UMaine is looking into creating public medical school to address rural physician shortage

Edited from a New England Council report

“The University of Maine System has announced it will work with a national consultant to examine the viability of launching the state’s first public medical school in response to a critical shortage of physicians in rural Maine.

“This concept has gained support from several associations, and UMS received state funding last year to undertake the study. The study comes as Maine’s only medical school—the University of New England’s College of Osteopathic Medicine—prepares to relocate from Biddeford to a newly expanded campus in Portland.

“‘The University of New England is always eager to partner with our colleagues at the University of Maine System and is proud of the mutually beneficial partnerships we have established with the system,’ said James Herbert, UNE’s president.’’

Read more in Mainebiz.

UMaine setting up new aquaculture research and training center

Planned University of Maine aquaculture training and research center.

— Image courtesy of its architects, Andover, Mass.-based SMRT Architects and Engineers

Images from the book Maine Oysters: Stories of Resilience and Innovation

Edited from a New England Council report:

The University of Maine is working on a 14,200-square-foot addition to its Sustainable Workforce Innovation Center to serve the Pine Tree State’s growing aquaculture center.

Scheduled to open in 2025, at the university’s flagship campus, in Orono, the $10.3 million research and training center will prepare workers for aquaculture careers, and help the state address the challenges of its finfish, oyster and mussel farms.

“[The center] links research with teaching, so there’s classroom and research space together, and it brings in professionals from the aquaculture industry, academic researchers and experts and students to work together on identifying and addressing the kinds of issues that the aquaculture industry confronts,” said Trish Riley, chair of the University of Maine System Board of Trustees.  

Using 3D printing in building neighborhoods

Home built using University of Maine 3D printer and wood.

Edited from a New England Council report

“The University of Maine has created a 3D printer that could be used to build a house, cutting construction times and costs. Now, it is one of the largest in the world and could be capable of being used to build entire neighborhoods. The recently publicized printer is four times the size of the original one, commissioned less than five years ago, and can use bio-based materials (such as wood from Maine’s big forestry sector) to address affordable-housing issues as well.

“This new massive printer ‘opens up new research frontiers to integrate these collaborative robotics operations at a very large scale with new sensors, high-performance computing, and artificial intelligence,’ said Habib Dagher, director of the university’s Advanced Structures & Composite Center, at the university’s flagship campus, in Orono, where UMaine houses its printers.

Using drones to monitor changing Eastern forests

Mt. Katahdin, in the midst of the Maine Woods.

Log jam at Ripogenus Gorge, Maine, during 1870s log driving.

Edited from a New England Council report (newenglandcouncil.com)

“The U.S. Department of Agriculture has awarded a $10 million grant to research teams from the University of Maine, Purdue University and the University of Georgia to develop technology that would use drones to monitor forests.  

“The main goal of this research project is to help landowners and stakeholders better adapt forests to complicated economic and climate conditions in the Eastern region of the United States, aiming to improve the management of 15 million acres of those forests. With this, the University of Maine will be receiving $2.7 million of the overall $10 million for its efforts on ‘PERSEUS,’ or ‘promoting economic resilience and sustainability of the eastern United States forests.’ This project will use digital technology including drones, piloted aircraft, and satellite-based sensors which will provide real-time, accurate measurements of the forests. The information collected from this project will be extremely influential to forest policy and the lawmaking of the region. 

“‘Forestry generally prides itself as a boots-on-the-ground business, while technology is rapidly changing access to information, [but] PERSEUS will provide the necessary training to help both students and landowners alike leverage these new tools,’ said Aaron Weiskittel, professor of forest biometrics and modeling, and director of the Center for Research on Sustainable Forests, at the University of Maine.’’

In Maine, working on virtual reality and self-driving cars

Researcher with a virtual reality headset.

