacLaughlin and Doug Hoyt.

The 36 students present at the organizational meeting viewed a presentation by Bret Johnson of Bangor, a recent NESCom graduate, who received one of two honorable mention awards at the annual meeting of the International Audio Engineering Society in New York City. Johnson recorded and mixed the song “Simply You” by local singer Nigel Hall and entered it in the society’s student recording competition.

His citation was one of five given by the society in the competition of 100 students from all over the world.

The club members also heard from guest speaker Lincoln Clapp, who owns his own production company in midcoast Maine and specializes in re-mastering audio for 5.1 sound. He also has worked for Media Sound Studios in New York with a legendary group of performers ranging from Whitney Houston to the Ramones.

Norwich University

NORTHFIELD, Vt. – Blake Civiello of Bangor, Luke Nabozny of Bangor, Brian Groshon of Hampden, Michael Peverada of Hampden, Paul Gillett of Orono and Kate McLean of Orrington have been named to the dean’s list for the fall semester at Norwich University.

University of Maine

ORONO – The University of Maine’s J. Franklin Witter Center has developed hay rebaling technology that promises to raise profits for Maine hay producers and increase hay availability for livestock owners.

Hay producers like to harvest hay in large round bales, rather than small rectangular (known as “square”) bales, because round bales allow them to harvest and store hay with minimal cost and labor.

A single person can often bale and store all of the hay grown on an average Maine farm with round bale harvesting. The drawback is that these large bales average about 750 pounds, making them difficult to handle, transport, sell and use as feed.

Small-scale livestock owners who buy hay like small, square bales averaging 40 pounds, even though they cost more per pound, because these bales can be picked up and handled manually. Yet it costs hay growers an estimated 60 percent more to bale hay this way.

The technology being tested at UM’s Witter Center is used in feeding the farm’s horses. It allows easily harvested and stored large hay bales to be remade into small square bales as needed. Preliminary trials suggest that the rebaling process costs considerably less than baling square bales in the field, and could result in a projected increased revenue for hay growers of about $105 an acre.

James Leiby, University of Maine, and Donna Lamb, UM Cooperative Extension, discussed this “value-added” hay marketing concept on Jan. 10 at the Agricultural Trades Show at the Augusta Civic Center.

University of Maine

ORONO – The University of Maine School of Performing Arts’ Music Division has created a new jazz studies minor, to be introduced in the fall of 2006.

Karel Lidral, associate professor of music and director of jazz studies, said the new program will substantially round out music performance and music education students’ preparation, plus it will offer nonmusic majors immersion in improvisation, piano and jazz arranging for piano and virtually any other instrument.

The minor will consist of 19 credit hours in: Jazz improvisation; chamber jazz arranging and piano; jazz history; and the performance of jazz in the university’s newly formed Chamber Jazz Ensemble and, optionally for up to two credits, the Jazz Ensemble.

The School of Performing Arts offers bachelor’s degrees in music, music education and performance, a master of music degree and a minor in music.

Additionally, the curriculum includes teaching arranging skills for piano, as well as sufficient piano skills for the performance of arrangements created in the coursework.

Music majors, particularly those who do not play saxophone, trumpet, trombone, piano, bass, drums or vibes, rarely have any background or opportunity in jazz, said Lidral.