Joseph McKeen
Center for the Common Good

Having taught for over a decade in both public and private schools in California, Montana, and Casablanca, Morocco, Susie understands the significance of an educational approach to service and public engagement. Her experiences living and traveling throughout Africa, Europe, and Eastern Europe inform her commitment to connecting students to international as well as local communities. Before coming to Bowdoin, Susie worked at the Haas Center for Public Service at Stanford University, where she served as the Center’s public service education specialist. As a member of the board of directors of the Mid-Peninsula YWCA in California, and advisor to the Youth Community Service Program of East Palo Alto/Palo Alto, she was able to address her other interests in issues of diversity, women in leadership, and empowering youth.

Contact Susie at sdorn@bowdoin.edu

Caitlin graduated from Bowdoin in May 2011 with a double major in Economics and Government and Legal Studies, and a French minor. As a student, Caitlin was involved in the local community as a mentor to a local student, the coordinator of the 2010 Common Good Day, and a member of the Common Good Grant Committee. She was also co-captain of the swim team, co-president of the Bowdoin College Democrats, and a Writing Assistant with the Writing Project. In addition to her position in the McKeen Center, Caitlin will be an assistant coach for the swim team.

Contact Caitlin at ccallaha@bowdoin.edu

Shawn was raised with the idea of community participation and service as part of her everyday life – giving whatever you can - no matter how little. Mostly through informal and unorganized service, she and her family regularly helped elderly neighbors and fellow church congregants in whatever way they needed. Currently Shawn is a board member for Family Focus, an organization committed to providing affordable community-based services (childcare, special needs programming, information and referral, parenting support and education) for families with children in the Midcoast area. She also participates regularly in service projects directed through her church. On campus, Shawn is particularly interested in inviting Bowdoin staff to take advantage of the resources of the McKeen Center. This year she offered a weekly knitting group to produce handmade scarves for the Orphan Foundation of America Red Scarf Project and a campus wide afghan project for Tedford Housing.

Contact Shawn at sgerwig@bowdoin.edu

In her fifteen years as a professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies at Bowdoin Janice saw students’ depth of understanding and sense of civic engagement increase as they put classroom theory on international issues such as immigration into practice at the local level. Mentoring students in course-based collaborations with agencies including the Maine Division of Migrant and Immigrant Services, Preble Street, and the Maine Migrant Health Program also enabled Janice to deepen her longstanding commitment to addressing the needs of immigrant communities. Her work translating oral histories of Hispanic immigrants for Latino Voices in New England (2009) and as a leader of interpreter training workshops for immigrants at United Way of Portland’s Language Access for New Americans program continue to inspire her and inform her efforts to bridge cultural differences and connect students and faculty with international communities in Maine. Currently, Janice is actively involved as a medical interpreter, interpreter trainer and board member with Partners for Rural Health in the Dominican Republic.

Contact Janice at jjaffe@bowdoin.edu

Promoting public engagement through the Center resonates with Craig’s own rewarding experiences working on issues of inequality, housing access, and civil and criminal justice. At present, he chairs the State of Maine’s Committee on Judicial Responsibility and Disability and serves on the Board of Directors of the United Way of Mid Coast Maine, and the Mid Coast Community Housing Coalition. When he came to Maine in 1975, he began a 25 year involvement with criminal justice reform, serving on the state’s Juvenile Justice Advisory Group, the Maine Civil Liberties Union’s Board of Directors, the Maine Council of Churches’ Criminal Justice Committee, and the Governor’s Advisory Committee on State Correctional Facilities Improvement. He has also had the chance to serve on the state’s Legal Needs Commission and Commission to Study the Future of Maine's Courts; to participate as a member of the Maine Board of Overseers of the Bar as well as its Grievance Commission; and to work as a court mediator and promote the development of mediation in Maine’s court system.

Contact Craig at cmcewen@bowdoin.edu

Sarah’s interest in civic engagement and public policy and her experience with non-profit organizations inform her daily work with students. Before coming to Bowdoin, Sarah coordinated community service programs at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts and promoted student civic engagement at the state level in her work with the New Hampshire and Maine Campus Compacts. Nationally, Sarah has served as a Youth Engaged in Service (YES) Ambassador for the Points of Light Foundation, based in Washington, D.C. Sarah recently completed her Master’s Degree in Public Policy and Management at the University of Maine’s Muskie School for Public Service.

Contact Sarah at sseames@bowdoin.edu

Central research issues include the study of sorption, desorption and coordination chemistry; surface complexation theory; mineral precipitation, dissolution, and weathering; and surface-assisted chemical transformation processes. Dr. Vasudevan and her group use a combination of controlled laboratory experiments, molecular and surface complexation modeling, and statistical tools in their research. Completed and current projects have emphasized the study of iron oxide rich soils, and pure phase minerals (iron, aluminum and titanium oxides, silica, and kaolinite) and include:

• Polar and ionic organic compound (pesticides/herbicides, pharmaceuticals) sorption-desorption in soils;,
• Sorption of organic ligands with -OH, -COOH, -NH2, heterocyclic N groups at the metal-oxide water interface;
• Influence of phosphate on organic compound retention in soils;
• Fluoride sorption to soils and associated aluminum release.
• Sorption of approved tracers and their potential use as surrogates for pesticide fate and transport;
• Chemometric analysis of pesticide and pharmaceutical retention in soils

Contact Dharni at dvasudev@bowdoin.edu

His book Oficios del goce: Poesía y debate cultural en Hispanoamérica (1960-2000) [Practices of Pleasure: Poetry and Cultural Debate in Spanish America], published by Fondo Editorial Universidad Eafit (Medellín 2000), studies Hispanic poetry from the Caribbean, Central and South America and the U.S. written during the last four decades of the 20th century, in the frame of contemporary cultural debate and social transformation.  As Bowdoin's Peter M. Small Associate Professor of Romance Languages, he is currently studying contemporary Latin American poetry in its interaction with social activism.

Contact Enrique at eyepes@bowdoin.edu