Press Releases

Three Presque Isle High School students have gained excellent field work and research experience—and received recognition during a statewide conference—thanks to the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research [EPSCoR] grant project underway at the University of Maine at Presque Isle. Over the last year, junior Angela Wang and sophomores Sedona Lucas and Zach Rice have assisted with research connected to UMPI’s EPSCoR project, which is focused on assessing the feasibility and sustainability of grass biomass production for central Aroostook County.

The University of Maine at Presque Isle is welcoming 12 new employees in the first part of the 2013-2014 academic year, including a new vice president, professor, and several professional staffers.

Anderson Giles, Professor at the University of Maine at Presque Isle, recently helped lead a private tour to South Korea for the College of the Ozarks, which gave Korean War veterans and students the opportunity to visit important Korean War sites, the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea, and important cultural sites.

The tour took place from Sept. 28 to Oct. 7 and included stops at several sites, including in Cheorwan Country, Yanggu, Gyengii-do, Busan, and Incheon.

Shirley Rush, Associate Professor of Social Work at the University of Maine at Presque Isle, recently completed the climb of a lifetime as part of a fundraising effort to help one young man from Africa go to college. With an UMPI pennant in hand, Rush climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro in September for Daniel Mlangwa, from Moshi, Tanzania, who plans to attend UMPI in the Spring of 2014.

An Education Professor at the University of Maine at Presque Isle has had an article and book review published in the inaugural edition of a political science journal based at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland.

Dr. Tomasz Herzog, UMPI Associate Professor of Social Studies Education, was published in Polish Political Science Quarterly, a peer-reviewed journal that invites contributions from all the major subfields of political science, including international relations, party politics, comparative politics, political theory, media and journalism studies.

A team of professors at the University of Maine at Presque Isle has received $90,000 in grant funding from the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research [EPSCoR] to assess the feasibility and sustainability of grass biomass production for central Aroostook County.

This is the fifth year in a row that the team has received funding from EPSCoR, a program under the auspices of Maine’s Office of Innovation. EPSCoR grants are awarded by the National Science Foundation to states that are typically not targeted for research grants. The funding UMPI has received – which totals $416,000 and includes a $75,000 grant in 2009, $66,000 in 2010, $95,000 in 2011, and $90,000 in 2012 – is a part of the larger grant led by the University of Maine in Orono and the University of Southern Maine.

Anderson Giles, Professor at the University of Maine at Presque Isle, has led dozens of trips focused on World War II in the Pacific over the years, but this time, he and his group had the unusual opportunity of visiting one of the most mysterious archeological sites in the Pacific, Nan Madol, the ancient city built on coral reefs.

Giles, a professor of art at the University, is passionate about the history of World War II and the veterans who served in the Pacific theater. He has worked for more than 20 years to preserve the history of the war in the Pacific through film, photographs, paintings and other collections, and has traveled to many islands in the Pacific—including Iwo Jima, Tarawa, and Peleliu—to document historical sites and interview World War II veterans about their experiences in order to preserve their memories for future generations.