Sun, 25 Jul 2010 21:19:56 -0400 http://www.acadiapartner.org/ PostNuke Powered Site en-us http://www.acadiapartner.org/images/logo.gif http://www.acadiapartner.org/ bill@acadiapartners.org http://www.acadiapartner.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=126 Geri Vistein, a Conservation Biologist in Maine, will offer an interactive and visual presentation, "Coyote - America’s Songdog," at 7 PM on Wednesday, July 28, at Moore Auditorium on the Schoodic Education and Research Center campus. The focus of Ms. Vistein's work is carnivores and humans ~ re-creating relationships that have been lost to us. Her talk will touch on coyote’s long history on the North American continent, coyote’s relationship with Native peoples and the European Americans, coyote’s complex relationship with the life of Maine’s ecosystems, and coyote’s relationship with us. She will speak about coexistence skills for those who raise domestic animals or crops. Sun, 25 Jul 2010 21:19:56 -0400 http://www.acadiapartner.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=125 Acadia Partners for Science and Learning is changing its name and will begin operating as the ‘Schoodic Education and Research Center Institute’ -- or ‘SERC Institute’ for short. SERC Institute does a better job of communicating who we are and what we do. As a nonprofit organization, SERC Institute exists wholly to support the Schoodic Education and Research Center and to collaborate in carrying out the Center’s work. Changing the name of this established organization wasn’t taken lightly. Discussions among the Board, staff, and park personnel led to the decision to make the change to a new name that emphasized the close connection between SERC and the nonprofit partner. SERC Institute captures the complex nature of both the financial support and education and research activities that complement the work of the Center. Tue, 13 Jul 2010 14:47:44 -0400 http://www.acadiapartner.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=124 Acadia National Park staff and local scientists will present a free hands-on public workshop about bees, wasps, and ants on Sunday, August 1, from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. The workshop will take place at the Moore Auditorium, located on the campus of Acadia National Park's Schoodic Education and Research Center (SERC) in Winter Harbor, Maine. The workshop is being sponsored by the National Park Service and Acadia Partners for Science and Learning. Dr. Cassie Gibbs, retired professor of entomology from the University of Maine, and Maine Entomologist Marcia Siebenmann, will lead the workshop and explore the habits, life history, and importance of bees, wasps, and ants. Participants will also go out into the field to collect specimens and come back to the lab to look at what they collected under microscopes. No previous experience is necessary! Mon, 12 Jul 2010 20:22:00 -0400 http://www.acadiapartner.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=123 Some changes, and some additions ... The Second Saturday Lecture planned for July 10 has had to be postponed due to construction on the SERC campus. Rebecca Cole-Will, Cultural Resources Manager for Acadia National Park, has been rescheduled for August 14. She will talk on the history of the Schoodic district, Moore, Rockefeller, and the "Apartment Building." Her talk will begin at 7 pm, Saturday, August 14, in the Moore Auditorium on the SERC campus. It is free and open to the public. It is presented by the Schoodic Committee of Friends of Acadia, Acadia National Park, and Acadia Partners for Science and Learning. On Yhursday, July 22 Linda Ilse will present a talk titled "The Natural History of Porcupines." Dr. Ilse, Wildlife Ecologist with the University of Maine, has studied porcupines here and in the west and is currently studying them here on Schoodic. She will speak on porcupines in Maine, the effects of porcupines on trees, and her research findings from her work on Schoodic. Her talk will be at 7 PM in Moore Auditorium. Mon, 05 Jul 2010 20:16:38 -0400 http://www.acadiapartner.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=122 This summer Acadia Partners for Learning and Science has hired four interns to work on science communication in the Northeast Region national parks. The interns will spend 10 weeks covering a variety of natural, cultural, and social science programs and research projects. The interns’ tasks are coordinated by Acadia Partners, Schoodic Education and Reseatch Center, and Acadia National Park. In addition to providing financial support for the interns, Acadia Partners is working with David Manski, Acadia’s Resource Management Chief, to develop a list of projects and topics. This collaborative effort between the team at SERC and other NPS scientists, educators, and specialists across the park network is one of the reasons research learning centers such as SERC were established by the National Park Service. Sara Delheimer, an Environmental Sociology senior at the University of Tennessee, is a returning intern from the summer 2009 program and is the lead intern for this summer. She provides the science writing experience needed to support the interns and is managing day-to-day tasks and logistics. She excited to explore different media for communicating science while learning about Downeast Maine’s natural and cultural splendor firsthand. She is particularly interested in topics such as climate change and visitor impacts that explore the intersection of social and natural systems. Wed, 09 Jun 2010 14:16:37 -0400 http://www.acadiapartner.