Maine Policy Review Spring 2018

Spring 2018 · Vol. 27, No. 1 · $15

Maine Policy Review

S PE C I A L I S S U E:

Leadership

Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center

Maine Policy Review

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PUBLISHER MARGARET CHASE SMITH POLICY CENTER Jonathan Rubin, Director

Maine Policy Review (ISSN 1064-2587) publishes independent, peer-reviewed analyses of public policy issues relevant to Maine.

EDITORIAL STAFF EXECUTIVE EDITOR

The journal is published two times per year by the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at the University of Maine. The material published within does not necessarily reflect the views of the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center.

Linda Silka Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center

EDITOR Barbara Harrity Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center

The majority of articles appearing in Maine Policy Review are written by Maine citizens, many of whom are readers of the journal. The journal encourages the submission of manuscripts concerning relevant public policy issues of the day or in response to articles already published in the journal. Prospective authors are urged to contact the journal at the address below for a copy of the guidelines for submission or see the journal’s website, https://digitalcommons.library .umaine.edu/mpr/.

PRODUCTION Beth Goodnight Goodnight Design

DEVELOPMENT Eva McLaughlin Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center

COVER ILLUSTRATION Robert Shetterly

PRINTING

For permission to quote and/or otherwise reproduce articles, please contact the journal at the address below.

University of Maine Printing Services

Current and back issues of the journal are available at: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/ The editorial staff of Maine Policy Review welcome your views about issues presented in this journal.

Please address your letter to the editor to:

Maine Policy Review

5784 York Complex, Bldg. #4 University of Maine Orono, ME 04469-5784

207-581-4133 • fax: 207-581-1266 http://mcspolicycenter.umaine.edu mpr@maine.edu

The University of Maine is an EEO/AA employer, and does not discriminate on the grounds of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, transgender status, gender expression, national origin, citizenship status, age, disability, genetic information or veteran’s status in employment, education, and all other programs and activities. The following person has been designated to handle inquiries regarding non-discrimination policies: Sarah E. Harebo, Director of Equal Opportunity, 101 North Stevens Hall, University of Maine, Orono, ME 04469-5754, 207.581.1226, TTY 711 (Maine Relay System).

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My Creed . . . is that public service must be more than doing a job efficiently and honestly.

It must be a complete dedication to the people and to the nation with full recognition that every human being is entitled to courtesy and consideration, that constructive criticism is not only to be expected but sought, that smears are not only to be expected but fought, that honor is to be earned but not bought.

Margaret Chase Smith

THANKS TO… Major Sponsor

Margaret Chase Smith Foundation Contributors

Sanford Blitz Merton G. Henry

Peter and Nancy Mills Linda Silka and Larry Smith

and anonymous Contributors

Peter Bowman Mary R. Cathcart A.N. Caviness John Clark Stanley R. Howe, Ph.D.

H. Paul McGuire James P. Melcher Craig Olson Kenneth Palmer Frances B. Pinney

Douglas Rooks Howard P. Segal David Vail Elizabeth W. Saxl and anonymous Friends

Friends

Volume 27 of Maine Policy Review is funded, in part, by the supporters listed above. We encourage you to consider making a tax-deductible contributions to show your support for the journal. Checks should be made payable to the University of Maine and can be mailed to the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center, 5784 York Complex, Bldg. 4, University of Maine, Orono, ME 04469-5784. Donations by credit card may be made through our secure website at digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr and by clicking “Donate.” Information regarding corporate, foundation, or individual support is available by contacting the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center. If you would like receive email updates about future issues of MPR, please send an email to mpr@maine.edu and we will add your address to our electronic mailing list.

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Contents

Special Issue: Leadership F E AT U R E S Introduction

by Linda Silka . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Incubating Leaders in Maine

by Joseph W. McDonnell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Building the Next Generation of Maine Leaders: Learning from the Leadership of Mary Cathcart

by Linda Silka . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

THE MARGARET CHASE SMITH ESSAY

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Commentary

Merton G. Henry: A Legacy of Leadership

A Life Committed to Leadership: Life Lessons from Margaret Chase Smith and Outcomes That Would Please Her

by David Richards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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by Linda Cross Godfrey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Why Leadership Matters

ENACT-ing Leadership at the State Level: A National Educational Network for Engaged Citizenship in State Legislatures

by Robert W. Glover, Kathleen Cole, and Katharine Owens . .

by Susan J. Hunter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Leadership, Inside and Out

by Deirdre McCarthy Gallagher and Joseph Shaffner . . . . .

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Commentary

Teamwork Is the New Leadership

by David D. Hart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Contents

Commentary

Commentary

Leadership as Partnership

by Karen Hutchins Bieluch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Adaptive Challenges of Leadership in Maine Schools

by Richard Ackerman, Ian Mette, and Catharine Biddle . . . .

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Commentary

Developing Leadership Pipelines in Maine School Districts: Lessons Learned from a SchoolUniversity Partnership

by Ian M. Mette and Betsy Webb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Power of Invitation: Teacher Leaders as Agents of Change

by Bill Zoellick, Molly Meserve Auclair, and Sarah L. Kirn . . .

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by Kate Dickerson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Our Path: Empower Maine Women Network and Leadership

by Mufalo Chitam, Parivash Rohani, Laura de Does, Ghomri Rostampour, Oyinloluwa Fasehun, Bethany Smart, and Jan Morrill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

by William I. Maxwell and Joyce T. Gibson . . . . . . . . . . . .

Injecting New Workforce Leaders in Tourism, Hospitality, and Environmental Science: A Community-Engaged Learning and Immersion Class

by Tracy S. Michaud and Robert M. Sanford . . . . . . . . . . .

The Importance of Leadership: Insights from Major Business Leaders in Maine

by Linda Silka . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Collaborative Leadership Is Key for Maine’s Forest Products Industry

Commentary

Hidden in Plain Sight: Making Maine’s Science Leadership Visible

by Yellow Light Breen, Jennifer Hutchins, and Marcia Sharp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

A Positive Change Trinity: Lean, Servant Leadership, and Maine

Investing in Teachers’ Leadership Capacity: A Model from STEM Education

by Susan R. McKay, Laura A. Millay, Erika Allison, Elizabeth ByersSmall, Michael C. Wittmann, Mickie Flores, Jim Fratini, Bob Kumpa, Cynthia Lambert, Laura Matthews, Eric Pandiscio, and Michelle K. Smith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Leading by Example

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by Brooke Hafford MacDonald, Lydia Horne, Sandra De Urioste-Stone, Jane Haskell, and Aaron Weiskittel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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INTRODUCTION

Introduction

by Linda Silka

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t is with great pleasure that we bring you this special Maine Policy Review issue on leadership. Over a year in the making, this issue captures the broad array of work on leadership in Maine, exciting work that continues to build Maine’s national visibility in the leadership arena.

It is no coincidence that we are publishing an MPR issue on leadership at this time. We are doing so to celebrate the qualities of leadership reflected in the work of Mary Cathcart, who has recently retired from her position as senior policy fellow at the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center (MCSPC). Mary originated and led the MCSPC’s award-winning Maine NEW Leadership program and was also instrumental in creating the MCSPC’s Distinguished Maine Policy Fellows program, which brings policymakers in the state to the University of Maine campus to engage with campus leaders and students. Throughout her work, Mary has been a tireless champion for strengthening leadership in the state. Her own work in the Maine Legislature is widely recognized as instrumental in creating change, building communication across parties, and modeling creative and innovative leadership. This work was recently recognized by Mary’s award of an honorary doctorate by the University of Maine.

This MPR issue delves into the full array of leadership issues in Maine. You will learn about leadership programs in Maine in many different contexts: business, K–12 education, higher education, health care and nonprofit organizations, politics, and tourism. The articles show leaders who encounter unique challenges and cover leadership training aimed at different groups: nonprofits, youth, municipal leaders, and teachers.

Across the articles, we see a recurring theme of how to learn from each other given our varied contexts: rural and urban, north and south, and local, regional, or state levels. Some articles delve deeply into one sector; others look across sectors and compare them. Many of the articles tackle the issue of the changing world. Other articles examine the changing views of what constitutes leadership or note the demographic changes that underlie many leadership challenges: keeping our youth, teaching leadership skills to our youth, assisting leaders

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to work across age groups and remain open to new ways of leading in Maine.

Throughout many of these articles, research is front and center. The articles explore the research we need to help us understand leadership or what works and what doesn’t in various leadership realms. Many of the articles describe research that looks at how leaders need to be attuned to rapidly shifting opportunities. In fact, change is an underlying theme throughout the articles.

This is our first MPR issue exclusively devoted to leadership, but it is a recurring topic in past issues. Past articles on leadership have covered a range of important topics: aging, community development, education, election reform and politics, tourism, women’s leadership, and workforce development, to name a handful. As we look to the future of leadership in Maine, it will be important not to lose sight of past insights about leadership challenges and opportunities, which can be discovered in these past articles.

We hope that this issue will advance discussions on leadership throughout the state. As these discussions happen, it will be important not to lose sight of all the innovative leadership in the state. We should pay attention to leadership issues in both rural and urban regions of the state. We should not lose sight of leadership among our elders or young people. Ultimately, this issue is about how we learn from each other and how we can make it easier to do so. Finally, it is about drawing lessons from current practices, yet learning to innovate beyond them. Linda Silka is the executive editor of Maine Policy Review. A social and community psychologist by training, Silka was formerly director of the University of Maine’s Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center. In addition to her role with MPR, she is a senior fellow at UMaine’s Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions.

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The Margaret Chase Smith Essay

A Life Committed to Leadership: Life Lessons from Margaret Chase Smith and Outcomes That Would Please Her

by Linda Cross Godfrey

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speaking, and the state of Maine. Those same areas of high interest born that summer of 1964 are still with me today— as personal passions, career choices, and public commitments—54 years later.

Research revealed more about Senator Smith and introduced me to another woman political leader. From the archives of the US Senate, November 4, 1956:

uly 13, 1964, might have been any This was the first day I saw, heard, other hot summer Saturday on a and was inspired by Margaret Chase farm outside the small town of East Smith. I later learned she had been the Which presidential campaign produced Tawas, Michigan. A junior in high first woman to serve in both houses of the first nationally televised debate? The school, it was my turn to vacuum the Congress and the first woman federal typical answer to that question is 1960, family living room. Turning on the political leader from Maine. As I Kennedy v. Nixon. In fact, the first television for distraction, I came upon researched further, I learned that Senator televised debate occurred four years the opening ceremonies for the four-day Smith had been the first national politearlier, when Democratic candidate National Convention of the Republican ical leader to speak up and speak out Adlai Stevenson challenged incumParty at the Cow Palace in Daly City, against the scandal fueled by Senator bent Republican president Dwight California. What unfolded over the next Joseph McCarthy. I read Senator Smith’s Eisenhower—but those two men did few days changed my life, inspired my “Declaration of Conscience” speech several not appear in the debate. Instead, on heart, defined my career, and enticed us times that summer, while other teens November 4, 1956, two surrogates to become residents of Maine. were focused on “Hard Day’s Night,” by debated the issues on network televiA group of eight men, each seeking the Beatles, “Rag Doll” by the Four sion. For the Democrats, former First the presidency of the United States, Seasons, or “I Get Around” by the Beach Lady and party icon Eleanor Roosevelt. circulated in front of the news cameras, Boys. It was clear in our family, with two For the Republicans, the senior senator making pronouncements and promises parents involved in local politics and from Maine, Margaret Chase Smith. and being interviewed — Nelson organizational leadership, that I had That’s right—the first televised presiRockefeller, Walter Judd, Henry Cabot experienced an epiphany of sorts. I was dential debate featured two women.1 Lodge Jr., Hiram Fong, Harold Stassen, now focused on women as leaders, public William Scranton, Barry Goldwater, George Romney.

Amid the furor, a milestone occurred: Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine became the first woman to receiver a presidential nomination by a major party. Even though the senator from Maine did not fare well in the delegate count, her attempt was credible, her message solid, her high moral character obvious. Unlike the male candidates, Senator Smith never conceded her place in the nomination process, which in the end kept Barry Goldwater from achieving 100 percent of the Eleanor Roosevelt and Margaret Chase Smith during the first televised president debate in 1956. delegates.

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The Margaret Chase Smith Essay Reading about Senator Smith’s preparation and presentation for this debate—from planning not just her words, but also her speech pattern, her attire, the size of the characteristic fresh red rose on her lapel, the decision to sit on two phone books to raise her to sit eye to eye with Mrs. Roosevelt— provided me with ideas and actions I used over the years and applied in campaigns I led for other candidates.

In 1968, as a junior at Central Michigan University (CMU), I was active in the nationwide Associated Women Students (AWS) organization.

When the opportunity came to attend the annual convention at the University of Maine in Orono, eight other AWS student leaders from CMU and I arranged for our tickets and boarded the plane. In what would be very unlikely to happen today, about ten minutes from landing at the Bangor airport, the captain’s voice came over the loudspeaker: “We’re early today, and it’s such a lovely day, instead of flying all the way over land directly from Detroit to Bangor, we’re going to swing out over the ocean and fly up the coast of Maine.”

After that glorious view of Maine’s coastline, and after I had been elected to be a national vice president of AWS, we sold the Bangor-to-Boston portion of our flight home, rented a van, and drove down the coast of Maine. Together with the glorious views, I was in Margaret Chase Smith’s Maine; I was smitten.

Three years later, as a staff member of the Student Affairs Division at Indiana State University, I was asked to be the chairperson for the annual Women’s Week Program. Our committee invited four nationally known women leaders, hoping one would accept and be our major presenter: Helen Gahagan Douglas, US Representative from California, actress, and champion of migrant workers; Jeane Kirkpatrick,

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American diplomat, political scientist, and author (later to become US Ambassador to the United Nations); Gloria Steinem, cofounder of MS magazine, activist, and leader in the Equal Rights Amendment movement; and Margaret Chase Smith, by now one of the nation’s most admired women, an influential member of the Senate, and a strong woman leader willing to speak her conscience. While hoping one of these women leaders would accept our invitation, we were actually expecting four letters declining. Imagine our surprise when all four women accepted! We decided to seize this rare opportunity, raise more funds, set up hosting sites for each, and welcome them to what became the Women’s Week of our dreams, and the university’s pride.

I had selected Senator Smith as the guest I would arrange housing for, and placed her in the home of a mentor and Indiana political leader, Elizabeth Foster Blumberg, who lived near the university.

