Press Releases

With its wind turbine spinning and lots of questions about renewable energy, the environment, climate change and sustainability in the air, the University of Maine at Presque Isle will offer during the Spring 2010 semester the first of many energy courses designed especially for those who want to understand these key topics and the issues surrounding them, and are thinking about becoming active players in the industry.

“We have made renewable energy and climate commitment top priorities at the University of Maine at Presque Isle and we are proud to make this initial offering of energy courses a very important part of the work we’re doing in this arena,” President Don Zillman said. “These are among the most important issues of our day and it’s going to take the involvement of many knowledgeable and dedicated people to meet the challenges we face. We anticipate that these courses will help to add more informed and committed individuals to the conversation.”

Officials with the University of Maine at Presque Isle and the Fairmont Cemetery Association are partnering on a unique project that is helping to preserve important information about a local cemetery for future generations.

Drs. Michael Sonntag, Lynn Eldershaw, Kim Sebold and Chunzeng Wang have garnered two MEIF [Maine Economic Improvement Fund] Small Campus Initiative Fund grants – one this year and one last year – totaling $23,000 to complete a project titled “Developing a Cemetery GIS Database for Historic, Cultural, and Social Research in Aroostook County.”

The University officials are working with members of the cemetery association to create a GIS database that will allow people to search an inventory of information about the Fairmont Cemetery, including burial data and more than 5,000 photographs of burial plots. The Fairmont Cemetery, established in the 19th century, represents one of the oldest and largest graveyards in northern Maine.

The University of Maine at Presque Isle is pleased to announce the appointment of Mr. Eddy A. Ruiz as its Project Compass director, completing an effort that has been underway since the summer to establish a three-member retention team for the initiative.

Members of the campus and community are working together to create a new garden for the University that is tied to the local region and Native American culture.

Professors Alice Sheppard and Dave Putnam received a 2009 Project Compass Educational Mini-Grant for about $1,000 this summer to work with students and community members on the installation of representative plant specimens at a small plot near the central campus park woods. These plants are used by the region’s Native peoples in many ways, including food, healing, dyes, ceremonies, and artifacts.

VPAA article on RateMyProfessors.com published
UMPI Vice President of Academic Affairs Michael Sonntag has had an article he co-authored about the website RateMyProfessors.com published in the most recent issue of the peer-reviewed journal Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education.

Students in Art Professor Renee Felini’s ceramics class headed to the Aroostook River on Sept. 30 for a special class project that helped them to understand more fully the organic nature of the art form they’re learning about.

Felini and her class gathered at the boat landing near the Route 1 Bridge at the north end of Presque Isle to release into the river more than a dozen hollow, clay spheres that they had made in the ceramics studio.