— Photo by ESA, CC BY-SA IGO 3.0

Edited from a New England Council (newenglandcouncil.com) report

“Researchers at the University of Maine’s Virtual Environment and Multimodal Interaction Lab (VEMI) are working on cutting-edge technology to contribute to the development of self-driving cars and virtual reality. The VEMI lab recently won a grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Inclusive Design Challenge for $300,000 to fund research for autonomous vehicles.

“The VEMI lab was founded by Dr. Rick Corey and Dr. Nick Giudice in 2008 with the idea of creating a space that students and faculty from different disciplines can come together to create technology-based solutions to global problems. With this new federal funding, VEMI lab scientists will create a ride-hailing app targeted at helping older adults and the visually impaired. The app would use electric cars that would be maintained at a central hub and use a payment system based on membership rather than a per ride. The autonomous vehicles would help older adults and people who are visually impaired access safe rides in such areas as rural Maine where access to public transportation or ride shares can be hard to find.

“Dr. Corey said, ‘[W]e don’t want to be constrained to the classroom or the traditional lab. We’re in the business of trying to make the world a slightly better place, and to break down the barriers between technology and people.’’’

At the University of Maine’s flagship campus, in Orono, on Marsh Island

— Photo by Jalnet2

The University of Maine’s ‘factory of the future’

Edited from a New England Council (newenglandcouncil.com) message

“The University of Maine has been approved for $35 million in funding to build a new digital research laboratory. These funds were made possible under the omnibus spending bill that President Biden recently signed into law last week. This facility is an initiative of UMaine’s Advanced Structures and Composites Center and is a “factory of the future,” according to UMaine. It is being created to advance “large-scale, bio-based {material from living or once-living sources} additive manufacturing,” using technologies such as artificial intelligence and 3D printers.

“The cost of building this facility is expected to total $75 million. According to the university, the center’s new capabilities could lead to technology development in the affordable-housing industry, clean energy, transportation industry and more.’’

And stick around

“Hug and kiss whoever helped get you – financially, mentally, morally, emotionally – to this day. Parents, mentors, friends, teachers. It you’re too uptight to do that, at least do the old handshake thing, but I recommend a hug and a kiss. Don’t let the sun go down without saying thank you to someone, and without admitting to yourself that absolutely no one gets this far alone.’’ 

Stephen King (born 1947), hugely successful novelist, and a Maine native, in his University of Maine at Orono (the flagship campus of the university) commencement address in 2005.

And:

King has chosen to live in his native state for most of his life. His main home is in nearby Bangor. So he asked the graduates to stay in the Pine Tree State.

''This can be home if you want it to be. If you leave, you will miss it, so you might as well skip the going away part."

Stephen King’s house in Bangor, built in 1858

Grace Kelly: Floating turbines may be part of New England offshore-wind network

Floating turbines come in various styles.

— Joshua Bauer/U.S. Department of Energy

From ecoRI News (ecori.org)

The winds and airs currents swirling around the oceans of this blue marble have the potential to power our cities and towns. And locally in coastal New England, the race to harness the power of coastal wind has been accelerating.

Last year then-Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo signed an executive order that called for an ambitious, yet somewhat vague, “100 percent renewable energy future for Rhode Island by 2030” — a good portion of which would be from offshore wind.

“There is no offshore wind industry in America except right here in Rhode Island,” Raimondo said at the time. She was referring to the groundbreaking five-turbine Block Island Wind Farm, a 30-megawatt project that was the first commercial offshore wind facility in the United States.

Today, there is a slightly different picture forming, and other New England states, notably Massachusetts and Maine, are looking into becoming a part of a regional offshore wind network.

During a March 18 online presentation, Environment America discussed a recently released report detailing the overall potential that offshore wind has, specifically in New England. The discussion also included presentations from experts in the field of offshore wind.