There, Senator Smith not only had a great room and delicious food, but on her last day, we took her into the nearby woods for a rare experience of picking pawpaws. The magic of the experience was not lost on Senator Smith, and the friendship she and I started at that time lasted through many years and includes correspondence that is archived at the Margaret Chase Smith Library.

The following selections from letters we exchanged speak to the value of an admired elder leader supporting a younger follower and stand as an example of inspiring and supportive words that can help develop a new generation of community leadership.

This exchange with Margaret Chase Smith over the years also honors her loyal assistant, Angie Stockwell, secretary to Senator Smith from 1983 to 1995 and current collection specialist at the library, who I always believed made

it possible for the senator to be such a great letter writer.

October 28, 1988: It was a joy having you here even for a brief time….I hope you will be back from time to time until you come to stay. Many thanks for your kind words and friendship. [On every visit to the MCS Library, after a conversation, Senator Smith would take out a small step stool, raise herself to wind the grandfather clock in the corner of her living room, hand Bob her car keys, and we’d go to her favorite place for lunch. Lunch was always half of a grilled cheese sandwich, which the senator requested be slightly burned.]

May 10, 1989: Honorary degree from Indiana University! Truly it was one of the most perfect events I have attended in a long time. Of course, it was a very high honor coming to me and the day will be one of my most cherished memories through the years. [On receipt of an honorary degree from Indiana University, which my mentor Betty Blumberg, a member of the Board of Trustees, and I were please to achieve.

This became Senator Smith’s ninetieth honorary degree.]

May 8, 1995: How pleased I am to hear from you and to know of your activities and all that goes on around you...your words touch me deeply, and I am most grateful to be remembered. [Senator Margaret Chase Smith died at her home and library 11 days later. On a visit a few years earlier, she commented that all was readied, so when she died, the front door could be closed for five minutes and reopened to be her library and museum.]

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The Margaret Chase Smith Essay Years of studying Margaret Chase Smith’s leadership style, visits with her, and our written correspondence have influenced me personally and professionally. I learned that we both are the eldest daughters in a sibling family of six, with that big-sister role a perfect training ground for developing early leadership skills. We also shared a preference for simple living and hard work, a thirst for learning, a respect for all people, and confidence in women to do anything and everything.

Receiving the senator’s personal words of encouragement, her mentoring, and what we today call “personal coaching” gave me an influential and admired voice to shape my thoughts, words, and actions. Thankfully, I have a lovely stack of letters, tied up with a white silk ribbon, that continue to inspire and guide me: January 29, 1990: You are the ‘Number One’ idea woman I know…always so constructive….

March 15, 1990: I am so impressed with your enthusiasm and optimism….

September 17, 1990: Few have the courage and the feeling that someone must be leading the way, and this is what you are making every effort to do.

April 23, 1991: Keep up your

courage and continue as you have, striving for that which you have wanted for so long.

Senator Smith’s calm and clear speaking voice, her welcoming inclusion, and a consistently high expectation of herself as a leader guide me daily.

During my last visit with Senator Smith I asked, “Who are the political leaders you believe are most like you?”

There was barely a breath between question and answer, “Senator George Mitchell and Senator Olympia Snowe,” MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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she said in an absolute tone. I followed up, asking what she saw in them?

Another immediate answer: “Senator Mitchell is a man of great integrity and ethics. Senator Snowe studies the issues, shows up, stands up and speaks up.”

Then, with a little smile, she added, “And, they both love Maine and Maine people.” I have made her response a great summary, which I aspire to daily in my own leadership work.

Inspired by Margaret Chase Smith’s leadership example, I have founded the Atlantic Leadership Center (http://www .atlanticleadershipcenter.com/index. html) in Eastport, Maine. The center’s newest initiative is the Three-Nation Leadership Initiative. The intent of the program is to expanded leadership work by bringing together talented, and younger, thinkers and leaders from Washington County, Maine, three nearby tribal communities, and Charlotte County, including the Fundy Isles, of New Brunswick. Starting in April 2018, the program is offering six classes in six communities: Calais, Trescott, Eastport, and Milbridge, Maine; and St. Stephen and Campobello Island, New Brunswick. The classes cover six different aspects of leadership: Nikanke/Leader, Storyfinder/Leader, Place Maker/Leader, Cultural Champion/Leader, International Citizen/Leader, and Deliverer/Leader.

Our Save Passamaquoddy Bay 3 Nation Alliance was awarded the Maine Chapter of the Sierra Club’s Local Grassroots Leadership Group Award, for preventing the development of three liquefied natural gas terminals in Passamaquoddy Bay. This was a 12-year battle against a number of the country’s largest legal and consulting firms, deep-pocketed investors who put $90 million into the effort, and against all odds. Our work was based on proven leadership patterns and practices and guided by the example of Margaret

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Chase Smith to stand up, and speak out, and do what’s right.

Now, for a great announcement about the outcomes of a five-year national project to find examples of cities and towns showing positive community development, local leadership, and culminating in a new book, Our Towns: A 100,000 Mile Journey into the Heart of America. This book will turn the spotlight on Eastport (and 28 other selected communities) and our collective work to revive and advance our community. The American Futures Project, a partnership of The Atlantic, National Public Radio, and Esri, launched this nationwide exploration in 2013 to find the best example of a resilient and reinventive city or town in each state. Through personal visits and interviews, the journalistic team of James and Debra Fallows and Kai Rysdall have collected stories of the selected locations over the past five years and now will take their work into the world, with the publication of the book this spring.2 Here is a sampling of what the journalists and producers leading the American Futures Project have said about Eastport. Senator Smith would be pleased about this, and so are we.

Since our first visit in the fall of 2013, Deb and I have reported frequently on the grit, vision, resilience and apparently indomitable drive of the roughly 1300 people who live in the little city of Eastport, Maine. (Fallows 2017) Here is why I’m writing about Ajo—and Xizhou, and Eastport, and even Yellow Sheep River—late at night.…to emphasize the emotional power of seeing social capital being created, as we now realize we have done in all of these different-butsimilar places.

Everyone knows about financial capital-creation, and we assume it is carried out on Wall Street or Sand Hill Road or by gnomes in Zurich. Social 9

The Margaret Chase Smith Essay capital is as precious and necessary as financial capital.…And it has been surprisingly moving to get to know people who are investing themselves in the lives of their communities, even if conventional economic or careerstrategy analysis might suggest that this is a waste of time. (Fallows 2015)

Linda Cross Godfrey is

Yes, Margaret Chase Smith would be pleased with Eastport and the leadership efforts her life definitely inspired, and I believe she’d send a letter saying so. ENDNOTES 1 https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory /history/minute/The_First_Televised _Presidential_Debate.htm 2 For more information about the project, visit the website https://www.theatlantic .com/projects/city-makers-american -futures/

president of the Atlantic Leadership Center in Eastport, Maine, and a partner in The Commons, Inc., and Dirigamus, LLC, also in Eastport.

She is an educator, entrepreneur, community leader, and author and has been described as “one of Maine’s most inspiring speakers.” Godfrey lives by words from her leadership inspiration, Margaret Chase Smith: “And this I do believe above all, especially in times of greater discouragement, that I must BELIEVE—that I must believe in my fellow people—that I must believe in myself—that I must believe in God—if life is to have any meaning.”

REFERENCES Fallows, James. 2015. “From Xizhou to Eastport to Ajo: Big Dreams in Small Towns.” The Atlantic (April). https:// www.theatlantic.com/national/archive /2015/04/from-xizhou-to-eastport-to -ajo-big-dreams-in-small-towns/390105/ Fallows, James. 2017. “A Big Step for Little Eastport.” The American Futures Notebook. https://www.theatlantic.com /notes/2017/01/a-big-step-for-little -eastport/513242/

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The Margaret Chase Smith Essay

Why Leadership Matters

by Susan J. Hunter

The following is from a talk University of Maine President Dr. Susan J. Hunter gave on May 30, 2018, at Bangor Public Library as part of Dirigo Speaks. President Hunter feels her time at UMaine has allowed her many opportunities to reflect on leadership and why it matters and recognizes that many people have shaped her perspectives on leadership. More information about this and other Dirigo Speaks presentations is available on the Bangor Daily News website (https://bangordailynews.com/browse /bdnevents/dirigospeaks/).

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f asked, I think most people would say that they know a leader when they see one. That person with the highest—and sometimes longest—title. The occupant of the corner office. The loudest voice or highest paid.

But I’m drawn to a different definition of leadership. In that definition, leadership is derived from influence and can come from anyone at any level, in any role. This leadership doesn’t rely on prominence of position, but, rather people who are considered wise, thoughtful, and responsible—in any venue—a community, a neighborhood, a campus, a classroom. They have a reputation for working for the greater good—not for themselves, I have influence, built up over many years, based on long professional relationships, working hard, and holding many roles. And there’s no doubt that, as one moves up in an organization, she or he gains power. But the reality is, you gain more authority by the use of less power.

Persuading people to take action because it is in the collective best interest is a more powerful—and more reliable—way to lead. I think this approach has the greatest potential for making lasting change.

Leadership matters. In any organization, almost any leader can get by during good times, when things are going well. Even so, poor leadership in good times is not strategic enough to

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capitalize on those good times. But the status quo will not last for long. Change is constant.

Leadership is tested—and matters— most in the face of challenging situations. Times of crisis usually require large-scale change, significant innovation, and problem solving. It’s there that the hard work is done, and it may seem particularly difficult to do it right. But the alternative—poor leadership—is not an acceptable option.

Studying and thinking about leadership is important. A couple of years ago, a small group within my cabinet suggested we actively study and discuss leadership in a more organized, disciplined fashion. It was an opportunity to challenge ourselves, to reflect, share, and learn from each other—to flex our “leadership muscles.” We started incorporating a short leadership segment at the start of our weekly meetings. We took turns sharing perspectives or examples of leadership, either leadership theory or leadership in action. We discussed what we read in light of current situations we were dealing with. One take-home message that stuck with all of us is the need for a leader to remain curious and grateful, and convey both in how she or he operates. And know that patience is a virtue when trying to drive larger change.

Bringing about institutional change often requires a culture shift. And that

translates to thinking, operating, and behaving differently. It often requires a shift in people’s comfort zones, and that’s not easy for most of us—including me. Knowing not only your institution, but also the culture in which it operates are important. A leader is a catalyst for change and has to recognize the nuances of the existing culture and the current institutional environment to better understand the work ahead to bring about change.

Because the path forward is rarely clear, I have come to recognize that a successful leader has to be comfortable with a high degree of ambiguity and be able to make meaningful connections in seemingly dissimilar and disparate places.

It’s important to remain attuned to a background hum of impending change and appreciate the degree of anxiety that causes in everyone, including me. But that’s okay because that bit of angst has always kept me on my toes.

It’s important to take on challenges outside your comfort zone. Leadership is informed by what you learn from seeking out opportunities for greater engagement, doing more than you need to do.

It’s how you grow in your sense of self, as an engaged citizen and as a leader.

For example, the development of the Primary Partnership with the University of Maine at Machias and the assumption of the presidency of that campus were growth experiences for me.

I thought hard about the importance of that institution to Downeast Maine and saw the partnership as a natural extension of UMaine’s land grant mission, allowing us to serve the state in a new way. I’m proud of the work we’ve done, and the close relationship that has grown—and will expand—between our campuses. The success of the Primary Partnership did—and continues to— involve the work of many people, on both campuses. Institutional change 11

The Margaret Chase Smith Essay takes a village. And people need to be seen—and see themselves—as leaders with the potential to bring about change, to make a difference. Empowering others to be leaders is critical for successful change initiatives.

Also critical to growth and success in leadership and in life are mentors. I was lucky in having role models and mentors who were themselves leaders.

They were smart, analytical, creative, and people oriented. My role models also emphasized the importance of mentoring others. I tell students that it is important to observe successful, competent leaders, and understand why they are so respected and successful. How do they act and communicate? What do you see when you watch them in action?

At UMaine, I have the good fortune to have been a longtime member of the community. I am engaged in the community and have a depth and breadth of experience that has permitted me to know first-hand the pleasure and importance of teaching and mentoring students, of being a scientist at the state’s land grant university and a high-level administrator. My career pathway was unusual.

It is not common for leaders to stay in a community for multiple decades as I have. Nonetheless, leaders at all levels need to connect to community organizations, institutions, and various constituencies to tune in. The appreciation for what exists and why folks will be loath to change can come from listening intently to constituents, being empathetic.

Leadership that brings about institutional change cannot be done in a vacuum. It is not a solitary undertaking.

It occurs in a context, and to be done right, it must be done with transparency and with as much input as possible.

Because leaders accomplish very little single-handedly. A leader is part of a team, and successful change occurs because of the work of multiple leaders.

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Accomplishments ascribed to the best leaders need to be seen in context, as achieved by the collective we. I really tried to emphasize this point—on campus and off—often referring to the impact of the collective.

A good leader brings people together, not only to get their input, but also to be clear on the collective goals and the steps to getting there. It puts your challenges, timelines, factors, goals out there— accessible to others. Some would say it increases vulnerability. I say it advances meaningful change by removing the mystery and reducing suspicion.

As historian Doris Kearns Goodwin described in her biography of Abraham Lincoln, Team of Rivals, the best leaders resist the temptation to populate their cabinets or counsel only with people who agree with them. People who disagree are essential for broad community representation and informed leadership.

On the back end, the leadership team needs to develop a level of comfort and trust necessary to push against one another, ensuring that what needs to be said is said—and heard—at the beginning rather than at the end of the process. I want people to push against me—even if I don’t seem overjoyed at the moment. It forces the consideration of widely divergent viewpoints, and that is a good thing. Does this ensure perfection? Nothing does. It’s important to admit when you’ve made a mistake, that a point should have been a little clearer or explained a little better.

When peers, constituents, and community members see you as credible and operating in a straightforward way, they will know with confidence that you’re doing what you think is best for the enterprise, even if it may not be exactly what they would prefer or always in their individual best interest.

In leadership, as in life, there are challenges, but also opportunities for

significant progress. A good leader, at any level, recognizes those moments and takes advantage of them. Susan Hunter became the twentieth president of the University of Maine on July 7, 2014. In 2017, she also became president of the University of Maine at Machias. Hunter began her full-time career at the University of Maine in 1991 as a faculty member in the Department of Biological Sciences. Her administrative positions included chair of the Department of Biological Sciences, associate provost and dean for undergraduate education, and five years as the executive vice president for academic affairs and provost. Immediately prior to her appointment as UMaine’s first woman president, Hunter served as vice chancellor for academic affairs for the University of Maine System.

