Second-year political science student Zach Wyles has announced his bid for the position of University of Maine Student Government (UMSG) vice president. Wyles has served on the UMaine Student Senate for two years, amounting to four semesters, and has aided in the operation of various committees within the Student Senate. The role, which is currently filled by third-year mechanical engineering student Chase Flaherty, assists the president with the running of the UMSG and aids in the approval and implementation of committees that function within the UMSG.

Wyles, who grew up in Old Town and attended Old Town High School, has had experience with student leadership since youth. When he was in middle school, he joined the student council because his friends were getting involved, and he wanted to gain an understanding of his community.

“I used to be a very introverted person,” Wyles said. “It kind of started as a side [interest].”

However, Wyles was encouraged to continue to engage with his student council by a teacher that he had in his freshman year of high school, who he says was always encouraging him and his peers to stay informed on and make a difference in their community.

“I was really shy, going into high school,” Wyles said. “Having an encouraging teacher really helped me to come out of my shell. It was way easier for me to approach people, and it’s really aided me as a person.”

After this experience, Wyles became even more involved with the Old Town High School Student Council and was elected as the Student Council president in his last year of high school. He was chosen to represent the Old Town High School as a student liaison to the Old Town School Board as well during his time in high school.

“I got a direct view of the leadership in my community, on the student level as well as being able to see the town leaders making decisions. It was an honor and a privilege,” Wyles said. “In my time on the high school council, when I saw a lack of leadership [in the previous president’s term], I wanted to propose much more action. Seeking what the community wants as a part of your interaction [with them] is important to me.”

Should he be elected to the position of vice president of UMSG, Wyles is looking forward to working on two initiatives that he feels are important: student body outreach and addressing student mental health on campus. He said that while he had the immediate pull to join UMSG in his first year at UMaine, many undergraduate students do not know the full role of the UMSG on the UMaine campus. Many of the students that Wyles has talked to throughout his campaign have expressed gratitude over the facilitation of student organizations that the UMSG conducts but are unaware of the other issues that the UMSG works to address. He hopes to expand the interaction between the UMSG and the student body on campus.

Wyles also hopes to work with UMSG presidential candidate third-year political science and economics student Harrison Ransley, should he get elected to the position of UMSG president, on the student mental health initiative. Ransley has worked throughout his time as a senator and committee chair in the UMSG to initiate a campus-wide response to the mental health needs of UMaine students, as it has become a pressing community discussion.

“While I am not personally able to understand the issues that these students [dealing with mental health issues] face, I want to recognize my privilege,” Wyles shared. “Hearing about how hard those students work through these challenges inspires me to do something.”

“I’m really looking forward to the opportunity to make a positive change for students on campus,” Wyles said of his campaign for UMSG vice president. “I hope the initiatives that Harrison and I will be working on closely together will have an impact. Being in a partnership with someone as passionate [about making change] as [Harrison is] will create the momentum needed.”

Wyles looks to go into politics after he completes his undergraduate degree. Through all of his interactions with various communities in and around Orono, Wyles expressed he has found a passion for making positive change.

“It’s really important to me to invest in democracy,” Wyles noted.

On Feb. 27 Michael Hussey, a co-founder of RateMyProfessors.com, spoke to University of Maine students at the Foster Center for Student Innovation. Hussey’s presentation focused on the lessons he learned as an entrepreneur and from his experience building startup companies.

Hussey shared that he founded the “Rate My…” network in 1999 while he was a third-year student studying financial economics at the University of Maine.

“I’ve always been obsessed with organizing ideas, organizing data, and organizing abstract concepts and knowledge and trying to bring structure, meaning and usefulness to those things,” Hussey shared. He stated that this was what motivated him to create not only the “Rate My…” network, but also all of the startups he has created since.

“After each course, we would fill out these really nice professor evaluations and would spend a lot of time on that. Then I just remember thinking ‘no one is ever going to see this. All these people [are] taking the time to share their opinions and what good is that? It will probably go in some folder somewhere and get locked away,’” Hussey said.