“We found that the U.S. has a technical potential to produce more than 7,200 terawatt-hours of electricity in offshore wind,” said Hannah Read of Environment America, a federation of state-based environmental advocacy organizations. “What we did was we compared that to both our electricity used in 2019 and the potential electricity used in 2050, assuming that we transition society to run mostly on electric rather than fossil fuels, and what we found is that offshore wind could power our 2019 electricity almost two times over, and in 2050 could power 9 percent of our electricity needs.”

On a more granular level, Read said Massachusetts has the highest potential for offshore-wind-generation capacity, and Maine has the highest ratio of potential-generation capacity relative to the amount of electricity that it uses.

Massachusetts is entering the final stages of the federal permitting process for the 800-megawatt Vineyard Wind project, which is slated to start construction next year and go online in 2023.

“We have some real frontrunners here in New England and we have a huge opportunity to take advantage of this resource,” Read said. “When you look at the New England as a region, it could generate more than five times its projected 2050 electricity demand.”

While Rhode Island and Massachusetts are looking to more traditional fixed-bottom turbines, in coastal Maine, where coastal waters are deeper, researchers at the University of Maine are testing prototypes for floating wind turbines.

“The state of Maine has deep waters off its coasts. If you go three nautical miles off the coast … you’re in about 300 feet of water,” said Habib Dagher, founding executive director of the Advanced Structures & Composites Center at the University of Maine. “Therefore, you can’t really use fixed-bottom turbines.”

To mitigate this, Dagher and his team have been building and testing floating turbines for the past 13 years, using technology from an unlikely source.

“There are three different categories of floating turbines and ironically enough we have the oil and gas industry to thank for developing floating structures,” Dagher said. “We borrowed these designs … and adapted them to floating turbines.”

Many of these floating turbines rely on mooring lines and drag anchors to keep them from floating away, and they come in various styles.

Dagher noted that while other states are able to pile-drive turbines, they should consider floating turbines as another way to fit more wind power into select offshore areas that could become crammed full.

“We’re going to run out of space to put fixed-bottom turbines. We have to start looking at floating … on the Massachusetts coast and beyond, in the rest of the Northeast,” he said.

Shilo Felton, a field manager for the Audubon Society’s Clean Energy Initiative, addressed another issue facing offshore wind: bird migration patterns. Focusing on the northern gannet, a large seabird, she explained that while climate change itself is negatively affecting bird populations, it is important to take care that offshore wind doesn’t make the situation worse.

She noted that Northern Gannets experience both direct and indirect risks from offshore wind. “Direct risks are things like collision, indirect risks are things like habitat loss,” Felton said.

But Felton also acknowledged that since we don’t really have lots of large-scale wind projects in the United States currently, it’s hard to really say how much those risks will impact bird populations.

“We don’t have any utility-scale projects yet, so we don’t really know how the build out in the United States is going to impact species,” she said. “So that requires us to take this adaptive management approach where we monitor impacts as we build out so that we can understand what those impacts are.”

Overall, the potential that offshore wind holds as a viable mitigation tactic in the fight to curb and eventually eradicate greenhouse-gas emissions is great. But, as speakers noted, implementation has to be done thoughtfully and thoroughly.

Referring specifically to Maine, Dagher said, “The state is moving on to do a smaller project of 10 to 12 turbines, and that would help us crawl before we walk, walk before we run. Start with one, then put in 10 to 12 and learn the ecological impacts, learn how to work with fisheries, learn how to better site these things before we go out and do bigger projects in the future.”

Grace Kelly is an ecoRI News journalist.

Ah, that skin-soothing lobster ‘blood’

From The New England Council (newenglandcouncil.com)

“Two graduates of the University of Maine (UMaine) have developed a skin cream derived from lobster hemolymph, which functions within the lobster similarly to blood. The product can sooth such ailments as psoriasis and eczema.

“The product is the latest addition to items that can be traced back to efforts by the University of Maine (UMaine) to find commercial applications for byproducts of the commercial lobster industry. UMaine has worked for years to find additional uses for shells and other byproducts. Marin Skincare was founded by CEO Patrick Breeding and co-founder Amber Boutiette, who learned about the potential for lobster by-products while earning their master’s degrees at UMaine.