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=121 On May 28 Acadia Partners learned that it will receive $224,846 of support over the next three years from the Maine Department of Education to continue and expand its work helping students and teachers engage in research that is both educationally rich and scientifically important. The project, which is called “Acadia Learning,” provides training, financial aid, and logistical support to teachers as they involve their students in research activities around the state. From a scientific standpoint, our goal is to engage teachers and students in collecting samples and data as part of research here at SERC and at the University of Maine. From an educational standpoint, we seek to enable our teacher partners to introduce students to the actual practice of scientific research. Colleagues at the University of Maine recently referred to typical high school science experiments as “historical reenactments.” Most high school science consists of repeating experiments that were done a century ago, where the outcome is well known in advance. The students are, of course, aware of that they are merely walking down well-trod paths and therefore focus on getting the “right” outcome, if they pay attention at all. Sun, 06 Jun 2010 22:31:06 -0400 http://www.acadiapartner.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=120 Malcolm C. Burson, Associate Director of Policy Services in the Commissioner’s Office at the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, will present the next lecture in the Second Saturday Lecture series on June 12. The lecture begins at 7 pm in the Moore Auditorium on the campus of Schoodic Education and Research Center and is free to the public. Dr. Burson will highlight the findings and recommendations of a recent report to the Maine Legislature. The report outlines the actions Maine people, communities, businesses, and others should undertake in response to changes in our climate that are already occurring, and that are expected in the future. Sun, 06 Jun 2010 13:49:34 -0400 http://www.acadiapartner.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=119 Ed Lindsey, pictured here working with his students to collect information about stream flow in the Sunkhaze National Wildlife Refuge, has been working with the Acadia Learning Program here at the Schoodic Education and Research Center for the past two years.  Like other teachers who are part of Acadia Learning, he and his students work with SERC and with scientists from the University of Maine to collect data that is used in research supported by SERC.  The students also investigate their own research questions, learning not only about things such as watersheds, mercury, and macroinvertebrates but also about what science is. Ed will be our guest speaker at the "Second Saturday Lecture" at 7 PM on Saturday, May 8 at Moore Auditorium on the SERC campus.  Bill Zoellick, Executive Director at Acadia Partners and principal investigator in the Acadia Learning project, will introduce Ed, providing some background about the Acadia Learning project. Wed, 05 May 2010 20:31:43 -0400 http://www.acadiapartner.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=118 Faculty and students from the College of the Atlantic who attended the United Nations' 2009 Climate Change talks will share their experiences and insights for April's Schoodic Second Saturday lecture at 7 PM on Saturday, April 10 in Moore Auditorium on the Schoodic Education and Research Center campus. Professors Ken Cline and Doreen Stabinsky traveled to Copenhagen with CoA students last December. Representatives of the group will describe their impressions of the talks, the experience of attending an international meeting like this, and their assessment of the talks' successes and/or failures. Wed, 07 Apr 2010 15:24:10 -0400 http://www.acadiapartner.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=117 Despite a wintery morning, our first "community conversation" had impressive attendance and engaged, enthusiastic participation. Superintendent Steele's slide presentation helped describe changes to the campus and a lively Q&A session introduced comments and suggestions from the community. We plan to continue these gatherings on the third Friday of the month for the next few months, with April's meeting on the 16th from 8:30-9:30am. The topic will be children's educational programs at SERC including the Schoodic Education Adventure (SEA) program. We hope that Acadia's new Chief of Interpretation, Lynne Dominy, will be able to join us as well. Wed, 07 Apr 2010 15:18:10 -0400 http://www.acadiapartner.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=115 Thanks to the generous support of L.L. Bean, Inc. and the donors contributing to Acadia Partners, a total of nine Research Fellowships totaling $40,022 have been awarded in 2010 that will address important science issues at Acadia National Park. The National Park Service faces a number of increasingly complex issues that threaten the integrity of natural ecosystems, cultural resources, and visitor experiences at Acadia National Park. The successful management and protection of the park’s resources and values depends upon scientifically credible and timely answers to important questions. Through the L.L. Bean Acadia Research Fellowship and Schoodic Research Fellowship programs, researchers are helping the National Park Service meet its stewardship responsibilities. Summaries of the 2010 funded studies are listed below. Robert Brooks, Pennsylvania State University. Schoodic to Schoodic Wildlife Corridor Initiative; Toward a Science Based Assessment. Schoodic Research Fellowship. This study will complement field research being conducted adjacent to the park to map sensitive habitats, rare species, and landscape corridors on the Schoodic Peninsula. The results of this work will contribute to a better understanding about the ecological values of and opportunities to protect a landscape-scale wildlife corridor in this part of Hancock County. Wed, 07 Apr 2010 14:34:11 -0400 http://www.acadiapartner.