In an election marked by the highest voter turnout in recent memory, Ashley Willems-Phaneuf…
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Oakhurst in, Hood out in Gorham
Residents in Gorham will now be filling their cups and cereal bowls with Oakhurst milk instead of Hood. USM’s food service provider, Aramark, decided to switch milk to Oakhurst Dairy in their effort to be more environmentally conscious. Retail locations on the Portland and Gorham campuses already sell Oakhurst Dairy products.
USM community brainstorms new ways to restructure
Over the course of three sessions last Thursday and Friday, groups of over 200 faculty, staff, administrators and students brainstormed ways for USM to innovate to offset yearly budgetary gaps and declining enrollment.
Fewer than 30 students came to each session.
USM surveys strengths at Convocation
Roughly 500 people attended a day-long convocation at the Sullivan Fitness Complex on the Portland campus last Friday to discuss USM’s strengths and assets as administrators and faculty begin drafting a restructuring plan to guide the university toward fiscal sustainability.
Aramark looks locally for better bean
A survey this week will give students a chance weigh in on the future of USM’s coffee offerings, as dining services seeks to switch to a local supplier in a push for a ‘greener’ bean.
USM budget deficit $4.8 million in 2011
USM’s budget shortfall in Fiscal Year 2011 is expected to be $4.8 million and by FY 2013, the total deficit could reach $13.9 million, according to a Tuesday evening blog post from President Selma Botman.
Committee hires consultants, eyes date for carbon neutrality
?The USM committee tasked with enforcing the President’s Council on Climate Neutrality contract met for the first time last Friday, bringing the University one step closer to a greener future.
Still, Student Body President Maggie Guzman says complete carbon neutrality is a long way off.
Going Green
USM President Selma Botman signed an agreement last spring, committing the University to create a climate action plan and to choose the date by which the school would be carbon neutral.
But it’s been slow going. Facilities Management hired Bob Bertram as its new director shortly after the agreement was signed, and the process was shelved while he adjusted to the position.
New president outlines plans for tenure
Maggie Guzman has big plans.
In May she will take over as student body president, a position currently held by Ben Taylor.
Besides establishing a cabinet, appointing committee members, improving advising and financial aid services for students, and performing the normal daily duties of the student body president, Guzman wants to pursue an ambitious sustainibility project that would retro-fit campus buildings to be more energy efficient.
Parents push for reprieve on daycare closing
“We’ve had plenty of parents approach us that if this place closes, they won’t continue to take classes here,” says Jane Dean.
Budget gap widens
In an effort to create a financially sustainable university system in Maine, UMS Chancellor Richard Pattenaude last week announced a six-month process aimed at spurring “major transformative changes”.
In a meeting with trustees on Jan 11, Pattenaude predicted that without significant restructuring of the UMS system, Maine’s seven public universities would face a $42.
The answer, my friends
During this chilling transition into winter, things can start to look grim for the coming months. Shorter daylight hours can get anyone down, and if winter sports aren’t your thing, the prospect of snow might do nothing more for you than conjure up images of backbreaking, early-morning shoveling.
Social Networking -Unplugged
It’s an unusually busy Monday night upstairs at the Old Port’s RiRa. The room buzzes with eager conversation and happy-hour gaiety, as a crowd of well-dressed young professionals mingles near the bar, undaunted by the full workweek ahead.
At first, it can be hard to tell what type of event you’ve stumbled across.
Starting a Fire
Staff Writer
Ask Eben Metivier what he’s doing with his life these days and he has a stock answer ready to go.
“I would say I’m saving the world – 500 people at a time.”
Metivier is the Operations Director of Kaleidoscope, the agency presenting Kindle, a Northern New England Bioneers Conference.
Students must help make USM greener
You may have read in the April 7 issue of the Free Press about USM’s attempt to measure its movement towards a sustainable campus through STARS – a new sustainability assessment system.
Students and faculty alike have joined forces in an extremely motivated attempt to figure out where USM has been and where it is going in terms of environmental friendliness.
26 Making the list
“Sometimes, you’ve got to be a provocative SOB,” said interim Provost Mark Lapping, as two members of the Free Press pawed through the plans and letters supporting the 26 programs to whom suspension has been threatened.
Plans and evaluations like this should happen on a more regular basis, according to a number of administrators, including Lapping.
He said that the Board of Trustees requires that programs undergo a review every seven years. Those reviews, he said, have not formally been occurring.
In their temporary positions, Lapping and interim President Joe Wood have made bold moves to incite change in the university, primarily in response to the financial crisis that has become more and more apparent over the past year.
We’re getting greener
A pair of students sit reading in the leather couches in the corner nook of the Abromson Center next to the twenty-foot-tall table-and-chairs sculpture on the first floor. A gray-haired woman smiles from the reception desk, and upstairs the doors to the skywalk swish open and closed.
How to be Green in the dorms
It has been said a thousand times over and shown in who knows how many different ways, yet it still doesn’t seem to be heard. We, as college students and a nation, need to start doing something about our carbon impact on the world today.
With gas prices rising and supposedly reaching a new high of $4 next month, it’s time to realize that we can’t rely on our fossil fuels.
PIRG seeks wind power on campus
It’s 8 a.m., and Eric Favreau glides silently into a chair. He smiles when I thank him for agreeing to meet me, and softly speaks a few polite words. He speaks them slowly, without rushing a single syllable, and then quickly falls quiet again, giving the impression that he hadn’t spoken at all.
Demosthenes’ Corner
USM has a variety of illustrious speakers coming here every week. Here is a sample of some of them. This list is not all-inclusive and the number of listings is contingent on space. If you, your student group, club, or etcetera would like to place a listing send an e-mail to joseph.
FootPrint
Try to find a smokestack on USM’s new Joel and Linda Abromson Community Education Center (CEC), but you won’t. That’s because it’s practically fossil-fuel free. Our “stackless” building could be the first of its kind built by the state of Maine, I’ve learned from the Director of USM’s Sustainability Office, Dudley Greeley.
In Brief
33rd Student Senate fills five more chairs
New senators appointed two months before elections
Two months before elections, the 33rd Student Senate appointed five new senators on Friday, February 11, filling two commuter and three residential seats, all of whom currently plan on running for a seat next semester.
FootPrint
USM students, faculty and staff are working to “green” USM’s campus, but we’re not alone. USM is a founding member of the Green Campus Consortium of Maine, a group of a dozen Maine colleges, universities and a number of state and private agencies that meet every six weeks to share information on how to become more sustainable institutions.
Maine recycles week: Mission USM
The University of Southern Maine’s Office of Environmental and Economic Sustainability defines sustainability as “the ability of current generations to meet present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” This plays itself out in the way the university recycles its waste, efficiency of energy use and oil resources.