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Junior Achievement grant

BANGOR – Junior Achievement of Maine, a nonprofit economic education organization providing young people with real life experience from local business leaders, has received a pledge of $35,000 from the Galen Cole Family Foundation. The gift is funded through its Junior Achievement program with participating Maine schools. Junior Achievement of Maine will aim to raise an additional $70,000 in matching funds during the fiscal year.

“We are very appreciative of the generosity extended by the Galen Cole Family Foundation and motivated by our shared mission of raising student aspirations here in Maine,” said Melissa Rector Bourque, president of Junior Achievement of Maine. “We will gratefully accept this seed money from the Galen Cole Family Foundation. With vigor, we will pursue doubling the funds to extend their gift even further, best putting it to work for Maine’s young people. Today, donor gifts need to be stretched as far as they can. Simply put, the economy demands it and our students deserve it.”

John Simpson, chief executive officer of the foundation, said, “The Galen Cole Family Foundation has long been active in the role of challenging our young people and helping build aspirations. These Maine students are our creative doers and builders of a bright future for themselves and our community. We strongly believe in the mission of Junior Achievement of Maine – they are the right organization to partner with for achieving this goal. And we know that our expanded program will go far with them.”

The Galen Cole Family Foundation challenge will make a contribution of up to $35,000 to participating schools for Junior Achievement of Maine during its fiscal year July 1, 2008-June 30, 2009. Junior Achievement will then pursue $70,000 in matching funds as contributions from new contributors or in increases from existing donors. The Cole Foundation will finance Junior Achievement of Maine classes for kindergarten through high school when the students visit the Cole Land Transportation Museum in Bangor.

Mainers, particularly in the Bangor area, know the Cole Family Foundation for its Cole Land Transportation Museum and the Ambassadors to Patriotism veteran-student interview program. These programs were developed with the deep devotion to serve community and country. In addition, the foundation has participated in a variety of causes and programs to raise student aspirations.

The foundation is no stranger to economic education for Maine’s students. Gary Cole, son of Galen Cole, first developed a personal finance curriculum for middle and high school students in the area a number of years ago. Gary Cole’s classroom program, which he and other community members taught, was the first business-offered economic program of its kind in the area.

Junior Achievement of Maine’s economic education programs include in-school programs that address work readiness, entrepreneurship and financial literacy. A series of activities focused on specific topics are led by a volunteer from the business community. A personal connection is made to what the students are learning in school and how those skills are applied in the workplace.

Arts grants

The Maine Community Foundation invites elementary school teachers in Penobscot County to apply for support to work with a professional artist to bring arts into classrooms.

The Leonard and Renee Minsky Fund for Arts Education will grant five $1,000 awards. Applications must be postmarked by Thursday, Jan. 15.

Complete guidelines and applications are available at www.mainecf.org.

The fund’s advisory committee is particularly interested in funding innovative and collaborative projects with professional artists from the visual and-or performing arts, including film, video and other media, theater arts, music, dance and creative writing.

In 2007, elementary schools in Corinna, Glenburn and Bangor received funding for projects in puppetry, pottery, African dance, dance fitness and theater.

The fund benefits elementary schools in Penobscot County in odd years and Washington County in even years.

To discuss an idea before submitting a proposal, contact Pam Cleghorn at 761-2440 or e-mail pcleghorn@mainecf.org.

Colleges

Indexing UM yearbooks

ORONO – Visitors can browse digital pages from every University of Maine Prism Yearbook from 1894 to 1997, but volunteers are entering data that will make the UMaine Yearbooks Online Web site, www.library.umaine.edu/yearbooks, searchable by name and year of senior class.

After the first phase of scanning and editing of images was finished for the Raymond H. Fogler Library Web site, people began asking whether the information would be fully text-searchable.

As the volumes are primarily graphic in nature, the staff found it prohibitively labor-intensive to offer full text searchability. However, an effort to create a name index began with the test of a pilot page for the class of 1949. All 794 names were entered into an initial database and tested. After assessing the potential for this added feature, the library put out a call for volunteers via the project Web site.

“We were delighted when Brian Bouchard of earlyMaine.org came forward,” said Sharon Quinn Fitzgerald, head of the technical services department at Fogler Library. “Brian not only offered to contribute to entering data for the index, he offered his considerable programming skills to provide a database front end that eases the way for volunteer participation.”

As a result of this successful partnership, volunteers have indexed the seniors for the years 1894 through 1940 in addition to the original 1949 project. This information already is available to the public through the Fogler Library Web portal and the earlyMaine.org Web site.

“We think this community project will be of great interest and value to genealogists as well as UMaine alumni and friends, and there is more work to be done,” notes Fitzgerald. Anyone with computer access can participate from any location.

Those interested in volunteering may e-mail Brian Bouchard at brian@earlyMaine.org or register through the Web at http://library.umaine.edu/yearbooks/VolunteerearlyMaine.htm.

Maine Maritime Academy

CASTINE – Jenna Algee of Bangor was named a Henry A. Scheel Scholar at Maine Maritime Academy. The academic honor is awarded for exemplifying intellectual curiosity and academic achievement. The scholarship was presented at the college’s Celebration of Achievement on Nov. 6.

Algee, a graduate of Bangor High School and in her third year at MMA, is majoring in marine biology.

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CASTINE – Maine Maritime Academy will hold an open house for prospective students and their parents on Saturday, Dec. 6. Registration will take place 7:30-8:30 a.m. in the Harold Alfond Student Center. A continental breakfast and lunch are free to all participants.

Jeffrey C. Wright, director of admissions, and other college officers will conduct programs on academic majors, extracurricular activities and options in student lifestyles. Representatives will lead tours of the campus, waterfront facilities and college vessels. To make a reservation, call 800-464-6565.