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INCUBATING LEADERS IN MAINE

Incubating Leaders in Maine

by Joseph W. McDonnell

Maine’s sparse population and its small towns encourage participation in community life. Leaders For a sparsely populated state, Maine has produced an extraordinary number of national, emerge from a rich communal life bipartisan leaders. What has made Maine an incubator for such leadership? Alexis de with its many opportunities to exerTocqueville, the author of Democracy in America, provides useful insights into Maine’s cise leadership. Small towns with culture as a breeding ground for leadership. But rapid societal changes sweeping the engaged schools, governments, fire country and the world—particularly globalization, urbanization, and the digitization of the and police departments, civic orgaeconomy—will inevitably alter Maine’s culture. This paper explores steps Maine might nizations, and houses of worship take to develop leaders in this new environment by preserving its past strengths and create communities rich in neighadjusting to these new challenges. Maine could overcome its north/south divide and play borliness and a spirit that encoura role in developing leaders who would bring polarized sectors of the country together. ages public service. Many small Maine towns, and even its cities, have maintained their same characaine has punched above its weight class in teristics for more than 100 years. producing national leaders from such a sparsely In Maine, people know their leaders on a first-name populated state, and not just national leaders, but basis; political campaigns are intimate, and candidates bipartisan leaders with a natural inclination to bring relate to voters in one-on-one relationships more than together disparate parties. These leaders include Maine’s through mass-media advertising. Personal reputations current senators Susan Collins and Angus King and gained over a long period carry more weight than manunotable past senators such as Margaret Chase Smith, factured political images. Leaders tend to be responsive Edmund Muskie, William Cohen, George Mitchell, and to the struggles of people they meet each day—and rarely Olympia Snowe. have enough supporters to stake out extreme positions.

It cannot be just coincidence that these leaders Alexis de Tocqueville, the author of Democracy in come from Maine. Leadership does not just strike a America, provides useful insight into Maine’s culture as chosen few as a bolt of lightning from the heavens, but a breeding ground for leadership. If Tocqueville were to bubbles up from the bottom, nurtured in a community’s return to America today, nearly two centuries after his culture. In this article, I will explore three questions 1831 visit, he would hardly recognize the many rural about Maine’s leadership: communities and small cities he visited that have become sprawling suburbs and sizeable cities. He would recog• What has made Maine an incubator for such nize Maine, however, because it still shares many of the leadership? characteristics of those nineteenth century communities.

• In light of societal changes, particularly globalTocqueville observed that Americans displayed a ization, urbanization, and the digitization of healthy balance between individualism and communithe economy, what steps might Maine take to ty-mindedness, which he described as “individualism preserve its past strengths and nurture leadership well understood” (Toqueville 2000: 500). Americans, he for the twenty-first century? observed, keenly sought their own advancement, but • In a country deeply divided into red and blue also recognized that sacrificing some of that individustates, reflecting rural and urban values, can alism for the sake of the community served their own Maine overcome its north/south divide and interests. In many parts of the country, that attitude may serve as a model to bring polarized sectors of the no longer be true, but it remains true, or at least truer, country together? in Maine today.

Abstract

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In America, equality of conditions first attracted Tocqueville’s attention for its sharp contrast with Europe’s aristocratic society, where opportunity for advancing one’s station in life was limited. It was not that everyone in America had the same amount of wealth, but that Americans displayed a sense of equality in relationships and optimism about bettering themselves (Toqueville 2000). Tocqueville observed that even women in America engaged in political discussions and exercised influence in shaping the democratic culture, despite being prevented from voting or holding formal leadership positions.

It is notable that none of the Maine leaders identified at the start of this essay came from wealth. It would be politically risky for Maine’s statewide office holders, no matter their party affiliation, to lose sight of constituents of all incomes when considering policies or proposing legislation.

It would be politically risky for Maine’s statewide office holders, no matter their party affiliation, to lose sight of constituents of all incomes when considering policies or proposing legislation.

Tocqueville observed that democratic leadership flourished in America because of its isolated geography, its laws, and especially its customs or mores, the “habits of the heart” of its people (Toqueville 2000: 275).

Maine’s habits of the heart stem from its isolation, its independence, and the hardscrabble life its people have endured farming rocky soil, fishing cold waters, and felling trees for ships and lumber. Credit must also be attributed to nurturing immigrant communities— communities of French Canadians, Irish, Italians, Poles, Greeks, Jews, and more recently, Africans.

But if Maine’s small public-spirited communities have successfully nurtured leadership, they also have been seen by many young people as places to escape from in order to pursue their ambitions or find gainful employment. Leaving the community of your parents MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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has a long history in Maine and the nation. Tocqueville observed that people in nineteenth-century France typically lived their entire lives in one community, but in America a person might be born in the East, move west to acquire less expensive land, and after a few years, sell that farm and migrate farther west to purchase an even larger farm. Mobility characterized ambitious Americans in the early nineteenth century, and a future outside Maine described the destiny of many young Mainers throughout its history and continues today.

NEW CHALLENGES FROM TECHNOLOGY AND A CHANGING WORLD

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lobalization, automation, revitalization of cities, and the digital revolution create new challenges that are already affecting Maine’s culture and will inevitably influence the development of its future leaders.

Maine knows firsthand the ravages of globalization as mills and other natural resource businesses have closed, eliminating jobs, forcing the young to flee, and leaving towns like Millinocket largely to retirees.1 Globalization has also left Maine with fewer businesses headquartered in the state as long-established businesses become satellites of larger corporations. Even the remaining state-based employers no longer place all their eggs in Maine’s basket as they expand to new locations in other states and countries.

Maine’s large iconic employers, LL Bean, Idexx Laboratories, Wex, and Jackson Laboratory, have all expanded outside Maine.2 Automation has been responsible for far more job losses in the country than globalization, and rapid advancements in artificial intelligence will only accelerate this trend.3 Automation will not only replace routine factory jobs, but also jobs associated with food preparation, collecting and processing data, and work associated with accounting, law, and real estate.

In the short run, Maine’s aging workforce presents the state with a massive problem that those in leadership positions have not yet fully responded to (Dorrer 2017).

In the longer run, the changing nature of jobs presents education leaders with a sizeable challenge to revamp schools, community colleges, and universities to prepare students and displaced workers for the new jobs, which will require different and often higher-level skills.

The worldwide resurgence of cities is also altering the economic landscape of Maine. Young people are flocking to cities, and businesses now are following 14

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talent into the cities rather than trying to lure employees to suburbs or rural locations. Although still seen as a rural state, Maine’s cities are driving the state’s economy, and in the near future, they are likely to be the only parts of the state experiencing growth.

Maine’s current population projections predict Greater Portland, for instance, will grow 2.3 percent between 2014 and 2034 while the rest of Maine experiences a 3 percent decline (LeVert and deLutio 2017).

But it would be a mistake for Maine’s leaders to conclude that its cities are doing well just because they are doing better than the state’s declining rural regions.

Maine’s cities are competing with other cities for talented workers and businesses to employ them as well as attracting tourists to support their economies. Maine’s cities suffer from aging infrastructure, shortages of workforce housing and public transportation, an influx of the homeless and those with mental illness, and a more complex school-age population with a disproportionate number of the state’s new Mainers. It will take resources and imaginative leadership from business, government, and education officials to address these issues.

Maine’s rural regions with their aging and declining populations present daunting challenges for leaders as they seek to revitalize their economies and attract new younger residents to the region. Incubating future leaders will require nurturing an entrepreneurial spirit and a love of the outdoors. Entrepreneurial ventures focused on nature tourism, crafts, agriculture, and aquaculture offer possible opportunities, and rural businesses must take advantage of Maine’s cities and the reach of the internet to sell products to distant markets.

RESPONDING TO CULTURAL CHANGES

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ow might Maine respond to these worldwide trends—especially with respect to the development of its future leaders? As a microcosm of the nation, half blue and half red, Maine could become a statewide demonstration project to reimagine democracy in the twenty-first century. Maine’s small cities and rural communities have historically built strong social capital among their members, which is the foundation for a democratic society. The sociologist Robert Putnam (2000) described social capital as accepted norms of reciprocity, trustworthiness, good will, sympathy, and fellowship, the glue that holds communities together.

But for the twenty-first century, bonding alone will not suffice as an incubator for future leaders. It risks

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producing narrow-minded, tribal leaders who represent only a small slice of the community and treat those outside the tribe with suspicion and even hostility.

Maine has also produced its share of that type of leader.

Bonding creates what Putnam has called “thick trust” in homogenous associations, but can leave a diverse society with “thin trust” among strangers (Putnam 2000: 136–137).

Communities in the twenty-first century will thrive when they complement bonding with bridging, which is the capacity to relate to a diversity of people and interests. If bonding is the glue that holds a community together, bridging is the grease that lubricates the diverse elements of a democratic society. To prevent the state’s population and economy from declining as deaths outnumber births, Maine will have to welcome people from different states and countries to its communities.

As a microcosm of the nation, half blue and half red, Maine could become a statewide demonstration project to re-imagine democracy in the twenty-first century.

Maine’s future leaders could become bridge builders, bridging divides between urban and rural, liberal and conservative polarized political parties, and those born here and those “from away.” In short, Maine might serve as a model in bridging human differences to find common ground. In the process, Maine could build social capital within the state and train future leaders for the state and the nation.

LESSONS FROM HISTORY

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ore than 100 years ago the United States economy shifted from an agrarian society to a predominately urban industrial society, with people leaving farms and moving to cities to work in factories and offices. The shift raised questions about whether the democratic society created by the country’s early settlers could continue in a society that had grown larger, more impersonal, and more complex.

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Even proponents of democracy doubted whether the average person would have the time, interest, or capacity to deliberate intelligently about society’s many issues and their far-reaching consequences. The rise of popular media also made it likely that propaganda would undermine democratic decision making.

Democratic realists such as Walter Lippmann (1966) thought it best to limit the public’s role in democracy to the voting booth with an elite group of experts running the government.

The philosopher John Dewey recognized that industrial society had altered democracy’s landscape, but he remained optimistic that this new society could be transformed into a great democratic community through education. Dewey maintained that culture shaped people and that if families, schools, media, local government, civic associations, and houses of worship all operated democratically, they would inculcate democratic habits that would transform the large, complex, and impersonal society into a great democratic community (Dewey 1954). Chief among these habits was an education in methods of inquiry—to create a generation of problem solvers who would search for solutions to society’s problems, free from personal, economic, or ideological bias.

We are again living in a society that is being transformed—by the digital revolution. The internet and social media are disrupting traditional forms of community, shopping, schooling, and even dating and interpersonal relationships. On the internet, place no longer matters. Whether you live in a city or a rural community, you are no longer dependent on local stores, schools, libraries, or even jobs. These new technologies provide access to unlimited information and entertainment, but can also disrupt the rich social interaction of face-to-face communities and encourage a retreat to echo chambers in cyberspace where interactions are limited to likeminded people.

Tocqueville warned that democracy could be threatened if people withdrew from the public sphere into their own private interests. Although de Tocqueville, Dewey, and Putnam lived decades apart from each other, they concurred that a democratic society requires citizen participation at a local level, not just in government, but in a variety of political, civic, religious, and educational organizations.

Today, there are many obstacles to such participation—the stressful 24/7 work ethic, long commutes, two-parent careers, single-parent households, and the lure of electronic entertainment after a hard day’s work.

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Participation runs against the grain for many, but to nurture the next generation of leaders, youth need role models and rich civic experiences—especially to counter the tendency of digital natives to turn inward with electronic media.

If societal complexity led Dewey and Lippmann to raise concerns about the mass media’s potential to undermine democracy by distorting communications, imagine their concerns today with social media whose impact on public opinion we do not yet fully understand. But Dewey’s solution still works today—independent social inquiry, the artful presentation of findings, rich interaction in local communities, and the development of democratic habits.

NURTURING LEADERS FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

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aine has all the right ingredients to develop leaders for the twenty-first century with small cities and communities that provide many opportunities for the exercise of leadership. Even in the digital society, the local face-to-face community will remain the center of leadership development in Maine.

Schools might consider revitalizing civics—not only to explain how government works, but as a highly engaged activity where students learn by participating in the decision-making life of the community. Students, along with adults in the community, might learn to bond and to bridge, to inquire imaginatively into community problems, to understand and appreciate diverse points of view, and to lead small groups in activities that make a difference in the community.

Through such an education, Maine would be nurturing leaders for the twenty-first century and asserting itself as a model for the nation. Maine might remain a purple state, but not because red citizens live in the north and blue citizens in the south, but because Maine has educated a generation of leaders with the capacity to inquire dispassionately and harmonize diverse perspectives. ENDNOTES

1 Since 2011, more than 2,400 workers have lost their jobs in Maine’s pulp or paper mills (Milneil 2017).

2 Jobs displaced from 2001 to 2013 due to the growing goods trade deficit with China represented 1.77 percent of total state employment in Maine, or 11,400 jobs (Aging and Disability Services 2016).

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3 Foreign trade accounted for just 13 percent of America’s lost factory jobs. The vast majority of the lost jobs— 88 percent—were lost to robots and other homegrown factors that reduce factories’ need for human labor (Milneil 2017).

REFERENCES Aging and Disability Services. 2016. Maine’s State Plan on Aging 2016–2020. Augusta: Maine Department of Health and Human Services. http://www.maine.gov /dhhs/oads/trainings-resources/documents /STATEPLANONAGING2016-2020DRAFT.pdf Dewey, John. 1954. The Public and Its Problems: An Essay in Political Inquiry. Athens: Ohio University Press.

Dorrer, John. 2017. “Workforce Development in the New Economic Era.” Appendix B in Greater Portland Tomorrow Choices for Sustained Prosperity, by Richard Barringer, Joseph McDonnell, and Frank O’Hara, 62–68. Portland: Muskie School of Public Service, University of Southern Maine. http://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/muskie/8/

Joseph W. McDonnell is a professor of public policy and management at the Muskie School at the University of Southern Maine (USM.) He has recently coauthored two reports on Portland and the Greater Portland region: Growing Portland, The Case for Growth: Not Whether but How and Greater Portland Tomorrow: Choices for Sustained Prosperity. He came to Maine in 2011 to serve

as dean of the professional schools at USM and subsequently also served as provost. Prior to coming to Maine, McDonnell served as dean of the business school at Stony Brook University in New York.