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=113 Can legend inform archeological inquiry? On Saturday, March 13 Bonnie Newsom will share about her own experience in connecting legend and research in a talk here on the SERC campus. Ms. Newsom has used Wabanaki legends in her research into aboriginal ceramics gathered at Maine’s Eddington Bend dig site. Her research interests include the archeology of the Penobscot River Valley, hunter-gather studies, aboriginal ceramics analysis, and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. A member of the Penobscot Nation, in her role as Historic Preservation Officer she ensures tribal compliance with the National Historic Preservation Act and serves as the tribal point of contact for all archeological issues. Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:10:12 -0500 http://www.acadiapartner.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=112 The buildings have stood for decades, the changes have been anticipated for months, and the demolition took a day…well, a day for one building and a couple of days for others.  Schoodic Education and Research Center, once a Navy installation and now a National Park Service Research Learning Center, is undergoing a transformation that will make its facilities more accessible, functional and green. The plan for change is ambitious, but it is moving forward as scheduled, despite the weather and the surprises that construction projects often bring.   Right now, two teams are working on the major projects: Ganneston Construction (Augusta) has begun updating and expanding Schooner Commons (our main dining facility), while Soderberg Co. Inc. (Caribou) is tackling the demolition of fourteen buildings, including the old barracks, pictured at right. The gymnasium was the first major demolition, beginning in mid-January. It was awe-inspiring to watch the excavator appear to "chomp" sections of cinderblock and corrugated steel, tugging and twisting like some mechanized predator shaking morsels free.  We also observed, as the roof came off, that there were no pieces of insulation board or fiberglass batting to be seen.  It was suddenly clear why the building once consumed more than 9,000 gallons of fuel oil a year. Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:13:01 -0500 http://www.acadiapartner.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=111 Dr. Brian Beal, professor of marine ecology at the University of Maine at Machias, has recently won a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant of $600,000 for the Downeast Institute for Applied Marine Research on Great Wass Island.  The funding will assist in the construction of a state-of-the-art center at the Institute and in curriculum development for a Downeast coastal studies concentration for UMM students.  What will these projects mean for the coastal communities in Downeast Maine? On Saturday, February 13, Dr. Beal will share a vision for this new facility and its future as he describes “The Downeast Institute: Creating New Educational and Economic Opportunities in Eastern Maine” as part of the “Second Saturday” lectures at Moore Auditorium on the campus of Schoodic Education and Research Center in the Schoodic District of Acadia National Park, Winter Harbor.  The lecture will begin at 7pm, is open to the public and admission is free. Wed, 03 Feb 2010 15:55:52 -0500 http://www.acadiapartner.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=110 Acadia Partners is looking for college students interested in a summer internship as roving science reporters covering research and other natural, cultural, and social science activities at parks within the Northeast Region of the National Park Service (NPS). Interns will work with staff from Acadia Partners and the NPS to create reports and summaries of research projects and science programs conducted at Acadia National Park and other parks in the region. This work will involve reading scientific reports, working with researchers and staff (including participating in fieldwork) to clarify details and focus, writing summaries, editing images, creating graphics, and designing layouts for online and print publications. Interns will also be asked to author and maintain a regular weblog about their observations and insights on science and nature in the parks they visit. Wed, 03 Feb 2010 13:18:29 -0500 http://www.acadiapartner.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=109 The "Acadia Learning" program is the outreach program at SERC that works with teachers across Maine to engage them and their students in science that is connected to research here at the park and at the Mitchell Center for Environmental and Watershed Research, our partner organization at the University of Maine. This past weekend we conducted a workshop with teachers from Scarborough, Old Town, Mt. View, and Nokomis high schools to introduce some new thinking we have done in the area of helping students work with graphs.  