FARMINGTON – University of Maine at Farmington will celebrate its 156th Commencement ceremony on Saturday, May 16, beginning at 10:30 a.m. There are approximately 468 students in UMF’s 2009 graduating class.
UMF’s Commencement keynote address will be delivered by Naomi Schalit, national award-winning journalist and opinion page editor for the Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel. Schalit’s investigative and feature news articles and editorials have appeared in magazines and newspapers around the country.
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Receiving honorary degrees of Doctor of Humane Letters at this year’s ceremony are Ann Arbor, gifted teacher, poet and award-winning photographer, and her husband John Rosenwald, international scholar, poet and dramatist. Together they have brought their love of poetry and passion for international culture to Western Maine. Graduating senior Katharine Rose Gergosian, a resident of Topsham, will give the student address, and Theodora J. Kalikow, UMF President, and Allen Berger, UMF Vice President for Academic Affairs, will confer the degrees. Delivering greetings from the University of Maine System will be Richard L. Pattenaude, University of Maine System chancellor, and Jean Flahive, member of the UMS Board of Trustees.
The Commencement ceremony will be held outdoors behind the UMF Olsen Student Center. Guests of graduates are also welcome to watch the ceremony live over closed-circuit television in Lincoln Auditorium in the UMF Roberts Learning Center. Following the ceremony, the University will honor the new graduates with a reception in South Dining Hall in the Olsen Student Center.
Keynote Speaker Naomi Schalit – award-winning journalist
A national award-winning journalist, Schalit’s reporting speaks to the heart of the concerns of the people in Maine and beyond. She began her career at the The San Jose Mercury News, in California, and, in the last two decades, has written for magazines and newspapers around the country. Schalit has worked as a columnist for the Maine Times and both a reporter and producer for Maine Public Radio. While at MPR, her far-reaching reports were also featured on National Public Radio, Public Radio International and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Opinion page editor of the Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel since 2005, Schalit authored a notable editorial series in 2007 exposing the growing problem of hunger in Maine. “For I was Hungry,” received multiple awards including, the 2007 Publick Occurrences Award from the New England Newspaper Association, first place for editorial writing in the 2007 National Sigma Delta Chi Awards, honorable mention in the Anna Quindlen Award for 2007 and runner-up in the 2007 Casey Journalism Awards. The series also earned her the inaugural Force for Good Award given by Preble Street, the Portland homeless and anti-hunger advocacy non-profit organization.
A graduate of Princeton University with a degree in religion and Near Eastern studies, Schalit attended the Graduate School of Journalism at University of California, Berkeley.
Schalit’s speech for UMF Commencement is entitled, “Please use English – a plea to new graduates to avoid weasel words, official obfuscation and education-speak.”
Honorary Degree Recipients Ann Arbor and John Rosenwald
UMF is honoring Ann Arbor and her husband John Rosenwald for the literary and cultural vision and energy they have so generously shared with the community and the region. Together, they have worked as poets-in-the-schools as part of the Maine Touring Artists Program; taught at UMF and for Gold Leaf; served on the Sexual Assault Victims Emergency Services board, and are responsible for situating the “Beloit Poetry Journal” here in 2003.
Since growing up in Mexico, Maine, Arbor has worked around the globe as teacher, writer, and photographer. She is a published poet and has taught English, creative writing, and English-as-a-Second-Language to a wide range of students from Mexico, Maine, to several universities in China, where she served as Foreign Expert. Her prize-winning photographs have been shown or published in numerous venues overseas and in the U.S., including at the UMF Gallery.
For over 30 years, Arbor worked on the editorial board of the “Beloit Poetry Journal” and for decades has been involved with poet Robert Bly’s annual conference on the Great Mother and the New Father. She was also head basketball and volleyball coach at Beloit College in Wisconsin. She received her B.A. degree from Assumption College in Massachusetts and her Master of Arts in Teaching in Secondary English Education from Beloit College.
Rosenwald grew up outside Chicago and has led an international life as teacher, poet, dramatist, and translator, but he is also deeply engaged in Western Maine. Currently Professor of English at Beloit College, he was named Beloit Teacher of the Year in 1996. His poetry has appeared in a wide range of journals and magazines, and he has given more than 500 readings worldwide. Initially a translator of German, he later took up Chinese, publishing the first major collection of contemporary Chinese poets available in the United States in 1989.
Since 1976 he has served on the editorial board of the “Beloit Poetry Journal,” and is currently one of two primary editors. He has also been involved in the annual Robert Bly conference for more than 30 years. He has had four Fulbright Fellowships to study abroad and has been a Foreign Expert at three universities in China. He received his B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and his Ph.D. in Victorian Literature from Duke University.
Student Speaker Katharine Rose Gergosian – Topsham, Maine
Graduating with a major in secondary education-English, Katharine Rose Gergosian, of Topsham, is an example of leadership in action on the UMF campus. As a junior, she was named the 2007-2008 George J. Mitchell Peace Scholar in recognition for her strong academic ability, commitment to community service, and exceptional leadership skills. As a recipient of the scholarship, she studied for a semester at the University College, Cork, Ireland. She has been involved with the new student orientation program, has mentored youth in the community, was involved in the study of the campus tobacco policy and was active with the UMF Dancers. Additionally, Gergosian was employed on campus as a residence hall assistant, a security assistant in the Office of Public Safety and worked as an administrative coordinator in the UMF admissions office. She is currently fulfilling her student teaching requirement at Mount Blue High School with the hopes to teach secondary English at a Maine school after graduation.
Additional Event Details
The outdoor ceremony is free and open to the public. However, in case of inclement weather, the ceremony will be held inside the UMF Fitness & Recreation Center. Weather inquiries should be directed to the University switchboard on the morning of the ceremony, at 207-778-7000. Admission to the indoor ceremony will be limited to those who have already received “Fitness and Recreation Center” tickets. Guests of graduates are also welcome to watch the ceremony live over closed-circuit television in classrooms in the UMF Education Center and in Lincoln Auditorium and C23, located in the UMF Roberts Learning Center. The Commencement ceremony will be broadcast live on Mount Blue TV community access Channel 11, whether the ceremony is held indoors or outdoors. Videotapes and DVD’s of the ceremony will be available for a small fee from the University’s Ferro Alumni Center, 207-778-7090.
About the University of Maine at Farmington
As Maine’s public liberal arts college and first public institution of higher education, the University of Maine at Farmington offers undergraduate programs in arts and sciences, teacher education, and human services; and a recently developed Master of Science in Education program. With enrollment limited to just 2,000 students, the University of Maine at Farmington is the same size as many of New England’s most selective private colleges and offers many of the same advantages–yet at an affordable price. University of Maine at Farmington has built a national reputation for academic excellence by placing students first and foremost. UMF is one of just 20 colleges and universities across the nation featured in “Student Success in College: Creating Conditions That Matter,” a book that identifies schools that serve as models of educational effectiveness.UMF is also a founding member of COPLAC, the Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges, which includes 24 public colleges dedicated to the liberal arts tradition and quality undergraduate education.
I really would not use the word journalist to describe this women. She lost all her credibility as a journalist when she decided to use the media to promoter her liberal agenda.