LeVert, Michael, and Catherine Reilly deLutio. 2017.

“Greater Portland Maine’s Urban Economic Engine.”

Appendix A in Greater Portland Tomorrow Choices for Sustained Prosperity, by Richard Barringer, Joseph McDonnell, and Frank O’Hara, 39–61. Portland: Muskie School of Public Service, University of Southern Maine. http://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/muskie/8/ Lippmann, Walter. 1966. Public Opinion. New York: Free Press.

Milneil, Christian. 2017. “Interactive: Population Change in Maine Towns, 2010–2015.” Portland Press Herald (May 25). https://www.pressherald.com/2016/05/19/interactive -population-change-in-maine-towns-2010-2015/ Putnam, Robert D. 2000. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Tocqueville, Alexis de. 2000. Democracy in America. Vol. 2.

New York: Bantam Classics.

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LEARNING FROM THE LEADERSHIP OF MARY CATHCART

Building the Next Generation of Maine Leaders: Learning from the Leadership of Mary Cathcart

by Linda Silka

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he University of Maine recently awarded Mary regardless of gender, recognizing the leadership they can Cathcart an honorary doctorate in recognition provide and notes that we must draw on all available of her ground-breaking work helping build the next talent if we are to have the strong leadership needed in generation of Maine leaders through Maine NEW our complex, difficult times.

(National Education for Women) Leadership, biparMary Cathcart’s own story captures some of the tisan training for college women. Cathcart started challenges to women recognizing themselves as leaders, Maine NEW Leadership in 2009 as an offshoot of a and the essay instructively highlights some of the program developed by Rutgers University. Cosponsored barriers we must address to bring more women into the

by UMaine Cooperative Extension until 2011, Maine policy leadership arena where they have so much to NEW Leadership is now solely sponsored by the offer. Cathcart’s exposure to politics occurred early. Her Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at the University parents, one a Democrat and one a Republican, talked of Maine. politics at the kitchen table and were able to work Maine NEW Leadership was established in response across their differences. They worked to find commonto the reality that women are significantly underalities. But, despite this early extensive exposure to represented in legislatures, both nationally and in Maine. political analysis, Cathcart had a sense from her mother Research suggests that women are more likely to run for office if they are encouraged and are exposed to political role models, and Maine NEW Leadership is one of the critical components that help women reach their full civic potential.

The crucial need for Maine NEW Leadership is captured in Cathcart’s 2008 Margaret Chase Smith Essay in Maine Policy Review, “These Very Impelling Reasons against My Running: Maine Women and Politics.” In the essay, she illustrates the many reasons why well-qualified women do not see themselves as having the requisite skills and credentials for pursuing leadership roles and running for office.

She also highlights the imporPhotograph is courtesy of the University of Maine. tance of all eligible people,

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LEARNING FROM THE LEADERSHIP OF MARY CATHCART

of the challenges that confront women who try to run political office.

Central to leadership, Cathcart notes, is recognizing it is not about the individual alone. In the essay, she highlights the importance of collaboration, friendships, and relationships. Leadership is not done alone; it is not carried out by a single individual. Effective leadership is about teamwork. Cathcart notes that she started her work this way, by learning from others. She learned that nothing is successfully achieved in Augusta without relationships. And these relationships often are built across differences and focus on finding common ground.

Success does not occur without listening to the other side.

Cathcart points out that even if you don’t agree, you still need be civil. She also notes how crucial it is to understand the importance of hard work. Leadership involves a commitment to working hard, recognizing differences, and finding commonalities. She believes it is important to not take things personally, not hold grudges, and not burn bridges. A lack of civility and decorum inevitably stands in the way of achieving effective results.

So how does one take the deep and extensive level of experience of Mary Cathcart and create training opportunities? The first thing Cathcart saw as essential is reaching everyone who has the skills and interest in serving in leadership roles. This means that access to training should be available regardless of whether one has funds to pay for such training. So Maine NEW Leadership is offered at no cost. Students from campuses across the state or who are from Maine but attend college elsewhere apply to participate in Maine NEW Leadership. Participants have diverse incomes, backgrounds, and leadership goals (serving in leadership roles in policy or political arenas, communities, schools, and other venues). A second essential part of Maine NEW Leadership’s training is a focus on building relationships and exposure to current leaders. The training is not about learning from textbooks or lectures; it is about seeing leadership in action and learning from Maine women in a range of leadership positions.

Leaders are brought to the training, and participants attend a networking reception with campus and community leaders. As a part of the training, they visit the statehouse and see leadership in action. And it is not just the one-week in-person training: the relationships and training continue after the program ends.

Participants have leadership mentors who continue to work with them and have opportunities to participate in legislative-shadowing days.

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And all of this is paying off. Maine NEW Leadership graduates are making their presence felt in many contexts. They have engaged in campuswide and group leadership positions and have created diversity coalitions at their universities. Graduates have been selected for municipal committees and boards, and some have been elected to their school boards and city councils—a graduate of the 2011 Maine NEW Leadership was recently elected mayor of Belfast. They have been active in political campaigns, and several are currently working for state and federal lawmakers. Some have obtained their “dream jobs” due to skills they learned at Maine NEW Leadership. Most (75 percent) of the graduates stay in Maine. Graduates of New Leadership describe the ways they are changed by the training: • “I love the fact that the program has inspired me to not wait until I am older to take on a leadership role in my community. I can make the change I want now.”

• “The NEW Leadership program has given me the basic tools I need to pursue my dream of making a difference in my local community as well as ideas on how to expand that mission to the state level. I feel encouraged and empowered and I have made contact with experienced women who have offered to share their wisdom whenever I have a question. This program taught me more about how state government really works than any class I have ever taken.”

• “Maine NEW Leadership helped me sharpen my communication skills, think critically about important issues, and learn to lead with empathy, strength, and grace.”

Mary Cathcart believes the future will be bright if we draw on the examples of leaders from the past. She points to Maine’s tradition of outstanding female leaders: Susan Collins, Chellie Pingree, Margaret Chase Smith, Olympia Snowe, and Libby Mitchell. They give us much to build on. Maine has a past filled with powerful exemplars of great leaders and with programs such as Maine NEW Leadership, we will have much to look forward to in the future. By bringing this program to Maine, Mary Cathcart has made a lasting, positive difference in the state—the true measure of a leader.

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A LEGACY OF LEADERSHIP

C O M M E N T A R Y

Merton G. Henry: A Legacy of Leadership

by David Richards

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first met Mert Henry in November 1996, for a job interview. That means my relationship with him was limited to less than a quarter of his 92 years.

Others knew him longer and better.

Many of them attended his celebration of life on April 14, 2018, at Trinity Episcopal Church in Portland. A few spoke lovingly and eloquently about him—his children, Donald, Douglas, and Martha, as well as Senator Susan Collins. I will attempt to convey the magnitude of Mert’s greatness even though I only knew him in the twilight of a long and distinguished professional career and was aware of many of his achievements only retrospectively.

My interview for the position of assistant director at the Margaret Chase Smith Library in Skowhegan took place at the offices of the law firm that bore his name, Jensen Baird Gardner & Henry.

Befitting a founding partner, his office was spacious, but not regal; he was self-assured, but not pretentious. In fact, the interview was delegated to the library director. Mr. Henry played the role of gracious and interested host, not meddling and interfering board member.

I must have made a favorable impression because I got the job.

For the next 15 years as assistant director of the library, my connection to Mert Henry was in his capacity as president of the Margaret Chase Smith Foundation, which meant he presided over board and advisory committee meetings at which I reported. He was always well prepared, in control, and good humored. The moments that most stand out in my memory are watching him grill investment advisors, yet giving

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them a fair shake and ultimately judging them by returns. He could make them squirm with discomfort, but it was never personal. Mert had a mirthful side and often presided over advisory committee dinners in garish combinations of colorful plaids. He was unfailingly compassionate, too. I remember hearing him at one meal quietly but firmly rebuke someone for toying with an older person whose memory was faltering.

Mert’s greatest gift was as a fixer.

With long experience and vast connections, he found no problem to be irresolvable. I well remember his calm counsel when the library was accused of supporting a “homosexual agenda” for inviting high school students to share their views on civil rights for the 2006 Margaret Chase Smith Essay Contest.

When it came time for the library to shift affiliations in 2012, it was Mert who had the institutional knowledge and network of relationships to spearhead the transfer of administration from Northwood University in Michigan to the University of Maine, all the while reassuring a nervous library staff. Mert was fully engaged right up until the end.

I emailed him as recently as a week before his passing about the policy for retaining foundation records.

After I was appointed library director in 2012, I became more privy to Mert Henry’s extraordinary talents and amazing career. Over the years, I had heard him talk about working in Washington for Maine Senator Frederick Payne during the McCarthy era, how the anticommunist paranoia was so pervasive that all friendships and associations were called into question. I knew

that back in Maine, Mert was politically well connected and well regarded, that future Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell had been a partner in Mert’s law firm, and that Senator Susan Collins sought his advice. His politics were clear, but never oppressive. He was a staunch Republican, until the party began drifting, no make that stampeding, away from his standards of moderation and civility.

I could tell the depth of respect for his friendship and leadership by the large turnouts at ninetieth birthday parties held for him in 2016. The one at the Portland Country Club brought out the state’s Republican establishment, as well as both of Maine’s US senators, Susan Collins and Angus King. The other party turned out scores of family and friends for a celebration at Piper Shores, the retirement community he helped create in Scarborough. The lengthy list of accomplishments compiled in Mert’s obituary is impressive, but it was the breadth and depth of relationships represented at those two parties that affirmed the measure of the man.

My enduring memory of Mert will be the origin of his connection to Margaret Chase Smith. It began in 1948 when he was a Bowdoin College student back from Army service in the Philippines during World War II. As a member of the Young Republicans, he decided to support Representative Smith as she sought the Republican nomination for an open US Senate seat. There were four candidates in all. Two had the credential of Maine governor. Yet, Mert cast his lot with the lone female candidate. What’s even more remarkable than

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C O M M E N T A R Y his political savvy at the age of 22 is that his dedication to Margaret Chase Smith lasted for another 70 years, as her political supporter, personal attorney, library advisor, and Margaret Chase Smith Foundation board member.

In compiling this testimonial, I have been struck by the many qualities of leadership manifested by Merton G. Henry: dedication, moderation, friendship, wisdom, compassion, humor, knowledge, grace, and humility. In this list, I hear a familiar echo of I Corinthians 13:4–7: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not

proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”

Leadership, true, self-less leadership, not the self-indulgent, narcissistic, and demagogic kind frequently on display today, is ultimately an act of love, for country, for community, and for family.

Maine has lost one of its greatest disciples of that virtuous ideal. May Mert’s legacy of leadership, like Margaret Chase Smith’s, live on. -

David Richards started working at the Margaret Chase Smith Library in 1996 and has served as director since 2012. During that time, he has facilitated a wide variety of programs for the Maine Humanities Council. In addition, he has taught writing classes for SAD 54 Adult & Community Education at the Somerset County Jail since 2010.

Merton G. Henry and Margaret Chase Smith at the Susan L. Curtis Foundation dinner in 1989. Photograph courtesy of Margaret Chase Smith Library.

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A NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL NETWORK FOR ENGAGED CITIZENSHIP

ENACT-ing Leadership at the State Level: A National Educational Network for Engaged Citizenship in State Legislatures

by Robert W. Glover, Kathleen Cole, and Katharine Owens

pedagogical strategies for meeting these goals including simulations The Educational Network for Active Civic Transformation (ENACT) is a nationwide (Bernstein 2008; Mariani and Glenn network that serves as a hub for the pedagogical efforts of educators in 16 different 2014), placement learning/internships (Curtis and Blair 2010), and states, with the ambitious goal of having an ENACT Faculty Fellow in all 50 states. community-based projects (DaLaet However, ENACT courses go a step further by engaging students directly in experien2016; Ferman 2012). Tapping into tial learning exercises designed to affect policy change by working with policy advoexperiential learning opens up pedacacy groups, preparing policy briefs, engaging in strategic outreach and messaging, gogical possibilities, moving and meeting directly with policymakers in their state capitals to advocate for political students beyond the classroom, change. In this paper, we argue that state politics represents a fruitful, yet often neglectwhile pushing past simple yet inefed, space for the development of political leadership skills. Accordingly, we will presfective engagement. This so called ent ENACT as a pedagogical model for empowering students, enhancing their capacity drive-by participation, including for political leadership. Yet we also remain attuned to localized variation in the policyacts such as posting or signing petimaking environment and state political culture. tions online, may bring attention to political issues, but fails to engage participants in reflection or hold merican democracy is under threat. Elite capture representatives accountable for political action of institutions has resulted in extreme levels of (McCartney 2017). By contrast, direct engagement with economic inequality and policy making that favors the the state policy process offers great potential for concrete rich (Bartels 2016; Hacker and Pierson 2010; Wolin and meaningful impacts, potentially enriching students’ 2008). Perhaps as a result, the United States is awash understanding of the policy process and contributing to in a wave of populist anger (Mounk 2014). Young their own sense of political agency and efficacy. Here, we people say they are not interested in politics (Foa and present an alternative model for the development of Mounk 2016), and their participation rates over the political leadership through engagement in the state last two decades confirm it (Harward and Shea 2013). political process, the Educational Network for Active Alarmingly, the number of Americans who support Civic Transformation (ENACT). We suggest that state democracy as a system of government is in decline, politics presents a neglected policy domain where while support for authoritarianism is on the rise (Foa students can learn and have an impact and that doing so and Mounk 2016). Democracy, once considered a can foster appreciation for political leadership and permanent feature of the United States (Fukuyama engagement with the democratic process.