Hussey questioned what the world would be like if students could see what others wrote about their professors and help each other by sharing their experiences. This is what inspired him to create an incredibly successful online platform for students to rate their professors, as well as another platform to rate high school teachers. The platform exploded with nearly 100,000 visitors to the site in the first few days.

Hussey left the “Rate My…” sites a few years after founding them, and RateMyProfessors.com was eventually acquired by MTV. The site is now owned by the company Cheddar. The website has seen success, with over 19 million ratings and feedback on faculty at over 8,000 schools, according to its website.

After leaving the “Rate My…” platforms, Hussey founded the companies PeekYou and StatSocial based on the same premise of organizing ideas and data.

PeekYou is a site that acts as a database for people. Hussey described it as a site where you can basically “Google yourself” and others to find all of the web’s information about a person. Similarly, Hussey continues to run StatSocial, a company that assists brands in navigating through customer data to help them make more educated decisions that target their specific audiences.

Hussey shared specific lessons that he has learned in the past 20 years as an entrepreneur. One of the lessons he shared was that, as an entrepreneur, everyone will experience failure. Hussey harped on the point that it is okay to feel sorry for yourself, but that a great entrepreneur should not hold on to failure and should put it behind them immediately and continue to innovate.

Another important lesson Hussey shared was that every decision has an opportunity cost, which is whatever else you could be doing or what you must give up to do what you choose. He shared that his economics classes at UMaine taught him this and that he considers opportunity cost every time he makes a decision.

After initially launching the “Rate My…” network, the site received so much traffic that Hussey shared that he wasn’t properly equipped to handle or deal with. Knowing that his summer break was ending and Hussey was going back to school, he decided to shut down the website and come back to it after he graduated. Hussey stated that his biggest entrepreneurial regret was not stopping school and focusing on the “Rate My…” network during this time. He shared that in the meantime, while the site shutdown, other companies were able to copy the idea.

“There’s a window, and if you truly are first, then be first,” Hussey stated.

He shared that owners of software and technology companies will always have competitors because startup costs are so small for their businesses, so it is important to have a sense of urgency and make use of your head start.

Hussey grew up in Alfred, Maine, but now lives in New York City with his wife and four daughters. He currently works as the president of StatSocial.

On Monday, Feb. 24, Ted Koffman, a former member of the Maine House of Representatives, spoke at the University of Maine. Koffman’s lecture at the George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions was on the topic of creating sustainable communities in the state of Maine, as well as sharing the work he does with the Island Housing Trust (IHT) organization.

Koffman, who hails from Mount Desert Island (MDI), is currently a member of the board of directors for the Island Housing Trust, an organization that works to promote “viable, year-round island communities.” From the years 2002-08, Koffman worked for the Natural Resources Committee where he served as co-chair. Additionally, Koffman worked as the director of government and community relations at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor and has spent time working for the Maine Audubon Society.

Koffman’s lecture primarily focused on the societal issues in MDI communities and posed potential solutions to aid in community development.

In his role at the IHT, Koffman works to facilitate discussions and works with the Mount Desert Island community where they pose solutions to the issues the island is facing.

Koffman is passionate about the island and advocates strongly for a sense of place. A large quantity of the work he does is geared toward the improvement of the MDI community.

“You can conserve the natural environment, but what about the community,” Koffman asked of the audience at Monday’s event.

One of the primary issues that Koffman has identified in MDI is that there is a dwindling number of year-round residents on the island, in comparison with the number of seasonal visitors.

This significant decline in population is visible in many areas, primarily in elementary schools. Koffman spoke highly on behalf of the island’s public school system. However, the enrollment has significantly dropped in recent years, with the number of enrolled students dropping 23% since 2000. This is a result of a lack of year-round residents.

Koffman presented the fact that an increasing number of people want to live on the island all year, but are not able to due to the high cost of living in MDI.

“60% of people would live on the island if they could, but they can’t,” Koffman said.

The work that Koffman is involved with through the IHT works toward making housing on the island affordable. The IHT promotes their work through community outreach and envisions a future where MDI has a significant percentage of affordable year-round housing available to the workforce. The housing units that the IHT provides seeks to address the high cost of living, as housing costs in MDI have more than doubled, while median incomes on the island have increased by less than 50%.

