Upcoming EE Related Free Public Events at Bowdoin College

MEEA Members are invited to these upcoming events at Bowdoin College, all of which are open to the public free of charge:

Meet Your Farmer- a series of 8 short films about farming in Maine
Wednesday, April 4 at 7:30 pm
Searles Hall, room 315.

The evening event will also include remarks by John Piotti, one of Maine’s leading farm advocates, as well as a panel discussion by local farmers.

Released last year by Maine Farmland Trust, these films have now been shown on Maine Public Television and at over sixty venues across the state, but never before at Bowdoin.  The films depict the great diversity of Maine agriculture, while portraying both the challenges and opportunities facing farmers in Maine. The films are the work of Cecily Pingree and Jason Mann, award-winning filmmakers from North Haven.

John Piotti, executive director of Maine Farmland Trust, will introduce the films by providing an overview of what’s happening within farming in Maine. Piotti is uniquely qualified for this task, having worked at the forefront of agricultural issues in Maine for seventeen years.  Outside of Maine, Piotti has served as chairman of the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Working Group (NESAWG) and a director of the National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture. In 2005, Piotti was one of only eight Americans awarded a prestigious Eisenhower Fellowship, which he used to study sustainable agriculture in Europe.

Following the films, Piotti will moderate audience questions addressed to a panel of local farmers and food supporters.   

The New Politics of Parenthood: Family, Citizenship and Inequality in America Today

A Symposium to examine the role of family and parenthood in the nation’s current atmosphere of extreme social inequality and extreme political partisanship
Thursday & Friday, April 5-6, 2012
Main and Lancaster Lounges, Moulton UnionFamily and the Reproduction of Class: Keynote address by: June Carbone, Author of Red Families v Blue Families, Edward A. Smith/Missouri Chair of Law, University of Missouri-Kansas City (Thursday, 7:30 pm), and
How Children Succeed: Schools, Parents, and the Cultivation of Character: Lecture by Paul Tough, Author of Whatever it Takes Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America, and editor of the New York Times Magazine. Mr. Tough is a leading author on poverty, education and the achievement gap (Friday 12:30 pm).

Today the way people parent - when they have children and how they raise them - closely correlates both to social class and to political loyalties.  Many commentators believe that that the nation is "splitting apart" into two groups with different kinds of families.  They believe that differences in parenting, especially the rise in single parenthood among low income groups, is the driving force behind this growing inequality.  They wonder how public policy might address it, and how we might agree on a strategy to adopt.

The New Politics of Parenthood examines both the premises of this debate, and the political difficulties of finding solutions.  Bringing together scholars and leaders of organizations confronting the problems of poverty, the symposium will address the fundamental questions:  What is the role of family and parenthood in creating the profound inequality that marks America today?  And do our ideas about family make it harder to find political solutions to the problems of inequality?

For more information, see the webpage: bowdoin.edu/coastal-studies-center

The Redneck Legacy: King Coal and Appalachian Activism, 1912-2012Thursday, April 5, 7:00 pm
Smith Auditorium, Sills Hall
Bowdoin College

Chuck Keeney—a local activist, and labor and environmental justice historian from West Virginia—discusses the impacts of mountaintop removal mining, what the people of Appalachia are doing to stop it, and how we can help here in Maine.

Dr. C. Belmont (Chuck) Keeney is the great-grandson of Frank Keeney (president of the United Mine Workers of America in West Virginia from 1917-1924 and a leader in the 1921 Armed March on Blair Mountain). In 2011, Dr. Keeney, acting chair of the Friends of Blair Mountain, helped organize a protest reenactment of the 1921 march in an attempt to save the battlefield from the practice of mountaintop removal.

Sponsored by the McKeen Center for the Common Good, the Environmental Studies Program, the Departments of History and Sociology & Anthropology, and the Natural Resources Council of Maine.


Mother: Caring for 7 Billion (film screening)
Friday, April 6th, 7pm
Smith Auditorium, Sills Hall

There will be a showing of the film Mother: Caring for 7 Billion, the award winning film about the impact on people and the Earth posed by human's growing population. The film breaks a 40-year taboo by bringing to light an issue that silently fuels our largest environmental, humanitarian and social crises - population growth. Since the 1960s the world population has nearly doubled, adding more than 3 billion people. At the same time, talking about population has become politically incorrect because of the sensitivity of the issues surrounding the topic- religion, economics, family planning and gender inequality. The film illustrates both the over consumption and the inequity side of the population issue by following Beth, a mother, a child-rights activist and the last sibling of a large American family of twelve, as she discovers the thorny complexities of the population dilemma and highlights a different path to solve it. Click here to watch the trailer for the movie.