1992), now appears much more precarious. In this environment of democratic disenchantment, the ways THE ENACT MODEL that we socialize and empower young people to engage in political leadership are of dire national importance. he national network of ENACT originated in Educators need to both convey disciplinary knowl2010 with a course at Brandeis University entitled edge and provide opportunities for developing skills for “Advocacy for Policy Change,” taught by Professor of participatory citizenship and political leadership. the Legal Practice Melissa Stimmel. Brandeis is a fitting Political science educators have developed a number of site, given its namesake’s belief that the American states Abstract

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operate as “laboratories of democracy” (New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann 285 U.S. 262 (1932)). This innovative course engages teams of undergraduate students in the Massachusetts state legislative process. Students choose pieces of legislation, research the topics addressed within the bills, then craft and execute models of legislative engagement and advocacy to influence the path of legislation. This includes researching and collaborating on legislative research reports, crafting an advocacy campaign, writing op-eds, producing fact sheets, and meeting face to face with legislators to influence public policy. Students in the course collaborate with Professor Stimmel and a mentor from the Massachusetts State Legislature, as well as civic organizations and policy advocates, in their attempts to craft effective, evidencebased messaging on these issues. Wherever possible, students meet directly with state legislators and engage in civic advocacy on their chosen policy area. Since its inception in 2010, the Advocacy for Social Change course has embedded dozens of students directly in the state legislative process, where their efforts have shaped the perspectives of lawmakers, while also providing an invaluable and transformative experience for the students.

In 2015, the International Center for Ethics, Justice, and Public Life at Brandeis University initiated a national expansion of the course. The initiative expanded the course to 15 additional colleges and universities in other states, creating ENACT. A competitive process produced a faculty cohort from the following states: Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, and Virginia.

Beyond their commitment to teaching a course engaging students in the process of legislative advocacy and their proximity to a state capital, the first ENACT cohort represents a range of educational institutions, including public and private, religiously affiliated, and historically black colleges and universities. The faculty that constitute the cohort are equally diverse, at all stages of their academic careers, with variation in training, disciplinary affiliation, and areas of expertise. ENACT has just selected its second cohort, expanding the network to 31 states with the addition of Alabama, California, Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, and Pennsylvania.

Members of the first cohort convened at the International Center for Ethics, Justice, and Public Life

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at Brandeis in May of 2016 to learn about this pedagogical model and how they would implement it in their respective states. Over four days, the Faculty Fellows learned from state legislators, policy advocates, Brandeis faculty, student alumni, ENACT staff, and one another.

Topical workshops included discussing the logistical challenges that might emerge in specific states, designing assignments and syllabi, navigating the demands of engaged pedagogy, effectively and strategically framing one’s policy message. Faculty also went to the Massachusetts State House to shadow Brandeis alumnus and State Representative Jay Kaufman. Fellows spent the day observing the business of the legislature and meeting with legislators one on one to learn more about their perspectives on the state legislative process and the ways that students can have an impact. Over the course of the sessions, participants strategized about forms of collaboration and resources that could prove useful as they pilot their own ENACT offerings.

The initial convening of the ENACT Faculty Fellows cohort produced numerous insights. First, variation in state legislative culture and institutions meant that the ENACT courses would vary widely from one locale to another. The ENACT network represents a group of scholars and educators united by a common goal, to engage students in political leadership directly via the state legislative process, but who may structure their pursuit of that goal according to the characteristics of their unique state political environment, institution, and personal teaching style. Second, the ENACT network opens great possibilities to build cross-institutional collaboration, both in terms of designing and executing courses, but also for research in teaching and learning, and research that delves into comparative analysis of state political and policy contexts. Third, there was broad recognition that state policy making often suffers from a lack of timely, evidence-based analysis of the legislative issues under consideration (particularly in states that have part-time citizen legislatures with limited staff capacity). As it grows, ENACT could serve as an information hub for policymakers, enhancing their knowledge about legislation under consideration, and their capacity to engage in data-driven, evidence-based policy.

Fourth, fellows should be intentional about building shared resources and designing communication networks to facilitate exchange between ENACT Faculty Fellows, the staff at Brandeis, current students, and the existing and ever-growing network of ENACT alumni.

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ENACT AND THE EDUCATIONAL POTENTIAL OF STATE LEGISLATURES

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he ENACT pedagogical model was developed with a belief in the centrality and importance of the legislative branch of government, despite the afore mentioned threats of capture by powerful private interests and creeping forms of democratic erosion. As one recent commentator notes, “the legislature (and not the executive or the judiciary) is truly the engine of democracy. It tugs and pulls a heavy load, uphill much of the way. Like the little engine that could, the legislature usually delivers the goods—a mixed bag, depending largely on one’s tastes” (Rosenthal 2009: 1). In light of the unsettling themes introduced at the outset of this article, this description may seem an overly optimistic and quaint conception of American democracy.

The ENACT pedagogical model was developed with a belief in the centrality and importance of the legislative branch of government.…

In theory, at least, the legislative branch is beholden to its constituents and organized interests with expectations of transparency and accountability. Legislators who fail to deliver tangible results for those whom they serve face rebuke from their peers and parties, public criticism, or even find themselves voted out of office. Furthermore, experimental research suggests that constituent expectations of the legislature are more or less consistent at both the state and national levels (Wolak 2017). Yet, the legislative branch operates with different expectations than the more insulated executive agencies or the often-private deliberations of the judicial branch. For this reason, the legislature operates as domain of government in which citizens can potentially have a greater impact. And, unsurprisingly, because the machinations of our legislative bodies are more visible with more points of access, popular opinion tends to be more critical of, and levels of distrust higher for, the legislative branch than for other branches of government (Newport 2012).

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level and less interest in state and local politics. Students have often been politically socialized in ways that overemphasize our national political institutions. For many students, their initial and formative civic education privileges the federal system. If asked to identify the institutional power centers of American democracy, they may suggest the US presidency, the US Senate and House of Representatives, the US Supreme Court, and only secondarily identify state and local settings. Their professional aspirations and goals can reflect this as well— evident in a preoccupation with living and working in Washington, DC, or gaining experience via involvement in national candidate races, issue campaigns, and organizations. This is even recognizable in popular culture, where it is far more likely to encounter plots centered upon Washington, DC, than a state capital or city hall.

This lack of attention is also a function of the media environment that we have created. As Lyons and coauthors note, “in the case of national politics, the opportunities to learn are plentiful—if interested in doing so, one can easily follow national events by watching the nightly news, a favored cable program, or listening to the news on the radio. But in the case of state politics, it can be much harder to stay informed” (Lyons, Jaeger, and Wolak 2013: 185). Structural challenges to the media landscape that make it harder for newsrooms to support a full-time state capitol press corps exacerbate the issue (Enda, Matsa, and Boyles 2014). This is not to suggest that citizens simply disregard state politics.

Rather, research suggests this political environment creates a “monitorial citizen,” one who is “actively patrolling for political information but attentive to political circumstances that demand increased attention” (Lyons, Jaeger, and Wolak 2013: 186). Thus, citizens’ knowledge of state politics tends to be highest when there are unfolding, consequential (often negative) situations that require their careful attention: an unfolding natural disaster, a budget shortfall or threat of a government shutdown, or a political scandal.

For a variety of reasons, then, our students (and the citizenry at large) may simply not be knowledgeable about state government or realize the power they have to influence policy and decision making on this level. This emphasis on the federal level can be disempowering, due to both the distance of this realm of policy making from its constituents and the dysfunction evident in national politics. With regard to distance, the decision makers in Washington, DC, are a political class that can be relatively insulated and hard to access (even when they 24

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are physically present in their home districts). Trying to contact one’s congressional representative or senator to offer input on an issue or seek constituent services often results in a relatively brief and impersonal interaction with a staffer or intern. This is understandable, as such policymakers are dealing with expansive constituencies.

Nevertheless, it can be difficult for ordinary citizens to have regularized contact with them or to forge meaningful relationships. While state political landscapes can vary widely in terms of district size and access to legislators, there is a far greater potential for such interaction and relationships.

Furthermore, our political dysfunction in Washington, DC, makes it exceedingly hard to pass any major piece of legislation at the federal level, even the reauthorization of legislation that in the past enjoyed broad, bipartisan support. Congressional leadership resorts to extraordinary procedural machinations to pass legislation at all, or passes a spate of largely symbolic or ceremonial bills to give the illusion of some action.

Alternatively, we have seen the executive branch circumvent Congress altogether through executive orders and policy changes that do not require congressional approval. Again, political culture and ideological climate can vary immensely by state and this is not to say that there are not similar forms of dysfunction and gridlock evident at the state level (Fehrman 2016). However, the state-to-state landscape is diverse and many states can rightfully pride themselves on their sustained capacity for cooperation and compromise and relationships of trust across party lines, even as Washington, DC, becomes ever more stymied by partisanship and legislative gridlock. Furthermore, states face constraints on spending, with all but Vermont having some form of a balanced budget requirement, a factor that compels negotiation and compromise that is less essential in Congress (NCSL 2010). And by sheer volume of legislative output, there is no comparison. For every one piece of national legislation, state legislatures are passing 75 of their own (Fehrman 2016).

THE ENACT NETWORK THUS FAR

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s is clear from what we’ve written so far, the state legislative context is too often underemphasized in both citizens’ understandings of their own capacities and our models of civic education and political leadership. Yet, tapping into this context opens up pedagogical possibilities whereby students can not only move beyond the classroom walls, but also push

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themselves beyond less-demanding forms of engaged learning centered upon limited forms of service and volunteerism. Direct engagement with the state policy process offers great potential for citizen and student access. Student involvement in the state legislative realm can yield concrete, meaningful impacts, potentially enriching students’ understandings of the policy process and contributing their own sense of political agency and efficacy. Furthermore, given the physical proximity of many of our educational institutions to state capitals, logistically, the state legislative context is a setting highly conducive to forms of engaged, experiential learning where students actually physically inhabit the halls of political power and see the policy process in operation.

Since its inception in 2016, students across the ENACT network have been learning the skills of state policy advocacy in specialized course offerings across the 16 participant states, working intensively on dozens of pieces of important state legislation across a range of policy areas. Numerous bills on which the students have worked directly have been successfully passed into law, in part because of their efforts. Many ENACT Faculty Fellows have already offered their courses multiple times.

Furthermore, with the expansion of the ENACT Faculty Fellows in 2018 to encompass 31 total states, the network will soon be working within a majority of the state capitals in the United States.

Engaged learning opportunities such as these are challenging. Rolling this model out to more states has meant that individual instructors have had to grapple with the particularities of varying state political cultures, the idiosyncrasies of each state’s political system, and the inevitable variations in institutional capacity and the student body being engaged in the political process. Yet, demanding educational experiences such as this are the very settings in which the qualities of political leadership are forged. Furthermore, familiarity with the policy process and appreciation for the complex dance of legislation beats back debilitating and pervasive political attitudes of disenchantment and apathy. At a time in which democracy is increasingly under threat, educational opportunities for engagement at the state level foster the skills necessary for sober, serious, and effective political leadership. REFERENCES Bartels, Larry M. 2016. Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Guilded Age, 2nd ed. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.

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Bernstein, Jeffrey L. 2008. “Cultivating Civic Competence: Simulations and Skill-Building in an Introductory Government Class.” Journal of Political Science Education 4(1): 1–20.

NCSL (National Conference of State Legislatures). 2010.

NCSL Fiscal Brief: State Balanced Budget Provisions.

NCSL, Washington, DC. https://www.ncsl.org/documents /fiscal/StateBalancedBudgetProvisions2010.pdf

Curtis, Steven, and Alasdair Blair. 2010. “Experiencing Politics in Action: Widening Participation in Placement Learning and Politics as a Vocation.” Journal of Political Science Education 6(4): 369–390.

Newport, Frank. 2012. “Americans Trust Judicial Branch Most, Legislative Least.” Gallup.com. Politics (Sept. 26). http://news.gallup.com/poll/157685/americans-trust -judicial-branch-legislative-least.aspx

DaLaet, Debra L. 2016. “A Pedagogy of Civic Engagement for the Undergraduate Political Science Classroom.”

Journal of Political Science Education 12(1): 72–84.

Rosenthal, Alan. 2009. Engines of Democracy: Politics and Policymaking in State Legislatures. Washington, DC: CQ Press.

Enda, Jodi, Katerina Eva Matsa, and Jan Lauren Boyles.

2014. “America’s Shifting Statehouse Press.” Pew Research Center’s Journalism Project (July 10). http://www.journalism.org/2014/07/10/americas-shifting -statehouse-press/

Wolak, Jennifer. 2017. “Public Expectations of State Legislators.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 42(2): 175–209.

Fehrman, Craig. 2016. “All Politics Is National.”

FiveThirtyEight (November 7). https://fivethirtyeight.com /features/all-politics-is-national/ Ferman, Barbara. 2012. “Educating for Democracy: Reflections from a Work in Progress.” Journal of Political Science Education 8(3): 231–250.

Foa, Roberto Stefan, and Yascha Mounk. 2016. “The Democratic Disconnect.” The Journal of Democracy 27(3): 5–17.

Fukuyama, Francis. 1992. The End of History and the Last Man. New York: The Free Press.

Hacker, Jacob S., and Paul Pierson. 2010. Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer—and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Harward, Brian M., and Daniel M. Shea. 2013. “Higher Education and the Multiple Modes of Engagement.”

In Teaching Civic Engagement: From Student to Active Citizen, edited by Alison Rios Millet McCartney, Elizabeth A. Bennion, and Dick Simpson. State of the Profession Series. Washington, DC: American Political Science Association.

Lyons, Jeffrey, William P. Jaeger, and Jennifer Wolak. 2013.

“The Roots of Citizens’ Knowledge of State Politics.”

State Politics & Policy Quarterly 13(2): 183–202.

Mariani, Mack, and Brian J. Glenn. 2014. “Simulations Build Efficacy: Empirical Results from a Four-Week Congressional Simulation.” Journal of Political Science Education 10(3): 284–301.

McCartney, Alison Rios Millett. 2017. “Introduction.” In Teaching Civic Engagement across the Disciplines, edited by Elizabeth C. Matto, Alison Rios Millett McCartney, Elizabeth A. Bennion, and Dick Simpson.

Washington, DC: American Political Science Association.

Mounk, Yascha. 2014. “Pitchfork Politics: The Populist Threat to Liberal Democracy.” Foreign Affairs 27-I.

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Wolin, Sheldon S. 2008. Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Robert W. Glover is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science and the Honors College at the University of Maine.

He also serves as the codirector of the Maine chapter of the Scholars Strategy Network. His research and teaching focus on democratic engagement, state and local policy, and the politics of immigration.

Kathleen Cole is an assistant professor of political science in the Social Science Department at Metropolitan State University. Her research focuses on racial identity and political judgment. She teaches courses in American politics and political theory.

