Professor Ed Grew Establishes Funds to Benefit School of Earth and Climate Sciences

Ed Grew Photo

Photo courtesy of UMaine

Professor Ed Grew has invested in his discipline in many ways. Grew has been at the University of Maine since 1984 as a research scientist and an educator and mentor to both undergraduate and graduate students.

In November 2014, he established two funds for the benefit of the department to which he has devoted his life’s work. The Edward Sturgis Grew Earth Sciences Endowment will be used to support the educational and research activities of students in the School of Earth and Climate Sciences. Funds will be available for educational field trips, field experiences and field camp, research, internships and networking events. The Edward Sturgis Grew Professorship in Petrology and Mineralogy will support a new tenure-eligible faculty position in the School of Earth and Climate Sciences.

Grew describes the motivation for his gift, “I would like to keep up the tradition of mineralogy and petrology at the School of Earth and Climate Sciences for which the School is renowned. The School has excellent and well-maintained analytical instrumentation for studying minerals such as the electron microprobe and scanning electron microscope, which are available to students and faculty alike. In addition, supporting a professorship is a family tradition since I have common ancestors with both founders of the Sturgis Hooper Professorship of Geology at Harvard University. I hope to set a precedent to other faculty in the School to come forward and donate funds to further the internationally recognized research within the School.”

Grew received a B.A. degree from Dartmouth College and a Ph.D. degree from Harvard University. He served in post-doctoral positions at the U.S. Geological Survey, the University of Wisconsin, and the University of California at Los Angeles before joining the research faculty of the University of Maine in 1984. His distinguished career in mineralogy and metamorphic petrology have included fieldwork in southern India, Siberia’s Aldan Shield and Tajikistan, as well as 9 trips to Antarctica with expeditions supported by the U.S., Japan, Australia, and the former Soviet Union, including a winter-over at its Molodezhnaya Station. This research was funded by 24 research grants and has resulted in over 160 peer-reviewed publications, two edited volumes, and numerous presentations at national and international scientific conferences. Grew has also brought significant international recognition to the University of Maine through his contributing to the discovery of 17 new minerals. Two new minerals have been named in his honor; edgrewite and hydroxyledgrewite. In 2007, Grew was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in recognition of distinguished research on the role of lithium, beryllium and boron in metamorphism at high temperatures and pressures, with emphasis on the Precambrian of Antarctica.

The Edward Sturgis Grew Earth Sciences Endowment is held at the University of Maine Foundation and the Edward Sturgis Grew Professorship in Petrology and Mineralogy is administered by the Dean of the College of Natural Sciences, Forestry and Agriculture.

“Dr. Grew’s gift is another fine example of UMaine’s faculty giving back to support and enhance ongoing learning for students,” says Foundation President/CEO Jeff Mills. “Along with the financial support, it is a tribute to the scholarship at the University of Maine.”

 

 

 

 

 

Black Bear License Plates Support Scholarships

Students with Black Bear License Plates

Revenue from the sale or renewal of Black Bear license plates has provided nearly $1,000,000 in general scholarship support to UMaine students since it was approved by the state 12 years ago.

The initial purchase costs $20 with $10 going to UMaine scholarships; reissue costs $15 with $10 going to scholarships. As a Maine resident, you can show your Black Bear pride and help UMaine students along the way.

For more information at Maine.gov

Mill Anthology Project Receives Grant

The sun sets on the last shift at the Verso paper mill in Bucksport. December 4, 2014. Photo by Ernie Smith

Bucksport Poet Laureate Pat Ranzoni has been awarded a $1,000 grant from the SpiritWords Fund of the University of Maine Foundation to support her proposal for an anthology titled STILL MILL, Poems, Stories & Songs of Making Paper in Bucksport, Maine, 1930–2014. The grant will help fund the cost of the book’s publication and distribution. Ranzoni will compile and edit the collection without compensation as a gift to her hometown. Proceeds from the book beyond the costs of production and marketing will be donated to the Bucksport Historical Society for locating, protecting and exhibiting material documenting the Bucksport mill, further addressing the fund’s mission.

“This generous grant, for which we are exceedingly grateful, makes a huge and hopeful difference to our vision,” says Ranzoni. “To have our voices believed in and respected in this way, not just locally but statewide, shows us that the work of our lives is valued beyond the scrap heap we’ve heard it might become.”

The SpiritWords Fund was established in 1996 to discover, support, honor and preserve the full breadth of poetic expression that grows out of a long and intimate relationship with the state of Maine and its rich and various cultural traditions. It seeks to recognize and honor those voices whose memories, dreams and imagination inhabit this homeland and whose work remembers and renews the significance of place and community.

The call for submissions, announced after the mill’s closing, has brought about a dozen poems, two songs, a half dozen stories, even cartoons. The collection includes a “treasure-trove” of verses and drawings of mill and regional life by “The Papermill Poet” Owen K. Soper (pen name, Fuller Clay), whose work appeared in the Seaboard Bulletin, a publication about the mill’s early identity in Bucksport. “Many of us old mill families have wealth such as this in our records,” says Ranzoni, “and we have promises from third- and fourth-generation mill workers for more.”

March 1, the collection will be reviewed to determine if additional resources are needed for the project. Rather than a totally romanticized account, the project seeks recollections, including the pride and the problems, along with the details and reality of industrial papermaking in Bucksport that only those affected by it can know.

Authentic submissions from all are welcomed regardless of age or schooling, including traditional and experimental treatments. All subjects and perspectives, from all time frames will be considered. Previously published work with standard rights and permissions may be submitted. All submissions will be copyright protected and all contributors will receive a copy of the book.

Send typed or handwritten submissions, with a few lines about your relationship to the Bucksport mill, its people and/or place, to pranzoni@aol.com or c/o Pat Ranzoni 289 Bucksmills Rd., Bucksport, ME 04416; enclose a self-addressed stamped envelope for a reply.

 

PHOTO: The sun sets on the last papermaking shift at the Verso paper mill in Bucksport. December 4, 2014. Photo by Ernie Smith

 

 

 

Wheatland Lab Assists Chestnut Tree Foundation

 

Wheatland Lab

In an effort to reach out to the community, the Barbara Wheatland Geospatial and Remote Sensing Analysis Laboratory in the University of Maine’s School of Forest Resources has become the hub of the UMaine Mapping and GIS Student Club, has provided trail maps for the Orono Land Trust and Bangor Land Trust, and is involved with the Maine chapter of The American Chestnut Foundation (TACF) and its effort to restore the tree to its native range. In working with TACF, the lab is helping build a chestnut tree database for the foundation that will be updated using innovative geospatial applications to detect trees and real-time aerial survey methods for monitoring.

The Barbara Wheatland Geospatial Analysis Laboratory Excellence Fund is held at the University of Maine Foundation.

Read more about the lab and chestnut tree research in UMaine Today

Laurence A. Jones, Jr. Memorial Service

Jones Memorial PlaqueThe annual memorial service held at the University of Maine honoring the life of Laurence A. Jones, Jr. was held on Nov. 20. A 1992 UMaine graduate who held a psychology degree, Jones was killed while he was a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University. Jones’ mother, Yong Jones, established a scholarship in his memory to be awarded to students who demonstrate excellence in psychology. This year’s recipient, Amber Rowley, spoke at the event that was held near the Laurence A. Jones, Jr. memorial tree on campus. “The recipient today — Amber Rowley — is also planning to study and also work in the field of psychology, we are hoping that she will continue on the living memory of Laurence,” said Jeffery Mills, president and CEO of the University of Maine Foundation. Yong Jones attended the memorial.

WABI covered the story.