LEWISTON — Julia Sleeper will present a lecture about the Tree Street Youth Center, an organization she helped to form, as part of the USM LAC Alumni Lecture Series at noon Wednesday, Oct. 1.

Sleeper is the founder and executive director of Tree Street Youth Center. As a student at Bates College, she began connecting to the Downtown Lewiston community youth through service learning opportunities as a psychology and education major. After completing her masters in leadership studies degree at USM LAC, she began what is now Tree Street Youth Center in the heart of downtown Lewiston.

Supporting youth through academics, the arts and athletics, Tree Street Youth Center provides Lewiston-Auburn children a safe space that encourages healthy physical, social, emotional and academic development while building unity across lines of difference.

The USM LAC Alumni Lecture Series invites USM LAC alumni to return to campus and speak to how their degree program has helped them in their chosen careers.

All lectures are free, and current members of the USM community as well as the public are invited to attend the short talks and hear directly from alumni applying their USM education in their workplace or organizations as well as to the wider world.

The campus is located at 51 Westminster St. and the lectures will be held in room 285.

For more information about this and upcoming lectures in the series, visit www.usm.maine.edu/lac/alumni-lecture-series.