Katharine A. Owens is an associate professor in the Department of Politics, Economics, and International Studies and director of the University Interdisciplinary Studies program at the University of Hartford in Connecticut. She researches civic engagement and environmental policy and often incorporates real-world activities and experiential learning into her courses 26

LEADERSHIP, INSIDE AND OUT

Leadership, Inside and Out

by Deirdre McCarthy Gallagher and Joseph Shaffner

Abstract This article explores leadership, inside and out: a new approach to equip aspiring leaders with the tools to lead creatively, inclusively, and effectively. Leadership, inside and out, transforms emerging leaders into the leaders of the future, positioning them to indelibly impact their own organizations and the state of Maine.

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ffective, transformational leadership in Maine is more important than ever. Leadership behavior is often the catalyst for change and is always key to its success or failure (Higgs and Rowland 2005). As Maine confronts the challenge of cultivating a workforce to support its economic growth, the time for change is now. Responding to the state’s low population growth and aging workforce, Glenn Mills, the chief economist of the Maine Department of Labor, stressed that it is crucial to “attract young people to stay and others to relocate here” (MDF/MSCOC 2016: 3). Inextricably linked to realizing this goal are leaders who engage and inspire others to commit to working and living in Maine, which demands a different type of leadership, one that is more about the group than about the individual at the helm. And while imagining a different type of leadership is easy, enacting a different type of leadership takes training and practice. The concept of leadership, inside and out, reflects the powerful and energizing connection between an individual leader and the group. How someone leads is as important—if not more so—than who leads.

FACILITATIVE LEADERSHIP

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t the heart of leadership, inside and out, is the concept of facilitative leadership, in which leaders are “able to actively engage others so their talents and contributions are fully leveraged” (Cufaude 2005). In facilitative leadership, the leader is not at the front of the room; she is at the table with the team. The success of the organization does not rest solely with the person at the helm, but with the many people throughout an organization who are critical to improvement and implementation. The

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facilitative leader encourages input from the group and is open to an examination of strengths and weaknesses. “The old IQ is about how smart you are; the new IQ is about how smart you make your team. If [leaders] take [this] to heart, it will change the way [they] lead” (Bourke and Dillon 2016).

Self-Awareness Critical to developing a facilitative leadership style is understanding where one is as a leader. The first step, then, is self-reflection and self-awareness. Traditionally, intelligence quotients (IQ) were thought to be the leading indicators of individuals’ capabilities and successes. Research shows that this is not the case; in fact, IQ has a low correlation with successful leaders (Goleman 2005).

Emotional intelligence (EI), sometimes referred to as emotional quotient (EQ), is the capacity for emotion management, self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. A high EI is

Facilitative Leadership

Conflict Competence

Self-awareness

Leadership, Inside and Out

Communication

Visioning

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the ability to recognize one’s emotions and those of others and discern between emotions and feelings. Emotions are more physical in nature; they are the short-term, hardwired fight-or-flight responses that keep us out of danger.

Feelings, which come from the higher-thinking part of the brain, can often be fed by a mixture of emotions and last longer. For example, thinking about a confrontation at work in the past can evoke an emotion of anger and then a feeling of resentment (Goleman 2005).

The ability to recognize and discern the difference between emotions and feelings is the core of self-awareness. This ability guides one’s behavior appropriately and allows a person to adjust and manage oneself. This core inside awareness manifests outward; authentic, confident leaders can better assist individual employees and teams to achieve goals and adapt to dynamic environments and challenges. Self-awareness can be taught and improved though learning practices like mindfulness and learning tools. The DISC, Myers-Briggs, Clifton Strength Finders, and the MHS Emotional Intelligence Assessment EQi are tools that help leaders gain a better understanding of themselves and their colleagues—and encourage the same among their teams.

Visioning Armed with this self-awareness, the next step in inside leadership is visioning where one is as a leader.

Leaders may have visions of themselves as effective communicators, in good times and bad, but learn through closer reflection that their strengths as communicators may not shine in times of challenge or change.

Our experiences show that many leaders have a tendency to shoulder everything and to bypass the collective intelligence of the group. There may be a predisposition to become the heroic leader and save the day, to the detriment of the organization and to the alienation of the group. According to Roger L. Martin, “When leaders assume ‘heroic’ responsibility for making the critical choices facing their organizations, when their reaction to problems is to go it alone, work harder, do more, to be more heroic still, with no collaboration and sharing of the leadership burden, their ‘heroism’ is often their undoing” (Cufaude 2005).

Taking the time to understand one’s own personal and professional visions can help a leader understand where the perceptions and reality of leadership don’t align. This creates an opportunity to map the steps to alignment. If this is where I am now, and this is where I want to be, then what do I need to do to get there?

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CONNECTING INSIDE AND OUT

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nderstanding oneself and one’s vision is a critical step in one’s leadership journey. But this is only a starting point for the facilitative leader, who now must transfer the lessons learned to influence, inspire, and empower the team. This is where the synergy between leadership, inside and out, is realized. Inside-out leaders do not operate in a vacuum, pontificating from on high about promising management ideas. Effective leaders connect with their team and inspire them to engage in the leadership journey. Outside leadership connects the dots, encompassing the ideals of facilitative leadership through work on skills to influence and inspire.

Driving this focus is understanding that when a leader is informed by the voices and perspectives of those he is leading, then the sense of ownership for the organization’s success is shared.

Communication Communication is at the core of this effort to expedite shared ownership of success. Facilitative leaders engage with employees to understand what they value.

They ask open-ended questions and use active listening skills to draw a picture of what is important to those they lead, what success looks like, and how to create and seize opportunities to achieve that success. They also elicit input to create a common vision and, through the process, build “a coalition among…[employees] to support that vision” (Salacuse 2006). They take the time to understand how to achieve and sustain that vision.

Effective leaders determine what needs to happen and who needs to be empowered to turn ideas into action; they ensure responsibility and accountability so that solutions and changes are sustained.

Conflict Competence Complementing the communication focus are skills of messaging, inclusive practice, and conflict competence, all of which strengthen the outside leadership efforts. Effective leaders practice the tools to both receive and send messages. These leaders model communication skills that foster inclusive practices and thus inspire employees to willingly join the leadership journey. A leader who is conflict competent recognizes the opportunity in dissension. Conflict is a symptom that something is wrong. Getting to the heart of that, rather than avoiding it, can inspire change. The process of open dialogue strengthens the organization. This is an effort 28

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the reaps dividends: “Too often we don’t realise the knowledge and potential that we have within the team or group of people.…In many cases the insight and knowledge of how to solve a problem or identify an innovative way forward is there in the organisation” (Apex Leadership 2013).

CONCLUSION

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he inside-and-out approach is holistic, with the self-awareness and visioning setting the stage for a look at how to transfer leadership abilities, inclinations, and skills to tangibly influence and make an impact in an organization. “Experienced managers know that, when it comes to leading people, authority has its limits” (Salacuse 2006). The challenge for Maine leaders is to move beyond authority to retain and attract employees.

Engaging employees in paving the path to organizational success—as opposed to telling them what they need to do to achieve that organizational success—can provide the buy-in to motivate and build a workforce.

The comprehensive annual Gallup Q12 Employee Engagement Survey consistently shows people do not leave their organizations, they leave their bosses.

Approximately 100 million Americans hold full-time jobs; about 30 percent of whom are engaged, 16 percent are actively disengaged, and 51 percent are neither engaged nor disengaged (Gallup 2017). “These figures indicate an American leadership philosophy that simply doesn’t work anymore” (Gallup 2017: 2). The cost of ineffective leaders is widespread, in terms of employee morale, productivity, and longevity. The less-tangible cost rests with those disengaged employees, who show up to do their jobs, but may not commit to do their jobs. Leadership, inside and out, aims to alter these numbers, which is critical to maintaining and growing Maine’s workforce.

We must imbue leaders in a unique inside-out way that builds on Maine’s unique environment.

Equipping leaders with these new skills will inspire the commitment of leaders to intentionally pave a new path of sustainable improvement. Times have changed.

Maine has changed. Leadership approaches must change along with them. The new model of leadership, inside and out, makes that possible. -

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REFERENCES Apex Leadership (2013). Defining Leadership: Leadership Resources for Resourceful Leaders. Facilitative Leadership Style. http://www.defining-leadership.com /facilitative-leadership-style/ Bourke, Juliet, and Bernadette Dillon. 2016. “The Six Signature Traits of Inclusive Leadership: Thriving in a Diverse New World.” Deloitte Insights. https://www2.deloitte.com/insights/us/en/topics/talent /six-signature-traits-of-inclusive-leadership.html Cufaude, Jeffrey. 2005. “The Art of Facilitative Leadership: Maximizing Others’ Contributions.” The System Thinker: Building Shared Understanding 15(10). https://thesystemsthinker.com/the-art-of-facilitative -leadership-maximizing-others-contributions/ Gallup. 2017. State of the American Workplace.

Washington, DC: Gallup.

Goleman, Daniel. 2005. Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ. New York: Bantam Books.

Higgs, Malcolm, and Deborah Rowland. 2005. “All Changes Great and Small: Exploring Approaches to Change and Its Leadership.” Journal of Change Management 5(2): 121–151.

MDF/MSCOC (Maine Development Foundation/Maine State Chamber of Commerce). 2016. Maine’s Labor Shortage: New Mainers and Diversity. Augusta: MDF/MSCOC. Salacuse, J. 2006. “Real Leaders Negotiate.” Negotiation Briefings (May).

Deirdre McCarthy Gallagher is the president and founder of Voices of Value, LLC, a disputeresolution firm. McCarthy Gallagher has facilitated multiparty decision-making processes for government and private entities, conducted dispute systems design assessments in public, private, and nonprofit sectors, and taught mediation as an adjunct professor with Georgetown University Law Center.

Joseph Shaffner has spent 30 years in the software industry with firms such as Price Waterhouse and SAP. He is currently a partner in Maine Leadership LLC and president of North Rock Leadership, which provides leadership and professional development and coaching services.

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TEAMWORK IS THE NEW LEADERSHIP

C O M M E N T A R Y

Teamwork Is the New Leadership

by David D. Hart

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s it just me, or has the world gotten more complicated? Even as businesses are increasingly expected to focus on growing quarterly profits, many customers and investors also expect them to demonstrate an unwavering commitment to local communities and environmental stewardship. Elected officials are under enormous pressure to deliver a wide range of high-quality government services while lowering taxes. Universities and colleges are not only supposed to provide students with a direct pathway to successful careers, but also to prepare the next generation of broadly trained citizens and leaders for the challenges of an increasingly complex and rapidly changing world.

What kinds of leadership are needed to address these challenges more effectively? For the last 12 years, I’ve had the privilege of working with extraordinary faculty, students, senior administrators, and external partners and funders to grow the capacity of the University of Maine and other institutions of higher education to help solve sustainability problems: that is, problems requiring a dual focus on improving human well-being and protecting the environment. Because sustainability problems involve a tangled mix of economic, social, and environmental issues, they are a good example of the kinds of problems that can benefit from innovative leadership models. Here, I highlight some of the lessons we have learned about teams and leadership and the ways we are applying these lessons to help develop a new generation of more capable leaders.

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KNOWLEDGE AND KNOW-HOW

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omplex societal problems have many moving parts, so efforts to solve them require teams with a wide range of knowledge and know-how. That’s why there is so much emphasis on the value of cross-functional or interdisciplinary teams. Regardless of the specific label, the researcher Scott Page (2017) has demonstrated that these teams have an abundance of “cognitive diversity,” which allows them to draw upon a wider range of information, experiences, and ideas regarding the causes of complex problems and propose a richer mix of strategies for solving them. In essence, diverse teams are less likely to get stuck in blind alleys or miss the forest for the trees.

But determining the kinds of expertise that are needed to solve a complex problem is a problem in itself. In our sustainability projects, we usually begin by reaching out to relevant stakeholders, including representatives from the public and private sectors, nongovernmental organizations, and local citizens, to understand their perceptions of the problem, its causes, and its impacts on the local community. This process not only helps us gain a richer understanding of the problem (including past efforts to tackle it), but also the kinds of expertise required in the search for lasting solutions. For example, efforts by municipalities to increase real estate development without damaging wetlands may need experts in economics, conservation biology, and public policy (see for example, Calhoun et al. 2014).

Similarly, stakeholders considering the

development of tidal energy but concerned about risks to commercial fisheries can benefit from a team whose expertise includes energy policy, engineering, and fisheries science (Jansujwicz and Johnson 2015). Another one of our projects focuses on how to prepare for the expected arrival of the emerald ash borer, an invasive forest insect pest that poses a major threat to ash trees as well as the economic and cultural well-being of Wabanaki basket makers (Hart et al.

2015). This team has included experts in tribal sovereignty, forestry, indigenous knowledge, and social science.

Institutions of higher education are fortunate that they can potentially draw on widely diverse resources to assemble a team whose expertise matches a particular problem. In fact, there may be few other places in society where such a remarkable breadth and depth of knowledge can be found in a single institution.

That’s why we began our work by engaging with faculty from different academic disciplines who expressed an interest in collaborating on interdisciplinary teams. After 10 years, more than 175 faculty, 200 graduate students, and 500 undergraduates drawn from more than 35 academic fields have participated in nearly 50 interdisciplinary projects. We’re also sharing the lessons we learn via innovative networks of colleges and universities that are committed to solutions-driven interdisciplinary research (Hart et al. 2016).

In our experience, teams that combine faculty and students with experts from government, business and industry, and nongovernmental organizations

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C O M M E N T A R Y (NGOs) are often better equipped to understand how all the pieces of the puzzle fit together. Although university researchers can often contribute unique methods and insights to help understand the causes and consequences of complex problems, their skills need to be combined with nonacademic stakeholders who bring their own critical knowledge to the table. Incorporating the real-world experience of government officials, business leaders, and local community members early in the process increases the likelihood of finding viable solutions that make sense at a practical level. Including the very people and organizations that will implement any identified solutions helps ensure that the work will actually be used. That’s why we’ve worked with over 400 stakeholder organizations representing local, state, and federal government, business and industry, and a wide range of NGOs. ART AND SCIENCE

G

rowing the collaborative capacity of teams is both an art and a science.

Finding individuals with different kinds of expertise and skills to work together is just one step in the process of growing a team’s ability to collaborate. In contrast to some cake mixes where you “just add water,” the recipe for effective teamwork involves many steps and is much more nuanced. In our work with faculty and students from different academic disciplines, building effective teams takes time: time to get to know each other, both personally and professionally; time to appreciate the strengths that each team member brings to the problem; time to develop a common language that can help overcome each field’s jargon.