“From 2000 to 2016, median home values on the island increased by more than 120%, while median income increased only by 44%,” Koffman noted.

As a result of this increase, as of 2017, 84% of homes that were for sale on MDI were not affordable for median income families.

Koffman is an advocate for initiatives that retain year-round residents on the island.

“We’d like more of them to come back,” Koffman said, referring to those who have left the island.

For those interested in learning more about the IHC, they should visit www.islandhousingtrust.org/.

This past week, the University of Maine Black Bear Exchange (BBE), the on-campus food bank which provides access to food and clothing for UMaine students and community members, received a generous donation of $3,600 from the America East Conference.

The America East Conference is a collegiate athletic conference that works with universities and their sports teams to ensure that they have the resources needed to achieve success both on and off the playing field. The conference is affiliated with the NCAA Division I and includes colleges and universities in New England, New York and Maryland. The America East Food Frenzy is an annual conference-wide community effort to gather essential items, such as shelf-stable foods, in order to provide the local community with resources to foster success. This is the fifth year that the America East Conference has held this challenge, and each year they have seen more success than the previous one.

Each school affiliated with America East takes part in the competition by collecting as many canned food and pantry items as possible. Through America East, which promotes community involvement and leadership, student-athletes are encouraged to gather these items in order to give back to the community. All nine schools affiliated with the America East Conference participated this year, gathering more than 40,000 items that will be donated to various food pantries and charity organizations across New England, doubling the number of donations that have been gathered in the past.

The #AEFoodFrenzy is a service challenge performed campus-wide in order to promote unity between the academic institutions and encourages student-athletes to form a connection with the people in their community. While the America East Food Frenzy benefits multiple charities from around New England, it also promotes qualities such as teamwork and leadership off the field for student-athletes.  

Over 83,000 items have been collected over the five years that the #AEFoodFrenzy has taken place, with UMaine student-athletes participating in it since its inception. 

“The dedication to the #AEFoodFrenzy on our campuses and among our student-athletes, particularly each campus [Student-Athlete Advisory Committees] SAAC, is overwhelming and impressive,” the commissioner of America East, Amy Huchthausen, noted. “To be able to help so many individuals and families during a time when so many need it is gratifying and what we are all about as a conference.”

The BBE is always looking for donations of food, as well as clothing. Cash donations, such as the one from the America East Food Frenzy, are allocated toward purchasing food to increase pantry selection.

A large component of the BBE is saving food from the dining halls on campus. The BBE participates in a weekly food recovery Friday, where volunteers package unused food from the dining halls around campus. During the 2018-19 school year, the BBE was able to recover approximately 4,000 pounds of food. Additionally, they were gifted over 6,000 pounds of food to go towards the pantry, gathered from food drives and fundraisers. The BBE estimates that the number of UMaine students and community members who use the pantry services has risen from about 50-60 during the 2017-18 school year to about 157 during the 2018-19 school year.

The amount of money that was raised by the UMaine student-athletes for the America East Food Frenzy shows how dedicated the students are to promoting community support, and the BBE will be able to serve many more community members because of the donation.

For information on the BBE, contact Lisa Moran of the Bodwell Center for Student Involvement at lisa.moran@maine.edu.

On Dec. 6, students, professors and community members gathered in Norman Smith Hall for a Growing Students Sustainability meeting and dinner at the University of Maine. Linda Silka, a senior fellow for the George Mitchell Center, and Tim Wearing, a professor of economics at UMaine, planned and hosted the gathering to bring about a discussion of how UMaine could become more environmentally friendly. The meeting explored positive steps the community at UMaine could take to engage in climate action. 

The event was well attended, with almost no room for seating as the event commenced.

Wearing started off the event with a general introduction, stating how he wanted to encourage sustainability, especially at UMaine. Wearing reflected on his college experiences with environmental activism and then went on to congratulate multiple student leaders for their work in environmentalism and sustainability.

