LEWISTON – Eight Bates College faculty and staff members have been awarded grants by the Harward Center For Community Partnerships to support community-based educational work. Seven awards were Harward Center Grants for Publicly-Engaged Academic Projects, given to faculty and staff for publicly-engaged teaching, research, cultural and other community projects. The eighth is part of the center’s new program, department and general education concentrations grant initiative, designed to support the integration of civic engagement into the Bates curriculum. Altogether the projects, seven led by faculty and one by a Bates staff member, received grants totaling $29,000.

“Once again, the range of these projects is terrific,” said Harward Center Director David Scobey. “It’s clear that Bates faculty and staff are using the grants to enlarge their teaching, research and creative work.”

The seven recipients of the Harward Center Grants for Publicly-Engaged Academic Projects and their projects include:

Claudia Aburto Guzman, associate professor of Spanish, for a project to create awareness of the participation that interfaith groups, involved in saving lives of those crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, have on border dynamics.

Alex Dauge-Roth, assistant professor of French, for “Rwanda: From National Disintegration to National Reunification,” an international and interdisciplinary two-day conference that featured guest speakers from Rwanda, Europe and the United States.

Joe Hall, assistant professor of history, to supervise a student researcher who will catalog materials related to Wabanaki history in the Bates College Edmund S. Muskie Archives.

Heather Lindkvist, lecturer in anthropology, to investigate the reproductive health of Somali women in Maine.

Bill Low, assistant curator, Museum of Art, who will oversee the “Voices of Seven Mills Exhibition Project.” Museum L/A’s first effort at producing major temporary exhibitions,.

Sarah McCormick, lecturer in dance, for collaboration with the Bates dance program and the Franco-American Heritage Center.

Kimberly Ruffin, assistant professor of English, for “Sighting and Sounding Sustainability: Gardeners-to-Artists.” Collaborators plan and conduct workshops that elicit participants’ reflection on the issues of sustainability and their experience as urban, organic gardeners.

The first program, department, and GEC grant goes to Emily Kane, Whitehouse Professor of Sociology, to support a program of sociology department assistantships in the area of community-based learning.