Joseph McKeen
Center for the Common Good
Address and location
Joseph McKeen Center for the Common Good
4690 College Station
Brunswick, ME 04011
Ph: (207) 798-4133
Fx: (207) 798-4120
We're located in Banister Hall, on the south side of the Chapel.
Susie Dorn, Director of the McKeen Center for the Common Good, works with students, faculty, staff and community partners to foster collaboration between the college and communities in ways that both augment student learning and benefit the public good. In addition to directing the Center, Susie administers the Common Good Grant program, the Community Matters in Maine Summer Fellowship and the Global Citizens Grant. Through these programs and others, Susie works to support students in their efforts to devise creative solutions to public problems. Her recent professional interests include developments in the fields of philanthropy and social entrepreneurism. She is a founding member of the Merrymeeting Bay Mentoring Coalition and currently serves on the Maine Campus Compact Steering Committee.
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
Shawn Gerwig, Administrative Coordinator, is responsible for the daily running of the offices of the McKeen Center. Providing administrative support for the Center director, staff, students and faculty working with community service and community-based teaching/research programs, her primary responsibilities include day-to-day management of the office, management of the departmental budget and finances, event coordination, oversight of the departmental web pages, development of office publications, and general public relations.
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. For example, she hosts the weekly knitting group in the McKeen Center which produces handcrafted scarves for the Orphan Foundation of America Red Scarf Project.
Contact Shawn at sgerwig@bowdoin.edu
Jessica Horstkotte ’08, Youth and Education Coordinator, runs the Service and Leadership programs offered through the McKeen Center that directly relate to youth, education, and schools. These programs include all the center’s tutoring, mentoring, and college aspirations programs.
Jess first came to Bowdoin as a student from the Chicago-area. While a student at Bowdoin, she was a sociology major and an education studies minor. Outside her academic pursuits, Jess worked closely with the McKeen Center, then the Community Service Resource Center, as an America Reads and Counts tutor, a member of both the Common Good Grant and Extension Committees, the coordinator of Common Good Day in 2007, and as a McKeen Fellow for Community Engagement her senior year where she helped coordinate service events for individual student groups. Additionally, she contributed to research on families in the Brunswick area waiting to receive subsidized housing through a community-based research course. In the community, Jess served on the steering committee of Community for All Ages. After graduating from Bowdoin in May of 2008, Jess joined the McKeen Center staff with the hopes of contributing to the betterment of children’s lives and strengthening the office’s connections with the local schools and youth organizations.
Contact Jess at jhorstko@bowdoin.edu
Janice Jaffe, Assistant Director for Public Engagement, works with faculty, students and local agencies to develop and strengthen partnerships that enhance student learning through curricular public engagement while fostering mutually beneficial ties between the campus and community. Her primary responsibilities lie in providing consultation and support for faculty interested and engaged in community-based teaching and research. Janice also advises students in making academic connections to their community work, and works with faculty, staff and students to organize events that engage the campus in issues of broad public concern. Through oversight of the Community Course Liaison program and the Academic Campus-Community Collaborations Symposium, Janice helps students understand the important role of academic work in the local community to a liberal arts education committed to preparing informed and engaged citizens.
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 problems such as migrancy and 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 Resource Center, People’s Regional Opportunity Program and the Maine Migrant Health Program also enabled Janice to deepen her longstanding commitment to addressing the needs of immigrant communities. She has taught ESL in Portland, led workshops for immigrant interpreters at Catholic Charities and assisted in interpreter training for United Way’s Language Access for New Americans program. At present, Janice is actively involved as a volunteer with the Casco Bay Friends of Safe Passage and as a medical interpreter, interpreter trainer and board member with Partners for Rural Health in the Dominican Republic.
Contact Janice at jjaffe@bowdoin.edu
Craig McEwen serves as Senior Faculty Fellow at the McKeen Center while teaching Maine Social Research and Sociology of Law as a member of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. The Maine Social Research course provides him the chance to work collaboratively with students and local organizations in doing research that serves the needs of the local community. At the Center, Craig participates actively with staff in planning and programming and works with the other faculty fellows and staff to deepen the Center’s connections to the academic program at the College.
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 serves on the State of Maine’s Committee on Judicial Responsibility and Disability, 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 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 the Commission to Study the Future of Maine's Courts, and the Board of Overseers of the Bar as well as its Grievance Commission.
Contact Craig at cmcewen@bowdoin.edu
Sarah Seames, Assistant Director for Community Service Programs, oversees the McKeen Center’s Service and Leadership programs. As the primary contact for annual service events, the Community Immersion Pre-Orientation, the Alternative Spring Break program, and the leaders of Bowdoin’s 26 student-led service organizations, Sarah helps introduce student volunteers to community issues through service. She works closely with the McKeen Fellows for Community Engagement, the student leaders of the McKeen Center, to create quality programs that connect service, learning, and public engagement.
Sarah’s interest in civic engagement and public policy and her experience with non-profit organizations daily inform her 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 lives in Brunswick, serves on the boards of the Brunswick Teen Center and the Community for All Ages initiative, and is currently pursuing 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