Some students who received congratulations were Sydney Abromovich, the president of UMaine’s Green Team and Dalton Bouchless from the Sustainability and Environmental Activism Division (S.E.A.D). The UMaine Green Team is a  community of UMaine students who meet in order to organize events and discuss issues related to the preservation of the local, state and international environment. S.E.A.D is a representative board whose purpose is to be the voice of the students, to allow members of the UMaine community to discuss environmental and sustainability issues and to empower students by connecting them with resources to improve and inform activism efforts. UMaine also recognized alumna Aubrey Cross who was congratulated for her sustainability work with UMaine Dining.

After award acknowledgments, the focus of the event began to shift. Wearing asked the audience about how UMaine should go about becoming more sustainable and encouraged discussion on the issue of how both state and local agencies can discuss and address environmental issues. Wearing encouraged group discussion, noting that the premise of the event was to promote discussion about issues concerning the community. Once community members had the opportunity to discuss these issues, they were then encouraged to engage with the larger group about the topics, issues and solutions that they had discussed. These were then compiled into a list by Wearing.

Benjamin Hacker, a third-year forestry student, was one of the first to speak. Hacker suggested that the university should become an ecovillage and that people should grow food for the University. This idea of becoming self-sustainable and self-dependent for some of the resources required to run the university would create a much smaller environmental impact and would allow UMaine to take more steps towards sustainability.

Others, including Ambromovich and Peter O’Brien, suggested ideas like investing in solar panels and creating a student board to discuss and decide on environmental and sustainability-related issues. They noted that having a board that discusses environmental and sustainability-related issues that is not apart of S.E.A.D would help the university to outline the goals that the student community hopes to reach.

Dan Dixon, UMaine’s Director of Sustainability, also spoke at the event and advocated for the university to completely divest from fossil fuels.

The very first Growing Student Sustainability event brought forward a very important conversation about climate change, sustainability and how the university can do better. The group hopes to meet again every semester in order to sustain the conversation about environmental and sustainability issues.

Recently, leading climate scientists have warned the general public that we have between 10 and 12 years to stop climate change in its tracks. Since then, climate change has become a topic. Politicians, reporters, scientists and even students have debated the current climate crisis across platforms. Many people across the globe are even holding a series of protests called ‘climate strikes’ to address the urgency of this issue and suggest solutions. In the UMaine community, many members of the student body feel very deeply about climate-based activism, including Benjamin Hacker, a student-activist who is active and vocal about local climate action.

Hacker, a third-year forestry student from Beverly, Massachusetts, has always had an intense, unbridled passion for environmentalism. Hacker grew up with his mother and his father near a coal plant — which Hacker says he and both of his parents are still very much opposed to. Hacker notes that living in such close proximity to this coal plant, as well as having two very staunch environmentalists as parents, led him to become an environmental activist.

“I grew up near a coal-fired power plant. I don’t know the day to day impacts of that, but it very much has the potential for negative impacts on my health, and especially … the people [who live] closer to the power plant,” Hacker says.

When Hacker was in elementary school, he started engaging in environmental activism. Hacker used his passion to bring recycling programs to his local communities. Hacker says this fiery passion for the environment, and his life experiences, motivated him to organize on campus.

Hacker organized the student climate strike on Dec. 6, which invited students and community members to assemble on the Raymond H. Fogler Library steps to voice their thoughts on the current climate emergency. Friday’s strike is part of a series of climate strikes from around the globe, originally pioneered by Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg. These climate strikes have garnered global attention and about 2,500 climate strikes have happened across the planet this year alone. Hacker believes synchronizing with this movement was a smart idea, and noted that he thought that it would grab the attention of more students and media outlets in order to bring visibility to the event.

Hacker’s event garnered a wide variety of interest, with members of the UMaine community, local activists, protestors and reporters from the Maine Beacon attending the event. Hacker estimated that there was an overall turnout of about 70-80 people attending the event. Speakers from the Racial Justice and Equity Organization, members of the Defenders of Wildlife and representatives of community interest groups spoke at the protest.

Hacker believes that students have the power to take direct action and prevent the climate crisis from worsening.