We are excited to be able to partner with Brunswick community members and so many groups at Bowdoin. The supporting departments and organizations at Bowdoin include: Bowdoin Film Society, Environmental Studies Program, Green Bowdoin, Hillel, McKeen Center for the Common Good, Muslim Student's Association, Sustainable Bowdoin, Women's Resource Center.
(SAVE THE DATE) John Rooks and Sustainable Organization Advocacy PartnersEvent Sponsored by Bowdoin Green Global Initiatives
Thursday, April 19^th 7:30 pm
ES Commons Room, Adams Hall

Green Global Initiatives is excited to have John Rooks, Founder of The Soap Group, come to campus on Thursday April 19th.  The Soap Group, which stands for Sustainable Organization Advocacy Partners, works with organizations, governments, and companies across the globe such as Cliff Bar, the World Bank Institute, the state of Maine and Clynk. The consulting group helps them to "understand, improve, communicate, and own their impact in the world" through a "holistic-systemic approach to sustainability."  John Rooks will be speaking about his experiences with these organizations and his career path in sustainability.

Johns Rooks is the Founder and President of The SOAP Group, author of the book More Than Promote – A Monkeywrencher’s Guide to Authentic Marketing, and a frequent speaker and writer about the intersection of sustainability, language and culture. With nearly 20 years of experience in the environmental and business consulting space, John has worked for an environmental engineering firm, an environmental compliance software company, and as a partner at an ad agency. John is also an adjunct professor of marketing and writing theory, and has consulted with Fortune 500 companies, the federal government and international NGOs on sustainability and business. John is husband to one, father of two and nerds out on zombie movies. He is currently writing his next book - an expose on the seedy underbelly of sustainability consulting.

Click here to go to the SOAP Group website

 

 

Rosemary Armstrong

Environmental Studies Program Coordinator

Coastal Studies Program Coordinator

Bowdoin College

6700 College Station

Brunswick, ME  04011

Phone: 207-725-3396

Fax: 207-725-3989

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MEEA members... Celebrate EE Week!
 
Educator Webinar: Field Investigations and STEM
Wednesday, March 28 at 7:00 p.m. EDT

  

EE Week is partnering with the Association of Fish & Wildlife Agencies (AFWA) and the Pacific Education Institute (PEI) to explore how the schoolyard or local public land can provide students with the opportunity to be scientists using the skills and knowledge of inquiry to collect real-world data.  

Webinar participants will learn how to engage students in STEM education outside, utilizing nature as a laboratory, by planning, conducting and evaluating a field investigation.   

go to http://www.neefusa.org/ for more info!

MEEA 2012 Award Winners in the News!

MEEA 2012 Award winners were highlighted in the Bangor Daily News...congratulations to our award winners!  See the great article below:

MEEA BDN Awards Article

Environmental education awards target sustainability projects

By Christopher Cousins, BDN Staff

Posted March 22, 2012, at 2:23 p.m.

PORTLAND, Maine — An ambitious student-led project to conserve energy at Lincoln Middle School in Portland is among the award-winners being announced Friday at the Maine Environmental Educators Association’s annual conference in Wiscasset.
Fran Rudoff, executive director of an organization called the KIDS Consortium, said projects such as the one at Lincoln Middle School are part of a wider emphasis by the consortium and other organizations on STEM education, which stands for science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
Students at the school studied the use of paper towels and hand-dryers to determine the school’s carbon footprint and which option would be more environmentally friendly. After research on a paper towel’s life cycle, they chose to purchase high-efficiency dryers, the newest of which were installed earlier this month. The students calculated that the hand-dryers will reduce the school’s carbon dioxide emissions by more than 122 kilograms a year.
Lincoln Middle School Principal Steve Nolan said the hand-dryer project was the latest of several energy conservation projects undertaken by students at the school. Among the others were heat conservation methods such as the installation of weather stripping, a conversion to motion-sensing light switches, the mounting of solar panels to generate electricity powered by the sun, and new cafeteria practices, including doing away with styrofoam trays in favor of wax-cardboard containers.
Students also have begun a composting operation to supplement a vegetable garden at the school. Nolan said projects such as these interest students because they go beyond the classroom into real-world applications.
“It’s a chance for them to apply the skills they’re learning in class and to learn in an integrated way,” he said.
Rudoff said that aside from the education benefits, these projects have a significant impact on the school’s budget and environmental friendliness.
“They’ve been making a huge impact,” said Rudoff.
The Maine Environmental Education Association will bestow the awards on Friday at the Chewonki Foundation in Wiscasset. Other than Lincoln Middle School, the winners include:
• Oakhurst Dairy, Business of the Year, representing the first for-profit business ever recognized by the association. Oakhurst is being recognized for its long-term commitment to sustainability, for reducing its carbon footprint and for its charitable contributions to environmental education in Maine.
• The Kennebec Land Trust, Excellence in Environmental Education program award. The land trust is being recognized for its mission of working with landowners in central Maine to conserve land, support sustainable forestry and farming and educate the public.
• Joanne DeFilipp Alex, lead teacher at the Stillwater Montessori School in Old Town, winner of the 2012 Eberhard Thiele Environmental Educator of the Year Award. DeFilipp Alex, who was Maine’s 1998 Teacher of the Year, has served for 20 years as a facilitator for Project Learning Tree and Project Wild and has written books on environmental education.