“Breeding and Boutiette are currently working with Luke’s Lobster in Saco, Maine, to collect hemolymph. The product has been available to consumers for over a month.

“The New England Council applauds UMaine for providing an innovative course of study encourage such scientific discoveries. Read more from the Bangor Daily News.’’

N.E. responds to COVID-19: A testing site for uninsured; policy-change simulator; in-state tuition for out-of staters

The First Congregation Church in Boston’s Hyde Park neighborhood, whose unofficial motto is “A Small Town in the City.’’ A mobile COVID-19 testing site has been opened there for the uninsured.

From The New England Council (newenglandcouncil.com)

BOSTON

As our region and our nation continue to grapple with the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) pandemic, The New England Council is using our blog as a platform to highlight some of the incredible work our members have undertaken to respond to the outbreak.  Each day, we’ll post a round-up of updates on some of the initiatives underway among Council members throughout the region.  We are also sharing these updates via our social media, and encourage our members to share with us any information on their efforts so that we can be sure to include them in these daily roundups.

You can find all the Council’s information and resources related to the crisis in the special COVID-19 section of our Web site.  This includes our COVID-19 Virtual Events Calendar, which provides information on upcoming COVID-19 Congressional town halls and webinars presented by NEC members, as well as our newly-released Federal Agency COVID-19 Guidance for Businesses page.

Here is the April 27 roundup

Medical Response

• Brigham and Women’s Hospital Opens Mobile Testing Site for Uninsured – In Hyde Park—one of Boston’s emerging virus hotspots—Brigham and Women’s Hospital has opened a mobile testing site to serve those with coronavirus symptoms but without health insurance. Testing at the site will be free of charge, and providers will not ask patients about immigration status. The testing site will also provide masks, boxes of food, and educational materials for those who qualify. Read more from CBS Boston.

• Massachusetts General Hospital Researchers Develop Simulator to Predict Policy Change Effects – As states weigh when and how to begin re-opening nonessential businesses, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) has built a COVID-19 simulator to predict infections, hospitalizations, and deaths from coronavirus in the state under different plans of action. The model uses virus data to create statistical predictions of the its spread to inform state and local leaders on when it will be safe to ease physical distancing regulations. WBUR has more.

Economic/Business Continuity Response

• The University of Maine Offers Tuition Break for Students Affected by Coronavirus – To support students across the country facing educational uncertainty, the University of Maine (UMaine) has launched a new initiative, The Maine Welcome, to allow all students—regardless of state origin—to pay in-state tuition to continue their studies. The program aims to help students as they navigate potential school closures and revenue losses. More from Mainebiz

• PwC Makes Digital Fitness App Free Worldwide – To allow workers across sectors and around the world to develop digital skills, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) has made its technological training app free globally. The app offers courses and learning assessments to instruct workers to learn important skills in a workforce increasingly dependent on technology. Cyprus Mail has more.

Community Response

• AAA Northeast Uses Service Fleet to Deliver Protective Gear – In partnership with a West Haven, Conn., manufacturer, AAA Northeast is utilizing its fleet of service vehicles, deemed essential, to deliver gowns and other protective equipment made by Thermaxx to first responders and Connecticut state agencies. Read more in WTNH.

• Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Enters Partnership to Provide Meals to Families – Harvard Pilgrim Health Care has donated $52,000 to sponsor a month of free meals for families through the Dimock Center. The Dimock Center will provide meals twice a week for families for one month using the donation, but Harvard Pilgrim has committed to additional funding as needed. The Jamaica Plain Gazette has more.

• Boeing Transports 1.5 Million Masks to Aid Response – Continuing its relief missions around the world, Boeing delivered 1.5 million face masks from Hong Kong to the United States. The protective equipment will be used by healthcare providers across the country to combat shortages of the equipment necessary to keep healthcare workers safe. Read the release here.