“We are in a lot of danger, but there is also a lot of hope … [the environmental movement] has grown enormously. It’s getting massive media attention and there are activist groups that are finally succeeding in getting governments or groups to declare a climate crisis,” Hacker commented.

Hacker sees an incredible amount of importance in youth climate activism, especially at UMaine. Hacker thinks it is necessary for the students to use their voices because some members of administration in the University of Maine System are prevented from speaking publicly about the issue of climate change.

The University of Maine System’s 2018 edition of the Policy Manual: Institutional Authority on Political Matter, which addressed administration’s guidelines for voicing support of political action, lays out guidelines as to what sorts of political statements the chancellor and president are allowed to make on an institutional level. Different political issues and topics are sorted into three different categories: green statements, which are considered critical to the university’s mission; yellow statements, which are indirectly related to the university’s mission and red statements, which are unrelated to the university’s mission. Some red topics include global trade policy and abortion, while yellow topics include labor rights and climate change. Both the chancellor and the president of UMaine and the greater UMaine system are highly discouraged from making statements about topics in the red zone and discouraged to a lower degree from releasing statements that fall in the yellow zone, such as climate change.

Hacker feels that hosting the climate strike, and generally being involved in environmentalist activities on the UMaine campus and in the surrounding community are good ways to counteract the lack of discussion about climate change.

Additionally, Hacker says that addressing this particular issue was originally one of his goals for the climate strike, as well as calling for major political action.

“[At] this [strike] in particular, we will hopefully be asking local and state legislative representatives to declare a climate crisis, as well as … potentially addressing the fact that the UMaine president is [discouraged from making] a statement on climate change,” Hacker said.

Hacker noted that his activism does not end here. Hacker hopes to continue the conversation about climate change by starting a chapter of Extinction Rebellion at UMaine and is planning on holding another climate strike event on Earth Day.

“I think I have the ability, that we all have the ability, to make some positive change,” Hacker noted.

Nov. 23 – 1:55 am

While on duty, Officer Gray of the Orono Police Department (OPD) noticed a vehicle come from the Kelley Road in Orono that had stopped at a stop sign for a longer time than necessary. Officer Gray followed the vehicle and noted that the driver was not driving at constant speeds. The driver reached 40 mph in a 25 mph zone and Officer Gray performed a traffic stop, pulling over Mohamed Mohamud, 24, of Lewiston. Officer Gray noted that the interior of the vehicle smelled strongly of alcohol, but Mohamud said that he had only had one beer three hours ago. Officer Gray conducted a field sobriety test, which Mohamud failed to pass, and Mohamud was brought back to OPD where a blood alcohol test indicated that Mohamud was intoxicated above the legal limit. While at OPD, Mohamud was searched and found with a Schedule Y drug. Mohamud was charged with operating under the influence with one prior warning, operating a vehicle after license suspension and unlawful possession of a Schedule Y drug. Mohamud has a court date set for January 9, 2020.

After signing an executive order on Nov. 26, installation of solar panels at the Blaine House, the official place of residence for Maine’s Gov. Janet Mills, has commenced. The project resulted in the installation of 61 new solar panels on the Blaine House property, in an effort to introduce more sources of renewable energy in the state capital.

The project has been in the works for months, as Mills included plans to forge ahead with introducing renewable energy sources in her inaugural address, given in January of 2019. Last month, Mills used the project as a backdrop to announce an executive order which directs state agencies to develop a sustainability plan by February of 2021, in order to meet accelerated carbon reduction goals. The project to install solar panels will cost an estimated $63,000, but Lindsay Crete, Mills’ press secretary, noted that the panels will provide enough power to cover roughly 25% of the Blaine House’s electricity needs.

“The project has already offset more than 1,400 pounds of carbon emissions, [which is] equal to planting 36 trees. Although the Blaine House isn’t heated with oil, the panels will annually offset the equivalent of burning 43 barrels, or 1,806 gallons of oil, with clean renewable energy,” Crete said.