Of course, this challenge is not unique to universities. Most organizations are composed of departments or

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divisions that have different functions, habits, and reward systems, so efforts to form collaborations that span these disparate groups must overcome differences in organizational subcultures. For example, businesses often face important challenges that require the creation of cross-functional teams, including employees from manufacturing, sales, R&D, accounting, and human resources, as well as their customers.

We’ve worked hard to learn from the large and diverse body of research on the factors that facilitate and hinder teamwork (see for example, Pentland 2012; Thompson 2009) and have also turned the microscope on ourselves to enhance collaboration. One key finding from our research is that team members were more satisfied with collaborations and made more progress towards project goals when they used shared decision-making processes that included opportunities for multiple viewpoints to be shared and time to find common ground (McGreavy et al. 2015). This conclusion emerged from an in-depth study of 156 faculty and students who were involved in nearly 20 different sustainability projects, but I suspect it is even more widely applicable.

For example, we are currently conducting a sustainability project in which a team of more than 25 faculty and 25 graduate students spanning 6 institutions of higher education are collaborating to improve the processes used to make decisions about the future of dams in New England.1 One of our first steps in designing the project was to create a Committee for Shared Leadership that is broadly representative of the project’s diverse participants, open to new ideas, and committed to consensus-based decision making.

But the art of collaboration is just as important as the science. So we look for opportunities to combine hard work

with relationship building, whether via shared meals, rafting trips, writing retreats, comedy skits, or long walks through the Maine woods and along its rugged coastline. By both strategy and opportunism, we have strived to create an organizational culture that is founded on, and advanced by, a shared commitment to open communication, mutual respect, and trust.

We’re also incredibly fortunate that our program bears the name of one of Maine’s most admired leaders, Senator George J. Mitchell. Every day, as students and faculty enter the Mitchell Center, they encounter a photograph of Senator Mitchell accompanied by this quote: The ethos of the Mitchell Center’s work reflects one of my deepest beliefs: the importance of public service. The many faculty and students involved in the Mitchell Center have committed themselves to a goal larger than their individual lives: the goal of helping to build a better world starting right here in our own communities in our own state.

PATIENCE AND PERSISTENCE

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hile we’re on the subject of Senator Mitchell, his patience and persistence are also worth noting.

Indeed, when speaking about his experiences chairing hundreds of meetings during the multiyear, conflict-ridden process that led to the Good Friday Peace Accord in Northern Ireland, Senator Mitchell once described it as “300 days of failure and one day of success.”

Although Senator Mitchell has set a high bar, many of our research teams have also demonstrated uncommon staying power in working with collaborators from other fields, examining

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C O M M E N T A R Y problems from multiple vantage points, and discovering that even when you make progress solving one part of a complex problem, another part sometimes pops up in whack-a-mole fashion.

This kind of endurance is indispensable because teams are likely to encounter many obstacles on the road to solutions.

Although a complete enumeration of these difficulties could fill a flash drive, let me offer just a few examples.

Teams often begin with what they hope is a clear understanding of the problem they are trying to solve, including the different kinds of expertise and partners they need. All too often, however, their interactions with stakeholders force them to question their fundamental assumptions about the nature of the problem, as well as its causes and potential solutions. When teams encounter this kind of snag, should they go back to square one, abandon ship, or try muddling through?

Many teams aspire to “craft usable knowledge” (sensu Clark et al. 2016) that they hope will lead to better decisions and a brighter future. But what if their work products end up being ignored in the decision-making process, which often happens when facts and values collide (Dietz 2014)?

Teams have a tendency to begin with high hopes when they embark on the road to solutions. They may have also competed successfully for a major grant that helps provide support for students and faculty to begin working with stakeholders. But these grants often last only a year or two, and it’s harder than ever to find long-term support for their collaborations. So what happens when the funding runs out?

Did I mention that team members often end up with frayed nerves, which sometimes leads to the end of teamwork altogether?

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Of course, there is no sure-fire approach for overcoming these and other challenges. Instead, we have learned that useful strategies for responding to obstacles often emerge organically as teams reflect on and draw inspiration from a set of core values that we first articulated in 2008 and that still guide our work: 1. Responsiveness to Maine’s diverse stakeholders 2. Dedication to interdisciplinary collaboration and cooperation 3. Shared leadership and responsibility for research outcomes 4. Respect for Maine’s communities, natural resources, and economic needs 5. Transparent communication processes that respect diverse values and viewpoints and build consensus 6. Commitment to excellence in innovative research But even core values aren’t guaranteed to help teams get back on track after major setbacks. I can’t say exactly where they get their stamina when progress is better described as “two steps forward, three steps back.” Now that I’ve had the opportunity to work with nearly 200 faculty members and even more students, however, I know that many of them view this as deeply purposeful work that cannot be accomplished via the lonescholar strategy that has been a more traditional professional pathway in academia.

There is also much to be said about the merits of learning by doing. As these teams gain experience, they often become more purposeful yet more patient, more focused yet more flexible, more confident even as their humility grows. Given the complex challenges we

face in and beyond Maine, there has never been a more urgent need for this kind of leadership. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Any time you have the good fortune of working with hundreds of dedicated faculty, students, staff and partners, it becomes impossible to acknowledge adequately their individual and collective contributions to building collaborative capacity.

Nonetheless, I offer my sincere thanks to all of them. Our sustainability projects have been supported by major grants from the National Science Foundation (e.g., EPS-0904155, IIA-1330691, OIA-1539071). I have also benefited greatly from the advice and support of George Mitchell, Ruth Hallsworth, and especially Irene Lang. This paper is dedicated to the memory of Bob Kates, who did far more than his share to forge an inspiring vision for, and map a pathway towards, a sustainable world.

ENDNOTE 1 For more information about this project, visit https://umaine.edu/mitchellcenter /road-to-solutions/new-england -sustainability-consortium/the-future -of-dams-nest/ REFERENCES Calhoun, Aram J., Jessica S. Jansujwicz, Kathleen P. Bell, and Malcolm L. Hunter.

2014. “Improving Management of Small Natural Features on Private Lands by Negotiating the SciencePolicy Boundary for Maine Vernal Pools.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111(30): 11002– 11006.

Clark, William C., Lorrae van Kerkhoff, Louis Lebel, and Gilberto C. Gallopin.

2016. “Crafting Usable Knowledge for Sustainable Development.”

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113(17): 4570–4578.

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C O M M E N T A R Y David Hart is director of the Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions and a professor in the School of Biology and Ecology at

Dietz, Thomas. 2013. “Bringing Values and Deliberation to Science Communication.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110(Supplement 3): 14081–14087.

Hart, David D., Kathleen P. Bell, Laura A. Lindenfeld, Shaleen Jain, Teresa R. Johnson, Darren Ranco, and Brian McGill. 2015. “Strengthening the Role of Universities in Addressing Sustainability Challenges: The Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions as an Institutional Experiment.” Ecology and Society 20(2): 4. dx.doi.org/10.5751/ ES-07283-200204

the University of Maine.

Hart, David D., James L. Buizer, Jonathan A. Foley, Lewis E. Gilbert, Lisa J. Graumlich, Anne R. Kapuscinski, et al. 2016. “Mobilizing the Power of Higher Education to Tackle the Grand Challenge of Sustainability: Lessons from Novel Initiatives.” Elementa Science of the Anthropocene 4 :90. doi. org/10.12952/journal.elementa.000090 Jansujwicz, Jessica S., and Teresa R. Johnson. 2015. “The Maine Tidal Power Initiative: Transdisciplinary Sustainability Science Research for the Responsible Development of Tidal Power.” Sustainability Science 10(1): 75–86.

McGreavy, Bridie, Laura Lindenfeld, Karen H. Bieluch, Linda Silka, Jessica Leahy, and Bill Zoellick. 2015. “Communication and Sustainability Science Teams as Complex Systems.” Ecology and Society 20(1): 2. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol20/iss1/art2/ Page, Scott E. 2017. The Diversity Bonus: How Great Teams Pay Off in the Knowledge Economy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Pentland, Alex. 2012. “The New Science of Building Great Teams.” Harvard Business Review 90(4): 60–69.

Thompson, Jessica Leigh. 2009. “Building Collective Communication Competence in Interdisciplinary Research Teams.”

Journal of Applied Communication Research 37(3): 278–297.

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LEADERSHIP AS PARTNERSHIP

C O M M E N T A R Y

Leadership as Partnership

by Karen Hutchins Bieluch

A

s our world becomes increasingly connected and interdependent, our vision for leadership also needs to evolve. Increasingly, businesses, governments, and universities and colleges are working in partnerships to cross organizational boundaries and share knowledge and accomplish things that can only be achieved when working together (Bednarek et al. 2018). This change in how we work together not only shifts how leadership is viewed, but also uncovers a range of new questions about the skills needed to effectively develop a collaborative leadership approach in partnerships.

During my career, I have had the good fortune to participate in a number of university-community/nonprofit partnerships, working with groups such as Alewife Harvesters of Maine, the Bangor Area Stormwater Group, and the Maine Winter Road Maintenance Working Group, to name a few. I have also studied partnerships. These experiences have made me rethink what it means to be a leader and have pointed to new opportunities and new questions about leadership.

To perhaps oversimplify past leadership approaches, they often were organized around a single leader who guided the work and the decision making.

Whether heading up a corporation, a nonprofit, a school, or a healthcare center, for example, that leader was ultimately charged with making many of the decisions about how things should go. Partnerships often involve a different form of leadership: a single individual is typically not in charge; the individual who takes the lead at different points of time depends on expertise, the issue being addressed, and the stage of the

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process; and the group may be constantly in the process of renegotiating the way forward. Leadership in this context needs to be more dynamic than may be necessary in a single-leader decisionmaking model. Leadership in multiinstitutional partnerships is further complicated by the need to understand not only the individuals involved in the partnership, but also their institutions and the ways those institutions constrain and enable them in the partnership.

Part of my research has involved investigating what groups and individuals want from community-university partnerships. This research is a valuable way to begin to see what leadership will be needed if partnerships are to achieve the expectations held for them. In Maine, an important kind of partnership for addressing sustainability issues facing the state is between municipalities (urban, rural, northern, southern) throughout the state and universities with academic resources that could be put to work for municipal problem solving, growth, and change.

Universities are increasingly entering into partnerships, but often do so with limited knowledge of what partners— such as municipalities—want and need from such relationships. Since universities are in the business of generating new knowledge, and partnerships will often be built around drawing on this capacity, key questions are who makes the decisions about what knowledge is needed, how will information be collected, how will the findings be used?

Additional questions include who will lead in making these decisions, and how could the potential partnerships use this

information to create effective collaborative leadership?

In my research, representatives from municipalities throughout the state were asked through a mail survey to provide information about how they wanted to be involved in decisions about studies that would serve their needs: did they want to lead or be involved in developing the focus, in collecting the data, in analyzing the data, and/or in putting the data to use? Our study yielded interesting findings about preferred strategies or models of partnership (Table 1).

As the results demonstrate, most respondents preferred a collaborative approach to partnership—and leadership—where university researchers and municipal officials work side by side in some, but not necessarily all, aspects of the research partnership (Bieluch et al.

2016). It is easy to assume that partnership means that all partners will want to be involved in every element of decision making and activity. Our results indicate that the hopes and expectations of municipal partners are much more nuanced.

They see opportunities for collaborative leadership in decisions about what information would be helpful to collect. The actual data collection and data analysis, they indicate, might well be done under the leadership of the university researchers.

And when it comes to using the results, the municipal leaders see opportunities for using their own municipal resources to implement the findings in ways that work for their municipality.

But municipal official preferences were also influenced by other factors related to the partnership, such as officials’ confidence that researchers can help address problems, the type of issue being addressed (for example, economic, environmental, social), the level of trust in university partners, the reasons for trusting university partners (for example,

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C O M M E N T A R Y Table 1:

Response of Municipal Officials to Community-University Research Partnership Strategy Options

Type of Partnership

Problem Identification

Research

Proposed Solutions

Implementation

Percentage of Respondents

Lead: University as Lead Partner

University researchers

University researchers

University researchers

Local government officials (LGOs)

2

Consult: University as Consulting Partner

LGOs/University researchers

University researchers

University researchers

LGOs

28

Facilitate: University as Facilitating Partner

LGOs/University researchers

University researchers

LGOs/University researchers

LGOs

27

Full: University as Full Partner

LGOs/University researchers

LGOs/University researchers

LGOs/University researchers

LGOs/University researchers

18

trust in having shared values, trust in technical knowledge), and prior experience with university researchers.

While there is much left to learn about what leadership in partnerships looks like, these studies encourage us to check our expectations and preferences in these relationships and suggest important questions about what leadership looks like when working in partnership. The findings suggest that when partnerships are a central part of addressing complex problems, it will be important to find ways to not simply work in lock step or to assume that everyone must be involved in every decision. Leadership and decision making in partnership will sometimes involve “handing off the baton” at crucial points and trusting the other partners to move alone, to work independently. But trust and understanding do not necessarily come easily in long-term partnerships. Missteps and too much independent work and decision making can erode the sense of working in collaboration. Thus, leadership in partnerships also requires responsiveness to and an awareness of each partner’s perceptions and expertise, a willingness to learn and adapt, and open, effective, and regular communication among partners. Too MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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much independence and we lose the generative potential of partnerships. Too much interdependence and partnerships may fail to thrive or move too slowly to address issues of concern. Finding the balance requires a delicate interplay of people, personalities, and institutions and a willingness to change our expectations of leadership as we work together. REFERENCES Bednarek, A.T., C. Wyborn, C. Cvitanovic, R Meyer, R.M. Colvin, P.F.E. Addison, S. L. Close, et al. 2018. “Boundary Spanning at the Science–Policy Interface: The Practitioners’ Perspectives.” Sustainability Science 1–9. doi.org/10.1007/s11625-018-0550-9 Bieluch, Karen H., Kathleen P. Bell, Mario F. Teisl, Laura Lindenfeld, Jessica Leahy, and Linda Silka.

2016. “Transdisciplinary Research Partnerships in Sustainability Science: An Examination of Stakeholder Participation Preferences.”

Sustainability Science 11(2): 87–104. doi: 10.1007/s11625-016-0360-x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Many thanks to Dr. Linda Silka (Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions, University of Maine, Orono) for her guidance on this article, and for

helping me to see the potential of community-university partnerships. Thank you also to my colleagues who conducted the research I referenced in this piece, including Linda Silka, Laura Lindenfeld, Kathleen Bell, Jessica Leahy, and Mario Teisl, and to the municipal officials who contributed to the research and the community partners with whom I have worked.