EPA Fellowship for Mainer

ORONO – A University of Maine student in the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences is one of 22 students in the United States to receive a Greater Research Opportunities Fellowship from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Jamie Young of Portland received one of only two awards granted in New England for her research regarding potential exposure of the general public to hexavalent chromium and arsenic, two environmental pollutants known to be lung carcinogens.

Her research will focus on developing a model for understanding the toxic interactions between these environmental contaminants that commonly are found in drinking water. Young’s study, which she is conducting at the University of Southern Maine’s Wise Laboratory of Environmental and Genetic Toxicology, is slated to run through Aug. 31, 2011.

The Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences offers a doctoral degree in biomedical sciences and is a collaboration of UM, USM, The Jackson Laboratory, Maine Medical Center Research Institute, Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory, University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine, and Eastern Maine Healthcare’s Maine Institute for Human Genetics.

EPA supports several fellowship programs as a way to address the country’s environmental work force needs.

EPA’s Greater Research Opportunities Fellowship program helps build environmental studies programs at universities with limited funding for research and development. A total of 156 applicants competed this year for 22 fellowships.

Since 1995, EPA has awarded more than 2,200 fellowships. Applications for EPA’s fellowship programs are peer-reviewed. Graduate fellows receive up to $37,000 a year to complete their degrees. The undergraduate fellowship provides up to $17,000 per year of academic support and up to $7,500 of internship support for summer.

UM Hutchinson Center

BELFAST – More than $13,000 in scholarships has been awarded this semester to Hutchinson Center students. The University of Maine Hutchinson Center in Belfast and numerous donors offer scholarship opportunities.

Receiving Hutchinson Center United Mid-Coast Charities Scholarships are Andrea Bozzino, Winterport; Erin Bridges, Prospect; and Angela Lyford, Hudson.

Nancy Sosman of Frankfort was chosen for the Harris B. and Ann Bixler Scholarship.

Registration is under way for spring classes, most beginning the week of Jan. 13. Scholarships are available for the new semester. Call 338-8000, toll-free 800-753-9044 or stop in at 80 Belmont Ave., Route 3.

UM glacier studies

ORONO – Using nearly 50 years of data, University of Maine researchers have determined that subglacial floods in East Antarctica caused a rapid and short-lived acceleration of a major outlet glacier.

Leigh Stearns and Gordon Hamilton of UM’s Climate Change Institute, along with Benjamin Smith of the University of Washington, observed that the flow rate of a large outlet glacier in East Antarctica increased by about 10 percent in response to the flooding of two subglacial lakes.

The team’s findings are based on a 48-year record of ice velocities along Byrd Glacier, East Antarctica, along with recent satellite observations of ice surface elevation and ice velocities from NASA’s Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer instrument on NASA’s Terra satellite; the Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite; and Landsat; as well as SPOT and Japan’s Advanced Land Observing Satellite. They have been reported in a Nature Geoscience paper.

“We saw that there was this very rapid acceleration of the glacier that we didn’t initially have an explanation for,” Hamilton said.

It wasn’t until Stearns presented these observations at a conference last year that they recognized the connection between the glacier acceleration and the subglacial drainage event.

“After my presentation,” said Stearns, “Ben [Smith, co-author] and I compared the timing of the flooding event that he measured and the acceleration of Byrd Glacier and were excited to find that they occurred at roughly the same time.”

The increase in ice flow speed coincides with rapid changes in ice surface elevation about 200 kilometers upstream, which the research team interprets as the filling and draining of two subglacial lakes.

“Our work shows that the speed of the glacier can change by a very large amount,” Hamilton said. “It only lasted for a year, but if the same process happens again at a larger scale, sea level could rise much quicker.”

For the past year, some of the team’s colleagues have been mapping subglacial lakes and discovered that they are quite prevalent.

“Our understanding of why they occur is minimal,” Hamilton said, noting that it previously was thought that these lakes were stable and relatively inactive. “The more we look, the more we see that these lakes fill up and drain.”

“One of the implications of this work,” said Stearns, “is that the addition of even a small amount of water to the bottom of a glacier can cause significant acceleration. While the changes taking place on Byrd Glacier are not caused by climate-driven processes, they highlight the sensitivity of glaciers to small changes.”

Future investigations are expected to look at other subglacial lakes to measure their activity and determine how to include subglacial flooding in current ice sheet models for more accurate predictions of sea level changes.

“We need to include all the important processes that cause the ice sheets to grow and shrink,” Hamilton said.

Advanced Training

Forest Ranger Academy

VASSALBORO – The 2008 Maine Forest Ranger Academy graduation ceremony was held on Nov. 14 at the Maine Criminal Justice Academy.

About 60 people turned out to congratulate Maine’s nine newest forest rangers – including one ranger pilot – who completed 10 weeks of strenuous training.

Featured speakers included Commissioner Patrick McGowan of the Maine Department of Conservation; R. Alec Giffen, Maine Forest Service director; and Bill Williams, state supervisor of Forest Protection Operations.

Forest Ranger Samuel Heffner, class president, gave remarks. Valedictorian for the class was Forest Ranger William Barnum.

The students are assigned to the these patrol areas: William Barnum, Hay Lake; Lisa Byers, Norridgewock; Wesley Hatch, Passadumkeag; Samuel Heffner, Jackman; Ryan Maker, Lee; Lincoln Mazzei, ranger pilot based out of Old Town; Josh Noyes, Topsfield; Dustin Pickering, Greenville; Aliesha Rautenburg, Jefferson.

Courses at the Ranger Academy ranged from wildfire suppression and investigation to general law enforcement, enforcing environmental laws and investigating timber theft. Most of the forest rangers were hired two or three years ago, but due to law enforcement training requirements, completed the Forest Ranger Academy this fall. The last academy was held in 2004.