MEEA Announces 2012 Award Winners...

The Maine Environmental Education Association (MEEA) will announce the winners of its annual environmental education awards recognizing this year's most outstanding environmental educator, school, business and environmental program in the state of Maine. These awards will be announced at MEEA's annual conference on Friday, March 23^rd at the Chewonki Foundation in Wiscasset, Maine at 8:30 a.m. Winners for 2012 include:

• Oakhurst Dairy: The Maine Environmental Education Association Business of Year
• Lincoln Middle School, Portland, ME: The Maine Environmental Education Association School of the Year
• Kennebec Land Trust: The Excellence in Environmental Education Program Award
• Joanne DeFilipp Alex: Eberhard Thiele Environmental Educator of the Year

Oakhurst Dairy is the first for profit business to be recognized by the Maine Environmental Education Association and will receive the Business of the Year award. In 2012, MEEA added for profit business to its award categories. Oakhurst is being recognized for its endless work on improving the company’s sustainability, reducing its carbon footprint, and its generous charitable contributions to environmental education, outdoor education and conservation associations in the state of Maine.

Lincoln Middle School, of Portland, Maine, the winner of the Maine Environmental Education Association School of the Year, is being recognized for its whole-school efforts to reduce its carbon footprint and increase the school's energy efficiency through student-led service learning projects.

The Kennebec Land Trust, the winner of the Maine Environmental Education Association’s Excellence in Environmental Education Program Award, is being recognized for so aptly upholding its mission to work cooperatively with landowners and communities to conserve lands in central Maine, support sustainable forestry and farming, and to educate the public about the natural world.

Joanne DeFilipp Alex, a lead teacher at the Stillwater Montessori School in Old Town, Maine is the winner of MEEA's 2012 Eberhard Thiele Environmental Educator of the Year award. Joanne, a former Maine Teacher of the Year (1998), is an inspirational teacher who instills a love of nature in her students. She is also dedicated to teaching other teachers and pre-service teachers in Maine about environmental education. For over 20 years she has served as a facilitator for Project Learning Tree and Project Wild. She has authored books on environmental education, taught related college courses, and has inspired many students, teachers and parents to become stewards of their environment.

This year’s MEEA conference, “Building Partnerships for Sustainable Communities: Gathering the Usual and Unusual Suspects,” is the key gathering of environmental educators around the state but will also feature conservation organization staff, health advocates, business leaders, governmental agencies, outdoor recreation groups and the agriculture industry. MEEA’s goal for the conference is to expand beyond the typical environmental education audience, integrating all sectors in recognition that the success of our communities relies on a healthy, active, engaged and environmentally literate population.

The awards ceremony will take place at the Chewonki Foundation, located at 485 Chewonki Neck Road Wiscasset, ME 04578. In case of inclement weather, the conference will be held on Saturday, March 24, 2012, at Chewonki.

For more information about MEEA and environmental education in Maine, please explore MEEA’s website at http://www.meeassociation.org/ and MEEA’s blog at http://maineeeassociation.blogspot.com/.

For any questions, please contact MEEA's award chairperson Olivia Griset at 207-232-6964 or oliviagriset@yahoo.com.

Richard Louv Speaking in Maine this Month!

Hello MEEA Members and Friends-

Just wanted to invite you to a much anticipated event....

Best selling author Richard Louv, 

 Last Child in the Woods: Saving Children from Nature Deficit Disorder

University of New England

Friday, March 30th, at 7pm Alfond 205

Richard Louv is an award-winning journalist and author of eight books about the connections between family, nature and community, including Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder and The Nature Principle. 

Book signings will take place after the lecture, and book copies will be available for purchase.

Sponsored by UNE’s Earth’s ECO and the Education Club

Don't Forget to Sign Up for the 2012 MEEA Conference!

Hello MEEA Members and Friends...
Just a reminder that our upcoming conference is happening March 23rd-next week-can you believe it is already that time of year again?  If you have not registered there are still a few slots available but the conference is filling up fast.  It should be a great conference this year!  Visit our website to register ASAP!