Stay tuned for more updates each day, and follow us on Twitter for more frequent updates on how Council members are contributing to the response to this global health crisis.

David R. Evans: How is Bulgaria like New England?

Graduating seniors at the American University in Bulgaria

From The New England Journal of Higher Education, a service of The New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org)

This question in the headline above probably seems like a lead-in for a funny non-sequitur, but bear with me for a moment.

The American University in Bulgaria (AUBG), in Blagoevgrad, where I currently serve as interim president, was founded in 1991, soon after the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, originally as a branch campus of the University of Maine. Like several other international institutions, AUBG is accredited by the New England Commission of Higher Education, so we’re at least an honorary New England institution. This strategy streamlined initial accreditation and provided us with a base of institutional resources to start from scratch in a country that had no tradition of American-style undergraduate education. We have long since become completely independent, but our roots in New England remain fundamental to our institutional identity.

Our mission was, and remains, to promote democratic values and open inquiry and to provide opportunities for students to experience the freeing—liberating—benefits of the liberal arts. We strive to create engaged, effective citizens, critical thinkers and excellent communicators empowered by their education to take an active role in their professions and communities and always work to make the world better.

In this respect, AUBG embodies a modern version of the ethos that founded so many colleges in New England and spread across the U.S. in the 18th and 19th centuries. While unlike many such institutions, we have no history as a training ground for the clergy, the parallels remain clear: Our founders envisioned a better world and hoped, through establishing this institution, to play a definitive role in bringing that better world into being. In a country where, for nearly a half-century prior to our founding, the absolute last thing the communist government wanted was engaged, empowered democratic citizens who had learned and been encouraged to question and critique everything, our project and mission to bring the outcomes of a good liberal arts education to Bulgaria have been genuinely revolutionary.

AUBG also shares with many small New England colleges some significant challenges. Most importantly, Bulgaria, like many parts of New England, is in a serious demographic crisis. Bulgaria is a small country with a population of just under seven million people. Its population peaked at nearly nine million in about 1985, and has been declining ever since. Moreover, its fertility rate has been below replacement since about 1985 and is now at only 1.6 live births per woman, while the replacement rate is about 2.1. Because AUBG, like most private colleges, is significantly dependent on tuition revenue, and because our primary market is Bulgaria, the steady decline in our national population is something to take very seriously. We are, in short, deep into the worst nightmares that Nathan Grawe has recently articulated in his indispensable book, Demographics and Demand for Higher Education

Unlike institutions in the U.S., we face another specific enrollment challenge. When AUBG was founded, Bulgaria was not a member of the European Union, and the university quickly became an—if not the—institution of choice for Bulgarian young people seeking a top-quality education conducted in English. However, since Bulgaria joined the E.U. in 2007, such young people have a range of options throughout Europe at very favorable prices and have chosen particularly to pursue higher education in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. Because of generous public support for higher education in the E.U., there are some parallels with the challenges the “free public college” movement poses to private institutions in the U.S., but the complexities of language and culture further complicate these situations.

In Bulgaria and most of our primary markets extending throughout Eastern Europe, we face another issue in that we proudly promote American-style liberal arts undergraduate education (though honestly more in philosophy and educational practice than in our majors, which are highly weighted toward careers in our service region in business, IT, journalism and communications, and politics).

Where in the U.S., comparable institutions face increasing skepticism about the “liberal arts” in general, in our area, the question is more about what a liberal arts education actually is, and how it differs and adds value to the undergraduate experience. The public universities of Bulgaria, of which there are many, tend to follow the European model of institutional specialization, with strong specific emphases rather than a deep investment in broad liberal education. (The technocratic and often applied focus of many of these universities is also surely a relic of communist practices as well.) In that context, as sadly often in the U.S. as well, our stress on general education is often seen as alien and unhelpful, a useless distraction from the actual business at hand. In many cases, our programs require an additional year to accommodate our curriculum’s required breadth, as we follow the traditional American four-year bachelor’s model, and this added time requires a real commitment on the part of our students and their families.