Karen H. Bieluch is an assistant research professor with the Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions at the University of Maine. She is also the practice-based learning specialist for the Environmental Studies Program (ENVS) at Dartmouth College, where she helps integrate community-based work into ENVS academics. Her research examines community-university research partnerships, environmental communication and behavior, citizen science, and place and community identity.

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The Adaptive Challenges of Leadership in Maine Schools

by Richard Ackerman, Ian Mette, and Catharine Biddle

by way of a diagnosis and treatment rather than take the time to consider The current landscape of educational leadership in Maine schools offers a range of chalhis puzzling symptoms. She was lenges and uncertainties that are seldom acknowledged or appreciated. These challengconcerned about potential signifes can expose significant gaps between clinical, research-based knowledge and leadericant gaps in the clinical knowlship practices in schools in Maine and across the United States. These endemic issues edge and practice in a small rural constitute adaptive challenges. Solutions to the leadership challenges raised by these emergency room. She feared the issues don’t come quickly or easily and are, in fact, inherently confusing because they emergency room physicians might assume they had the answer when in don’t have easy technical answers. In the context of schools, they include responses to fact they didn’t have all information the endemic challenges of poverty as it affects families and children in Maine, as well and knowledge needed to accurately as the nature of instructional leadership to provide better supervision and evaluation of diagnose and treat what looked to teachers. These issues also inform the principles and practices that guide the develbe an uncertain problem. opment of school leaders in Maine through the educational leadership program at the Many school leaders and University of Maine College of Education and Human Development. teachers experience a version of the emergency room dilemma every day.

They constantly face challenges “Am I going to continue to do the thing I was trained embedded in the core work of schools—teaching and for, on which I base my claims to technical rigor and learning—that do not lend themselves easily or always academic respectability? Or am I going to work on the to technical expertise and solutions. School leaders and problems—ill-formed, vague, and messy—that I have teachers must do this within the larger contexts of discovered to be real around here?” And depending on national and state educational policy and policymakers how people make this choice, their lives unfold differently. who often assume that complex social problems have —Donald Schön (1995: 28) simple solutions. Thus, it can sometimes be difficult for local school leaders, who lead at the intersection of few years ago, old friends came to visit our little policy and practice, to admit honestly, “they don’t know village on the coast of Maine. During the course what they don’t know.” What, then, do school leaders do of the visit, Roland suddenly started to seem quite with the genuine questions and uncertainties they have disoriented and confused. His wife, Barbara, said, about the myriad issues that come with leading a school “We need to get him to a hospital with an emergency and a community? room and fast. I worry that he’s having some kind of School leaders likely respond in several ways to this stroke!” Barbara, who had recently retired as head of question. Some are willing to view prevailing challenges surgical nursing at a major teaching hospital in Boston, to their work as leaders and educators for what they knew what she was talking about. We jumped in the are—“ill-informed, vague, and messy” (Schön 1995: 28). car and headed for the local hospital about 10 miles Examples are easy to name: dealing with the endemic away. Just before we pulled up to the emergency room issues of poverty in Maine, promoting positive student doors, Barbara asked, “Do they know what they don’t behavior, providing quality supervision of teachers that know?” Since what was happening to Roland at that improves instructional practices, and—likely the most moment seemed quite uncertain, Barbara worried that ubiquitous of all—influencing student learning. Some the emergency room doctors might rush to judgment school leaders are willing to approach these issues with Abstract

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disciplined methods of inquiry that emerge from experience, intuition, and trial and error; they ask questions, reach out to new knowledge bases, and keep an eye on their own uncertainties as they muddle through. Many educators (perhaps most), however, feel the need to approach uncertain problems with presumed models of technical rigor and practice despite that such technical expertise does not always apply to the messy and uncertain zones of their practice. Indeed, as Schön (1995) posits, depending how school leaders and teachers make this choice, their lives and the lives of the adults and children around them unfold very differently.

The current landscape of educational leadership in Maine offers a range of challenges and uncertainties that are seldom acknowledged or appreciated. These challenges can expose significant gaps between clinical, research-based knowledge and leadership practices in schools in Maine and across the United States. These challenges include responses to the endemic contexts of poverty as it affects family and children in Maine, as well as the real work of instructional leadership to provide better supervision and evaluation of teachers. These issues also affect our work in developing sound principles and practices to facilitate the development of school leaders in Maine through our educational leadership program at the University of Maine College of Education and Human Development. Solutions to the leadership challenges raised by these swampy issues don’t come quickly or easily and are, in fact, inherently confusing because they don’t have easy technical answers. They are what Heifetz (1994) calls “adaptive” challenges.

UNDERSTANDING ADAPTIVE CHALLENGES

T

he term adaptive challenges refers to situations where there are no known solutions to the problem or where there are too many solutions with no clear choices. Adaptive challenges, by nature, require flexible thinking and responses, which also means they are fluid and change with circumstances. As such, adaptive challenges are volatile, unpredictable, complex, and ambiguous in nature. Solutions to this type of challenge usually require people to learn new ways of doing things, as well as to have the ability to change their attitudes, values, and norms to adopt an experimental mindset (Heifetz and Linsky 2002) Adaptive challenges require adaptive leadership, leadership based on the principles of shared responsibility and continuous learning. Moreover, adaptive

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challenges are full of unknowns, so an experimental or learning mind-set is essential. Doing the same job better, longer, and with more help will not solve an adaptive challenge. There is, especially for beginning school leaders, the tension between being too authoritative and being too collaborative (Jentz 2009). However, to respond to adaptive challenges effectively, leaders need to develop the interpersonal capacities that enable them to work as part of a team. Developing these interpersonal capacities has been the central focus of our teaching and research at the University of Maine. From our work with students and reflections on our own teaching, we have developed insights into how leaders perform and how they learn to perform better in their schools (Ackerman et al. 2011). As such, in a view we share with many other leadership theorists, the great man theory of leadership—a notion where a single person, the great man, is able to solve all problems by himself—is passé (Heifetz 1994). The great man theory does not withstand the test of adaptive challenges for a few key reasons. No leader, no matter how brilliant, knows everything and has all the answers. And, even if the leader has the answer(s), she will need to work with others to overcome the complexities of an adaptive challenge. To state it succinctly, teamwork, and the ability to motivate and inspire others, matters.

Furthermore, working in a team ensures knowledge is spread across more people, reducing the likelihood of similar problems arising when formal leadership experiences turnover.

The issue of how to reconcile adaptive challenges in education systems is a wicked problem, meaning there is no easy way to identify a cause or a solution (Margolin and Buchanan 1995; Mette et al. 2017). When leaders believe they must be certain about problems that don’t have easy technical solutions, they can feel inferior to policymakers—who often present the problems as just requiring technical rigor—and unable to implement solutions. Some school leaders may be unaware or ashamed of their own confusion, so they hide their confusion and bluff, deny, blame, or take charge, as they react to complex problems with easy technical answers (Ackerman and Maslin-Ostrowski 2002). Since the challenges are complex, technical answers will not work, which may result in leaders being more uncertain and confused about what they don’t know.

Many, if not most, conceptions of leadership focus on the external aspects of leadership behavior, emphasizing what the leader should do without taking into 37

ADAPTIVE CHALLENGES OF LEADERSHIP

account who the leader is and how he is made aware of his own vulnerabilities and uncertainties. Leadership is practiced at a busy and sometimes hazardous intersection of personal and professional realms, where there is often a thundering flow of traffic. It is frequently thought of as a life of service in which personal wishes are turned toward the needs of others. Yet, school leaders frequently find themselves sandwiched between the need for technical rigor required by educational policies and the more ambiguous dilemmas they encounter on the ground in schools, especially in relationship to the work of leadership itself (Ackerman and Maslin-Ostrowski 2004).

Leadership development is perhaps one of the most vexing adaptive challenges facing public education systems.…

How then, given the pressures around policy implementation, is it possible for a school leader to take on the tasks of discovering and changing his attitude toward what he (and others) don’t know? How can a leader better incorporate the perspectives of others in addressing the wicked problems that adaptive challenges pose for schools? Perhaps most importantly, how can our society better contribute to finding solutions for these complex problems and serve as a resource and a starting place for growth?

We have been exploring principles, practices, and methods for helping school leaders develop such attitudes and performance capacities (Ackerman et al.

2011). We have engaged with our students in the arduous work of honing skills, judgment, and knowledge to address the adaptive challenges facing the PK–12 public education system across Maine and the United States. As such, we have worked hard to coconstruct spaces and opportunities for our students to learn how to mobilize people to demonstrably improve student learning.

It is critical for the development of our students’ leadership skills that we understand their ability to address adaptive challenges in a more personal way. To become more comfortable in acknowledging what they MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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do not know, as well as more confident and competent in leading others in addressing complex challenges, new school leaders need to acknowledge their own vulnerabilities (Brown 2012) and see their vulnerabilities as opportunities for improvement rather than as a reason to retrench into defensiveness. Operating from this reconfigured mind-set means leaders can acknowledge their limitations and be open about reaching out for what they need to lead effectively. We believe it is of primary importance for Maine schools that school leaders develop a well-rounded sense of self, grounded in their interpersonal and intrapersonal skills, intuition, imagination, and resourcefulness.

We see three pressing and fundamental adaptive challenges facing the state. First, there is a real need to alter the common paradigm on leadership development itself, moving away from solely technical solutions to more holistic approaches to leadership. Second, it is vital that we help school leaders address the pressing issues of poverty in Maine in a way that acknowledges the roots of poverty as an adaptive challenge that requires both community leadership and school leadership. Third, we need to shift away from policy-driven practices of simply evaluating teachers and develop leaders who are more capable of providing formative feedback as instructional leaders to improve student achievement. Understanding these three wicked problems as genuine adaptive challenges for Maine educators is a first step in addressing them.

Leadership Development Leadership development is perhaps one of the most vexing adaptive challenges facing public education systems, namely, because there is not one defined technical solution to developing future PK–12 leaders. Of course, many authors and publishing houses would have you believe that there is one solution if you only buy their book and follow their interpretations of leadership (Marzano, Waters, and McNulty 2005; Northouse 2018). Although there is comfort in this assumption, it flies in the face of everyday reality for practicing PK–12 leaders. The reality is that educational leadership programs must teach aspiring leaders to (a) accept uncertainty in their work, (b) gain balcony perspectives about their own leadership to reflect upon how this fits within their public school system, and (c) empower educators to reflect upon practices, exercise their own professional responsibility, and contribute to the learning organization as a whole.

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Two important abilities lie at the heart of effective leadership: the ability to persuade a group of people to change and the ability to mobilize the same group to action (Heifetz and Linsky 2002). How do aspiring leaders develop these skills? We believe that the ability to translate the theory of leadership into action lies with developing leaders who are able to handle uncertainty in their own organizations as well as the vulnerabilities they perceive within themselves. Through guided development, aspiring leaders can transform their tacit beliefs about leadership into explicit habits and communication messages about leadership styles and actions (Nonaka and Takeuchi 1995).

To encourage such growth, leadership development programs need to encourage aspiring leaders to analyze the messages and actions of their schools and districts and to critically question if these best support the students and families of the communities they serve.

The goal is to develop an independent moral compass that informs all future leadership actions. This process can cause feelings of uncertainty and vulnerability, especially when attempting to mobilize people to change.

And herein lies another challenge to leadership development, namely, the struggle to separate who a person is from what is expected of formal leaders by others within their school or school district (Donaldson 2008). The intersection of personal and professional is often the greatest source of conflict for school leaders. “How do I negotiate the politics of my school district and community? How do I best support teachers? How do I create a distributive leadership structure that empowers the school to function more as a learning organization?

How much power do I really have to make a decision?”

These are all questions that leaders can and should pose to themselves.

Perhaps one of the most difficult challenges for educational leadership development is disrupting an old but deeply embedded notion that aspiring leaders should be able to provide quick, technical answers to problems that are actually complex and nuanced. Yet, adaptive challenges are best solved when leaders have developed interpersonal skills that support cognitive coaching, that is, where leaders empower others to think through their problems and determine their own solutions (Costa and Garmston 2002). Cognitive coaching, however, requires the deliberate creation of a culture where leaders invest in the development of people rather than programs, with the embedded belief that supporting the growth of individuals will lead to the betterment of an organization MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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(Kegan and Lahey 2016). As such, it is crucial that leadership development focuses on developing a culture where educators perceive there are no weaknesses but rather only opportunities for improvement.

Addressing Poverty in Maine Enacting school leadership that alleviates rather than exacerbates the challenges associated with poverty is another clear example of an adaptive challenge. Changes in the structure of the global economy have shaped a world in which widening economic inequality defines the everyday existence of educators (Iceland 2013).

Although this inequality affects different places and social groups differently, poverty—which in the United States is politically defined in absolute, rather than relative, terms—affects about 41,000 children in Maine alone (US Census 2016). There are many adverse effects to child poverty including toxic stress, adverse effects on child development, lower career and educational aspirations, and decreased feelings of belonging, agency, and civic engagement (Berliner 2013; Gorski 2013).

…addressing poverty within the context of school leadership requires an adaptive approach.

Often, schools address poverty as a technical challenge, as another deficiency present in individual students that can be overcome through high-quality instructional practices and efficient organizational management (see for example, Payne 2005). Certainly, recent federal and state reforms emphasize that leaders ought to be thinking about poverty in this way. However, evidence from the last 15 years of high-stakes accountability for schools has not seen marked improvement in how our schools serve poor children.

Because there are many competing explanations for how and why poverty occurs (Bradshaw 2008; Jennings 1999), addressing poverty within the context of school leadership requires an adaptive approach. Some beliefs about poverty may be well-established lines of argument that stem from cultural explanations, pointing to individual motivation to work, questionable values or morals, or the transmission of these behaviors from one 39

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generation to the next. There is strong research evidence, however, that poverty is a systemic issue rather than a cultural one (Gorski 2013; Iceland 2013), which means that leaders need to directly address these beliefs and systems in order to design effective strategies for assisting struggling families.

Leaders who prioritize equity and support for economically marginalized families must find ways to engage and transform these beliefs within their community and at the district and even state level. Didactic interactions with community members and faculty, however, are unlikely to change long-held beliefs (Freire 1970; Nagda et al. 1999; