Three area teachers have been chosen to join a summer exchange program to study regional identity in Maine and Mississippi.

Jackie Bachman, American studies teacher at Mount Desert Island High School, Lynda A. Duplissea, English teacher at Calais High School and Elizabeth Lowe, social studies teacher at Union Elementary School, and 12 other Maine teachers, together with 15 teachers from Mississippi, will study at the University of Southern Maine at Gorham in July and at the University of Mississippi during the summer in 1996. During the third year, three teachers from both states will trade classrooms for a month.

The teachers will study northern and southern writers, politicians, musicians, artists and Civil War heroes.

The program was funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and organized by the Maine Collaborative, the American and New England Studies Program at the University of Southern Maine and the Center for the Study of Southern Culture in Oxford, Miss., with help from the Maine Humanities Council.