Graphs are important because they are a way for students to express their understanding of what is going on in the streams, forests, and fields that they study. They are also a tool that teachers can use to see how students use data that they collect to develop that understanding. Over the past three years of looking at students' graphs and poster presentations as part of the Acadia Learning project, we have observed that many students seem confused about how to express their findings on a graph.  The problems go beyond simple graph mechanics -- titles, labels, and the like.  A lot of graphs just don't seem to make sense in ways that we would expect.  So, over the past year we developed the first version of a written diagnostic tool to probe student understanding, and misunderstanding, of how to organize and present their findings.  The workshop this past weekend introduced teachers to the tool and engaged them in a day-long discussion about students, graphs, and data. Tue, 02 Feb 2010 22:11:31 -0500 http://www.acadiapartner.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=108 Just before the holiday season this year Acadia Partners Executive Director Bill Zoellick and Dr. Sarah Nelson, of the University of Maine's Mitchell Center, traveled to the American Geophysical Union Conference in San Francisco to present a paper describing SERC's Acadia Learning Project, which engages teachers and student researchers in a citizen science program that collects data about the mercury burden in dragonfly larvae and other biota across a region spanning the coast of Maine. The Acadia Learning project is differentiated from other research in its focus on engaging students in authentic research, collecting data of real interest to research scientists, while also providing a high quality education experience.  We have learned that these two goals -- collecting useful data and providing a rich educational experience -- often pull a project's implementation in different directions.  Our project, funded in part by the Maine Department of Education, is both educational research and geochemical research. Tue, 05 Jan 2010 22:29:49 -0500 http://www.acadiapartner.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=107 This past summer, Acadia Partners provided a research fellowship to Dr. Abe Miller-Rushing to support his work at SERC in developing ways to engage volunteers in phenology -- the study of seasonal biological events such as leaf out, migration, and reproduction.  At Acadia, Dr. Miller-Rushing involved a number of different kinds of volunteers in collecting information about both plants and animals in the park. We funded this work as a pilot study.  Our goal was to provide early support for Dr. Miller Rushing and is colleagues at the USA National Phenology Network so that they could develop their ideas and -- hopefully -- seek additional, more substantial funding.  We have just learned that Dr. Miller-Rushing and his colleagues have successfully secured additional support from the US Geological Survey for the next three years.  We congratulate them, and look forward to working with them over the coming summers. Tue, 05 Jan 2010 21:25:37 -0500 http://www.acadiapartner.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=106 Fisherman-scholar Ted Ames, whose innovative fisheries research was recognized with a MacArthur Fellowship known as the “genius” award, and Aaron Dority, Director of the Downeast Groundfish Initiative at Penobscot East Resource Center, will speak at the Schoodic 2nd Saturday Lecture Series on Saturday, January 9th at 7:00 p.m. at the Moore Auditorium on the campus of the Schoodic Education and Research Center. The Penobscot East Resource Center’s mission is to secure a future for the fishing communities of Eastern Maine through programs in leadership development, community-based science and resource management, education, and advocacy. Ames and Dority will speak about the Downeast Groundfish Initiative, a program to rebuild a sustainable groundfishery. A key feature of this is the recent creation of a permit bank which preserves legal access to the cod, haddock and flounder fishery for community fishermen. There are very few federal permits still available to Maine fishermen and without them, community fishermen will be prohibited access to the fishery when it recovers. By banking permits, much the way a land trust conserves land, the rights that attach to them can be made available to local fishermen who would otherwise be excluded from ever fishing again. Mon, 04 Jan 2010 12:57:42 -0500 http://www.acadiapartner.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=105 In its regular board meeting on December 8, 2009, the Acadia Partners Board of Directors accepted Denny O'Brien's resignation as Acadia Partners' Executive Director. Alan Goldstein, Board Chairman, said, "Denny did a great job of launching Acadia Partners and we've been extremely pleased with the job he's done. We wish him all the good luck as he goes forth in his next endeavor. We're going to miss him." The board appointed Bill Zoellick to serve as the organization's new Executive Director. In announcing Mr. Zoellick's appointment, Mr. Goldstein said, "This is a time of change and growth for Acadia Partners and SERC. Over the next two years we will rebuild the campus, and SERC will become the place that we envisioned back when the Navy left Winter Harbor years ago. We are very fortunate to have a person with strong business and program experience--who is already on our staff and familiar with our operations and mission--who can lead the organization through this next chapter." Mr. Zoellick said, "SERC is moving from idea to reality. It is breaking new ground--not only literally, in terms of new construction--but also as a public-private partnership that can create new ways to achieve the mission that the Park Service identified when it created the Research Learning Center network. I feel very fortunate to have the chance to do this kind of important work and am honored to have the Board’s support." Bill Zoellick has prepared a more complete statement about the changes, challenges, and opportunities that Acadia Partners faces; the statement is available on the Acadia Partners website. Thu, 17 Dec 2009 18:06:42 -0500 http://www.acadiapartner.