The Harward Center for Community Partnerships has awarded three Publicly Engaged Academic Project grants to Bates faculty members, the first of two rounds of awards for 2007-08. These “PEAP” grants are designed to offer faculty and staff significant support for publicly engaged teaching, research, cultural and other community projects. In the current round, three faculty-led projects received grants totaling $11,223.

“The diversity of the projects funded by these grants underscores the creativity with which Bates faculty link public engagement to their teaching, research and artistic work,” noted David Scobey, director of the Harward Center. “These grants fund work in dance, cultural studies and environmental research. The range of publicly engaged academic work represented in these grants is impressive.”

The three PEAP recipients and their proposals are:

• Myron Beasley, visiting assistant professor of American cultural studies and African American studies, for “What Androscoggin County Eats,” a Short Term course that will investigate local foodways across different cultural communities and stage a “performative meal” at the Bates Mill in partnership with Museum L-A;

• Carol Dilley, assistant professor of dance, for “FAB: Franco-American Bates Dance Showcase,” a regional dance showcase co-produced by the Bates dance program and the Franco-American Heritage Center, including Bates student dancers and leading Maine choreographers and presenters;

• Mike Retelle, professor of geology, for “An Environmental Archive of Seawall Beach,” which will pair Bates students and Midcoast conservation advocates to monitor and research the historical effects of climate and tidal changes on beach, dune and salt marsh ecosystems at the beach near Bates-Morse Mountain Conservation Area.

“It’s exciting that these projects not only connect faculty with community partners, but also involve Bates students in important public work,” Scobey said. “I’m proud that the PEAP grants can support such innovative parts of the Bates education.”

The Harward Center has offered the second round of PEAP grants for this year. New proposals are due on April 18. For more information, please visit the Harward Center website, or contact David Scobey.

Eight Bates College faculty and staff members have been awarded grants by the Harward Center For Community Partnerships to support community-based educational work. Seven awards were Harward Center Grants for Publicly-Engaged Academic Projects, given to faculty and staff for publicly-engaged teaching, research, cultural and other community projects. The eighth is part of the center’s new program, department and general education concentrations (GECs) grant initiative, designed to support the integration of civic engagement into the Bates curriculum. Altogether the projects – seven led by faculty and one by a Bates staff member — received grants totaling $29,000.

“Once again, the range of these projects is terrific,” said Harward Center director David Scobey. “It’s clear that Bates faculty and staff are using the grants to enlarge their teaching, research and creative work.”

“I’m also excited by two new aspects of this year’s grants,” Scobey added. “First, their geographic range: Grants are funding community-based academic work in Rwanda, Guatemala and the Penobscot reservation, as well as here in Lewiston-Auburn. And, second, I am proud that we’ve launched a new program to integrate community engagement into faculty teaching and curricula.”

The seven recipients of Harward Center Grants for Publicly-Engaged Academic Projects and their projects include:
• Claudia Aburto Guzman, associate professor of Spanish, for a project to create awareness of the participation that interfaith groups, involved in saving lives of those crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, have on border dynamics.

• Alex Dauge-Roth, assistant professor of French, for “Rwanda: From National Disintegration to National Reunification,” an international and interdisciplinary two-day conference that featured guest speakers from Rwanda, Europe and the United States; members of the Rwandan diaspora living in Maine; and numerous students and faculty from Colby, Bates and Bowdoin colleges who do research on issues related to those that Rwanda faces as one of the poorest post-genocidal societies in Africa.

• Joe Hall, assistant professor of history, to supervise a student researcher who will catalog materials related to Wabanaki history in the Bates College Edmund S. Muskie Archives, where one of the most important collections for Maine Indian history resides. The project’s final outcome will be a catalog and perhaps a publication for those interested in Wabanaki history.

• Heather Lindkvist, lecturer in anthropology, to investigate the reproductive health of Somali women in Maine. This project examines how American healthcare providers treat female genital cutting (FGC), and how Somali Muslim women, who have maintained this custom, respond to the conflicting cultural ideologies over FGC in their daily lives, in the interactions with medical practitioners and in their relations with kin and community.

• Bill Low, assistant curator, Museum of Art, who will oversee the “Voices of Seven Mills Exhibition Project.” Museum L/A’s first effort at producing major temporary exhibitions, this exhibition project is the result of ongoing efforts with the museum’s Textile Workers Oral History Project. The exhibition will feature photographic portraits of textile mill workers by artist Mark Silber.

