An electrical fire in the boiler room of The Sullivan Fitness Complex forced over 100 people at the gym and the adjacent day care center to evacuate the building at 12 p.m. on New Year's Eve. There were no injuries. The fire was caused by a short circuit in the building's backup electrical system.
According to Cecilia Ziko, the first time that the Lifeline Fitness Program saved her life was in 1983, one year after her first child was born. "I needed to make a change," she remembers. "I needed to make a life for myself." After reading an article about the popularity and success of Lifeline's programs, Ziko decided to give the program a try.
Students and faculty who bring their laptops to campus may want to be more cautious. Last week, three thefts were reported within a four-day period on the Portland campus- two of which were laptops. These thefts are part of a trend over the last few weeks, during which USM Police have seen an increase in thefts of electronic items such as laptops and iPods.
A buzzing throng of local business figures, students, and other guests assembled at the Hannaford Lecture Hall at 7 am on January 14th to witness Muskie School professor Charles Colgan's annual economic forecast. A grim excitement filled the air prior to the lecture, as more than 400 guests milled around the urns of coffee, platters of danishes and sliced canteloupe.
In an effort to create a financially sustainable university system in Maine, UMS Chancellor Richard Pattenaude last week announced a six-month process aimed at spurring "major transformative changes". In a meeting with trustees on Jan 11, Pattenaude predicted that without significant restructuring of the UMS system, Maine's seven public universities would face a $42.
The new entrance to USM's Glickman Library officially opened last Wednesday afternoon with a ribbon cutting ceremony. The new entrance that faces the campus is part of an ongoing revitalizing project financed through private donations and government earmarked funds, which the University hopes will make the campus more attractive to its students and faculty.
Walking through Luther Bonney this past semester it was hard to miss the group of campaigning students who called themselves the "Window Warriors." This was the most recent campaign of the USM Green Team, whose past efforts in the fall of 2006 involved covering light switch covers with sticker bearing the phrase "Flip it Switch it Turn it Off.
President Botman has named USM's next Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs - Dr. Kate Langdon Forhan of Northeastern Illinois University. Forhan is currently the dean of NEIU's College of Arts and Sciences, a post she has held since 2002. Her selection caps a hiring campaign that yielded 97 applicants from colleges around the country.
MTV's "The Real World," the show that give birth to reality television, took a step closer to representing the real world by adding a transgender to their cast for the first time. But while MTV was taking their time getting to the transgendered population, a pair of USM alumni were bringing transgender issues to the forefront of peoples' consciousness.