I bring a very particular, painful experience to my work here, because I was the president of the private Southern Vermont College when it closed last spring as a result of declining enrollment and the associated financial stress. I have seen first-hand the challenges that face private colleges in a highly competitive market, with a product not fully understood or appreciated by its clientele, and presenting a value proposition that is not always evident to the people who most need to embrace it. There, our mission was to provide a strong, broad education to a student body comprising mostly first-generation students and students from diverse and high-need backgrounds. Over time, and exacerbated by the broad declines in high school graduates across our region, it became increasingly difficult to manage institutional finances to support affordable access for them and thus to convince them to invest in our institution despite our evident success in supporting students to graduation and successful careers.

At recent professional meetings back in the U.S., in conversations with colleagues, I have been struck by how comparable, if not similar, our challenges are. Like many colleagues, I take strength from the power and importance of AUBG’s mission and from the tremendous success of our alumni, and work constantly to ensure that this mission can endure in the context of unprecedented challenges to a basic model that has, as New Englanders know, developed and supported exceptional leaders for over three centuries.

David R. Evans is interim president of the American University in Bulgaria.

RIP: Seal of Southern Vermont College, in Bennington, 1926-2019

2 Maine schools announce new marine-law program

Portland waterfront and skyline.

This is from The New England Council

“New England Council member the University of New England (UNE), in Biddeford, Maine, has announced a partnership with the University of Maine School of Law (Maine Law), in Portland, that offers marine-science students a faster track to a law degree. This new arrangement will enable students to earn a bachelor’s degree in marine science and a law degree in only six years, one year faster than is typical.

UNE is one of only four schools in the country that offer a bachelor’s degree in marine affairs, while Maine Law is one of six law schools in the country that specialize in marine and maritime law. Under this new arrangement, students can save time and money by enrolling in what will be known as the UNE Marine Affairs – Maine Law 3+3 Pathways Program. This will allow UNE marine affairs students to enroll in Maine Law after their junior year.

James Herbert, president of UNE, said, “Marine affairs is a fast-growing discipline, and law plays an increasingly important role in the field. This partnership between UNE and Maine Law will give strong and highly motivated college applications incentive to come to Maine or stay in Maine for their education and their careers.”

A stressed student? Check out a puppy

From Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com:

Bill Nemitz, a very good columnist for the Portland (Maine) Press Herald, had a good piece the other day about the tendency to coddle college students at some campuses; the young people are considered all-so-fragile. He cited a “campus puppy party’’ at the University of Maine at Farmington that used seven golden retriever  puppies (criminally cute!) at the student center as part of administrators’ efforts to help students deal with the anxiety associated with final exams and papers.

Meanwhile at Yale, Mr. Nemitz reports, students can “actually check out dogs from both the medical and law libraries because, as one librarian explained to the student newspaper {the Yale Daily News}, ‘For a lot of students, it’s their first time away from home and they do miss their home comfort – families, pets.’’’

All this cosseting, which includes a proliferation of highly paid assistant deans to address a panoply of students’ emotional, psychiatric and sociological worries,  and some luxurious spa-like services, has of course helped make college ever more expensive (another cause of anxiety!).

The students will find the world after they leave college remarkably unsympathetic.  How to prepare for that? As Mr. Neimitz writes: “Rather than agreeing with hand-wringing undergrads that life is indeed a tough journey and they’d best get about navigating it, we’re validating their ‘suffering’ with adorable little bundles of bliss.’’

To read Mr. Nemitz’s column, please hit this link:

From the Yale "Whiffenpoof Song'':

We're poor little lambs who have lost our way
Baa, baa, baa
We're little black sheep who have gone astray
Baa, baa, baa

Gentleman songsters off on a spree
Doomed from here to eternity
Lord have mercy on such as we
Baa, baa, baa