• Sarah McCormick, lecturer in dance, for collaboration with the Bates dance program and the Franco-American Heritage Center. The two groups have joined forces to promote and educate the community about dance in the following ways: through video documentation of Maine choreographers; by establishing the Franco-American Heritage Center as one of the primary sources for performing arts in the Lewiston-Auburn area; through diversity in programming theater, music and dance; by opening up an audience base for dance in the community; by exposing a variety of dance styles to the community and by providing the opportunity for Bates students, faculty and choreographic professionals to create and develop outreach projects.

• Kimberly Ruffin, assistant professor of English, for “Sighting and Sounding Sustainability: Gardeners-to-Artists.” Collaborators plan and conduct workshops that elicit participants’ reflection on the issues of sustainability and their experience as urban, organic gardeners. Generating “dialogue between campus and community,” the project documents the artistic and intellectual products created during collaboration, in both the form of public art featured at area gardens and in a commemorative booklet given to participants and made a part of campus archives.

The first program, department, and GEC grant goes to:
• Emily Kane, Whitehouse Professor of Sociology, to support a program of sociology department assistantships in the area of community-based learning. The department hopes to develop a program of increasingly advanced-level community engagement experiences for sociology students that link their developing substantive and methodological knowledge with meaningful internships and research projects in the community.

Marking a new chapter in Bates College’s commitment to the Lewiston-Auburn community and to community-based education, the Donald W. and Ann. M. Harward Center for Community Partnerships presents a grand opening and welcome for its first director, David M. Scobey. The Jan. 25-27 celebration features three days of academic and cultural events, all of which are open free of charge to the Bates and Lewiston-Auburn communities. For more information call 207-786-6202.

The Donald W. and Ann M. Harward Center for Community Partnerships was created to assure that the valuable relationships forged between Bates College and the Lewiston-Auburn community during the tenure of President Emeritus Donald W. Harward and his wife, Ann M. Harward, endure and grow.

The three-day series kicks off with a two-hour “Welcome Gathering” reception at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 25, in the Harward Center, 161-163 Wood St. An exhibit showing the past and present of Bates involvement in the community is featured.

Later in the day (Jan. 25), at 7:30 p.m. in Chase Hall Lounge, 56 Campus Ave., Syracuse University Chancellor Nancy Cantor delivers the keynote address in a series of events highlighting the activities of the Harward Center. Titled “Going Down the Hill: The Educational Value of Community Engagement,” Cantor’s talk will be followed by a reception. (Cantor’s biographical information appears below.)

The Harward Center series continues at 4:15 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 26,  in the Keck Classroom (G52), Pettengill Hall, 4 Andrews Road, with a panel discussion featuring Bates alumni who will look at “The Value of Community Engagement as Part of a Bates Education.”

Later  that day (Jan. 26) at 7:30 p.m., the Harward Center presents a performance, “The 51st (Dream) State,” by poet and composer Sekou Sundiata, New School University, in Schaeffer Theatre, 305 College St. A reception with the artist follows the presentation.

Sundiata is a poet who writes for print, performance, music and theater. His latest recording, Long Story Short, was released on Righteous Babe Records. He has been a Sundance Institute Screenwriting Fellow, a master artist in residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts (Florida) and the first writer in residence at the New School University in New York. A professor at Eugene Lang College, Sekou was featured in the Bill Moyers PBS series on poetry, The Language of Life.

The Harward Center celebration concludes at 6 p.m. Friday, Jan. 27, with a community party co-hosted by the Lewiston Public Library’s Marsden Hartley Center. The party will be held at the Hartley Center, 200 Lisbon St.

The 11th chancellor and president of Syracuse University, as well as Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Women’s Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences, Cantor is a native New Yorker who came to Syracuse from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she was chancellor. She has held administrative positions encompassing all aspects of a research university — from chair of the department of psychology at Princeton to dean of the graduate school and then provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at the University of Michigan.

Cantor received her A.B. from Sarah Lawrence College and her Ph.D. in psychology from Stanford University. She is recognized for her scholarly contributions to the understanding of how individuals perceive and think about their social worlds, pursue personal goals and regulate their behavior to adapt to life’s most challenging social environments.