The project is funded and made possible by the cooperation between state officials and ReVision Energy of Portland. ReVision Energy is the state’s largest solar installer and was the only company to come forward with interest in working on the Blaine House solar project. Maine has a small array of solar energy companies, and they struggled in the past years under the policies of former Gov. Paul LePage. Since Mills has been in office, she has pledged to boost Maine’s renewable energy economy and has worked with in-state companies in order to promote the growth of the solar industry in Maine.

Fortunat Mueller, the co-founder of ReVision Energy, noted that the project isn’t about making money for the industry or the company.

“It’s not a moneymaker,” Mueller said. “The value of the project for us, and for the state, is the visible demonstration of leadership by the governor, which we are grateful for.”

While the project is not making money for the state, it is an important step in the right direction for Maine’s environmentally conscious government. Throughout her campaign and since taking office, Mills has pledged to work to protect Maine’s environment and embrace a future where clean energy is accessible. In her past as a legislator, Mills voted in favor of clean air and clean water acts. In June of 2019, she signed a bill into law that established Maine’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 45% in 2030 and by 80% in 2050. The law also called for an increase in Maine’s Renewable Portfolio Standard from 40% today to 80% in 2030. She also implemented the Maine Climate Council, which is a board of representatives from across Maine from various academic and professional backgrounds who work to establish ways that Maine can improve their environmental policies.

“When all these factors — the reduced consumption of and reliance on fossil fuels, the increased consumption of homegrown clean renewable energy and, additionally, the very real demonstration of Maine’s long-overdue embrace of renewable energy — are taken into consideration, the state is satisfied with this project and believes it is a sensitive, forward-looking investment that moves Maine in the right direction,” Crete said.

On Thursday, Nov. 14, members of the University of Maine community gathered at Buchanan Alumni House to present the UMaine Arctic Share-Out, an event that highlighted the research efforts of members of the UMaine community. The event also featured collaborative projects between universities in the New England region and highlighted the importance of interdisciplinary research projects. 

The event was the first share-out of research to contribute to the UMaine Arctic initiative. UMaine Arctic is a project which is part of the New England Arctic Network which operates as a regional hub for institutions across the northeast to share and collaborate on research on the arctic. The UMaine Arctic initiative was set in motion over a year ago when researchers from UMaine decided that there was a need for a collaborative approach to arctic research, as a variety of departments at UMaine have been conducting research projects on the arctic environment but haven’t come together in their efforts. 

Jason Charland, the director of research development for UMaine Arctic spoke at the ceremony to recognize the initiative and speak on its importance to the UMaine community. 

“The University of Maine has a long history of engagement with the Arctic and the high north, from Greenland to Canada, Alaska and beyond. Our faculty and students engage with the region to study and share information about the environment, engineering, human dimensions, government policy and a wide range of research. These pursuits include glaciology, oceanography and research into the climate cycle,” Charland noted. “This group, the UMaine Arctic, seeks to identify how events in the Arctic drive changes in the Gulf of Maine and in New England. With more interest from the federal government in convergence research, it’s important [that we foster interdisciplinary research] and we hope that this network serves as a way to bring people from across disciplines, from across lines of academia to find mutually beneficial relationships.” 

The UMaine Arctic initiative is a way of bringing members of the UMaine academic community together across academic divides, and the event Thursday highlighted some of the value of this cross-field work. Presenting at the share-out were members from the Climate Change Institute, who presented posters that provided an overview of their work studying ice cores, iceberg melt effects on local and global ecology and research on how methane released by melting ice sheets and melting permafrost would affect the climate. Also presenting were faculty from the UMaine School of Nursing, with research on indigenous medicinal practices and cultural diffusion research. Highlighting the value of humanities research to the UMaine Arctic initiative, members of the UMaine Department of Art presented cultural resource recovery efforts, which worked to preserve art techniques of the indigenous communities in the Arctic who have been affected by climate change. 

Part of the UMaine Arctic initiative is to provide outreach opportunities to allow the UMaine Arctic researchers to present their research and findings to a wide array of community members. One way that UMaine Arctic is doing this is through UMaine’s “Follow a Researcher Program,” which works in tandem with the Maine 4H program to connect youth around the state with graduate student researchers. This program utilizes the power of social media to allow researchers to answer questions from K-12 students on their research and facilitate a space for students around the state to become more involved and knowledgeable about current research. 