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=104 Naming is a way of knowing something. When fifth and sixth graders come here to the Schoodic Education and Research Center they learn, among other things, how to recognize spruce trees. If you say "Ouch!" when you shake hands with the tree, it's a spruce. Knowing that a tree is a spruce, and that another is a balsam, and yet another is a birch, and a fourth is a maple -- rather than all just being plain old "trees" -- gives a child a way of seeing a forest differently. Naming creates connection. (It is probably one reason that farmers raising pigs for slaughter generally call them "Pig" rather than "Charlie.") Carol Kaesuk Yoon, who has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from Cornell and who writes for Science Times for the New York Times, has written a new book about our human impulse to order the world by naming it. It has the title Naming Nature: The Clash Between Instinct and Science (W.W. Norton, 2009). (Go to the Northeast Park Science Blog for the rest of the story.) Fri, 27 Nov 2009 00:45:55 -0500 http://www.acadiapartner.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=103 Over the next 18 to 24 months the Schoodic Education and Research Center campus will become a different place, with a different "feel" and capable of supporting new kinds of programs. As Acadia Superintendent Sheridan Steele puts it, we will compress ten years of transformation into two. Some buildings will be remodeled and repurposed, other buildings will be removed, roads will be rerouted, and the campus will become greener in all senses of the word. Next summer the entire campus will be buzzing with construction work. Packing this much change into a short period of time has required a great deal of planning, involving everything from overall campus design to the kinds of tables we will have in new laboratory spaces. At 7 PM on Saturday, November 14 Supt. Steele will come to Moore Auditorium to describe these plans and talk about the way that the campus will be transformed. Behind all of these changes, of course, are the programs that we run at SERC -- programs that the new campus is designed to support. To provide an overview of these programs, Supt. Steele will be joined by Kate Petrie ("Ranger Kate") who, who runs the Schoodic Education Adventure program at SERC, and Bill Zoellick of Acadia Partners, who works with park staff to develop programs focused on scientific research and teacher professional development. Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:02:45 -0500 http://www.acadiapartner.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=102 Dr. Bob Marvinney, Maine State Geologist and Director of the Maine Geological Survey, will speak at 7 PM on Saturday evening, October 10, about the state’s process to identify test locations for offshore, deepwater wind energy technologies. His presentation will be at Moore Auditorium on the Schoodic Education and Research Center campus. With a mandate from the State Legislature, the Department of Conservation and State Planning Office have identified seven possible locations and will pare these down to between one and five finalists based on public input. These sites would be available to wind energy companies and to the University of Maine to test new technologies, including blade design, floating turbine platforms, and anchoring systems. This initiative is part of the state’s efforts to position itself as a leader in research and development for wind energy based on the extensive wind resources of the Gulf of Maine. Dr. Marvinney will talk about program goals and progress. Tue, 06 Oct 2009 17:24:51 -0400 http://www.acadiapartner.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=101 Join Acadia Partners and Acadia National Park this Sunday evening, September 27, for a bean supper followed by a viewing of the new Ken Burns documentary, "The National Parks: America's Best Idea." The bean supper and the film viewing will be in the Moore Auditorium at the Schoodic Education and Research Center. Doors will open at 4:30 and we will be serving supper from 5:00 to 6:30. The actual broadcast of Part 1 of the series will begin at 8 PM. Before the broadcast begins there will be opportunities to chat with Park staff and the Acadia Partners staff and Board of Directors, to tour the campus, learn about educational programs, and to view preview clips from the documentary. Thu, 24 Sep 2009 22:24:11 -0400 http://www.acadiapartner.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=100 Anthropologists Bunny McBride and Harald E. L. Prins will present a trilogy of lectures and book signings to celebrate the publication of their new book, Indians in Eden: Wabanakis and Rusticators on Maine’s Mt. Desert Island, 1840s – 1920s from Down East Books. The programs are sponsored by The Penobscot Indian Nation, Friends of Acadia, The Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory, and the Abbe Museum. The three lectures will take place in Old Town, at the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory's Maren Auditorium, and at the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor. Wed, 02 Sep 2009 11:46:35 -0400