An advocate for racial justice and for diversity in higher education, Cantor has written and lectured widely on these subjects. At Michigan she was closely involved in the university’s defense of affirmative action in the cases “Grutter and Gratz,” decided by the Supreme Court in 2003. Cantor has also lectured and written extensively on liberal education and the creative campus.

The Harward Center links the college’s academic mission with its commitment to service and partnerships. It enhances the college’s focus on and support of service-learning by integrating community service into academic coursework.  The Harward Center provides an institutional structure and resource for collaborations with the community.

Scobey is the first director of the Harward Center for Community Partnerships and the Donald W. and Ann M. Harward Professor of Community Partnerships at Bates.  Scobey came to Bates from the University of Michigan, where he was an associate professor of architecture in the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning and director of the Arts of Citizenship program.

David M. Scobey has been named as the director of the Harward Center for Community Partnerships and as the Donald W. and Ann M. Harward Professor of Community Partnerships at Bates College, announced Vice President of Academic Affairs and Dean of Faculty Jill Reich. Scobey comes to Bates from the University of Michigan, where he is associate professor of architecture in the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning and director of the Arts of Citizenship program.

“His intellectual gifts, academic accomplishments and prominence in community-based learning will enable Bates to build a center of community partnerships with both deep local significance and a national reputation of the first rank,” Reich said. She praised the “energy, imagination, intelligence and experience” that Scobey will bring to the position. Faculty, staff, students and community members who met Scobey during his recent visits to Bates and Lewiston-Auburn are convinced, Reich says, that “he will contribute to our educational work both inside and outside the curriculum, forge new connections with local and global communities and enhance the intersection between academic and residential life at the college.”

“David Scobey’s appointment as director of the Harward Center is exciting news for both the college and the L-A community,” said Rick Speer, director of the Lewiston Public Library. “Scobey’s commitment to academic excellence should earn the center a high level of respect on campus, while his proven track record in connecting with a diverse array of community groups will reinforce the links already established between Bates students and schools, businesses, and hospitals and a variety of community agencies.”

The Harward Center for Community Partnerships is an emerging organizational structure at Bates College designed to pursue academic excellence through integrating local and global communities with the mission of the college. Under Scobey’s leadership, the center will link key academic endeavors at the college with community collaboration, research and service.

Firmly rooted in the academic purpose of the college, the center will serve as a focal point for connected learning that fuses academic discussion and community.

Scobey has written and spoken extensively about U.S. history and community-based learning. He is the author of the well-regarded Empire Study: The Making and Meaning of the New York City Landscape (Temple University Press, 2002), and two forthcoming books from the University of Pennsylvania Press, Arts of Citizenship: Higher Education and Civic Culture and Metropolis and Nation: Politics, Culture and Space in Nineteenth-Century America.

Nationally recognized as a leader in the theory and practice of community-based learning, Scobey founded Arts of Citizenship at the University of Michigan in 1998. Under his leadership, the program has brought together faculty, students and community partners in more than 30 collaborative projects from Detroit to Battle Creek in theater, history, visual arts and urban design.

Scobey graduated from Yale University with a doctorate in American studies. He was a Rhodes Scholar, a senior research fellow at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History and the recipient of various fellowships and honors.

Bates announced a $1.7 million gift to endow the Donald W. and Ann M. Harward Center for Community in May 2002. Named in honor of the sixth president of the college, Donald Harward, and his wife, at the time of Harward’s retirement, the gift was raised from members of the board of trustees, former trustees, parents of students, alumni, faculty and staff. Harward served as president of Bates from 1989 to 2002.

“At the core of Bates’ tradition lies a commitment to serve society,” said trustee James L. Moody at the time of the center’s dedication. “The Harward Center for Community Partnerships will provide new opportunities for Bates faculty and students to learn through civic engagement, and for the Lewiston-Auburn community to benefit from true collaborations with Bates.”Under Harward’s leadership, Bates reached out to the Lewiston-Auburn community with one of the most active service-learning programs in the country and renewed civic involvement through LA Excels. “The ivory-tower notion that intellectual activity must be separate, and values-independent, is changing,” Harward told the Christian Science Monitor. “Colleges and universities can be contrarian, but also be engaged in the communities in which they are located.”