“It’s great to see how far we’ve come. The UMaine Arctic [initiative] which is kicking off right now is building on 50 plus years of research, and we’re looking to educate future generations to continue [to make progress] in understanding the implications of further arctic change on the New England area and globally,”

UMaine Arctic works in tandem with prestigious universities from around New England including Bowdoin College, the University of Southern Maine, the University of New England, the University of New Hampshire, Tufts University, Harvard University, Dartmouth University and others.

UMaine Arctic is looking to provide even more research opportunities and will continue to announce funding opportunities into 2020 and 2021. The initiative also seeks to incorporate even more fields of study to contribute to a holistic understanding of how the changing arctic will affect ecology and environmental policy, as well as how it’s ongoing effects will alter human lifeways. To find out more, or to express interest in research opportunities with UMaine Arctic, go to https://umaine.edu/arctic/ or contact Kristin Schild at kristin.schild@maine.edu.

On Wednesday, Nov. 6, the University of Maine College of Education and Human Development held a grand opening and ribbon-cutting ceremony to welcome the Parenting Relationships Research Lab. The lab is located on the second floor of Merrill Hall, which houses the Child Development Learning Center. This is a resource for students and faculty conducting research and learning about young children to interact face-to-face with kids and gain real-life experience that can inform their classwork and research. 

The Parenting Relationships Research Lab is part of a cooperative effort between Assistant Professor of family studies Daniel Puhlman, and Kids First, a Scarborough-based organization that focuses on providing co-parenting resources to help raise healthy, happy kids. The lab itself was created by Puhlman, whose primary research focuses on co-parenting and fathering. 

The lab, Puhlman noted, will focus on the interactions between parents and their kids and social structures that affect parenting relationships. The research will also be using research data that encompasses extended family members and community members that act as caregivers to children to help Puhlman better understand the dynamics of the inter-family relationships. 

The goal of the Parenting Relationships Research Lab is to produce research data that will help people in both the local and global community have healthy relationships with their co-parent and other caregivers that will help to bring up happy kids. 

“We’re trying to look at (parenting) relationships, look at how they’re successful, and learning how to navigate the challenges in those relationships,” Puhlman said.

Puhlman is a father of three, and so parenting research is a topic that is close to his heart. He hopes that through his research, he will be able to make the world a better place for new generations.

“I was really just thinking about how I can go beyond just doing research. I think a lab, for me, is a way for me to present myself to others and the community that allows for connections and outreach,” Puhlman said about the inception of the lab. “A big part of what we do is not just to generate research, but to provide opportunities for parents and professionals and people that do this work, resources. They can come to us, and we can consult with them and work with them. Such an important part of it, for me, is bridging that gap between research and practice.” 

Puhlman sees the lab becoming a much more interactive community resource than the traditional research lab in the future. One of the focuses of the lab is on conflict and how conflict within the family structure can affect children in the household. While conflict can’t be totally avoided, it can be reduced through understanding and education. He hopes to see the lab travel around the state to be at fairs and events to provide parents with support and educational opportunities to help them deal with conflict. 

Working at the lab with Puhlman are two graduate assistants, as well as six undergraduate research assistants. All of the student workers are part of the education and human development programs at UMaine and are dedicated to the work at the Parenting Relationships Research Lab. 

Hadley Porreca, a third-year child development and family relations student, and Taylor Corey, a fourth-year child development and family relations student are both undergraduate research assistants for the lab. They work to catalog data and transcribe interviews, and help brainstorm ideas for data collection and interpretation. Both students are very passionate about the work that they do and want to see their research help people raise healthy, happy children.

The Parenting Relationships Research Lab is one of the only research labs in Maine that focuses on human interactions on the family level and is looking to lead the field by examining more complex aspects of familial relationships, such generational shifts and cultural differences in the future. For now, Puhlman hopes that the lab can spark interest and dialogue about parenting relationships to normalize the discussions about the challenges of parenting to help people help others.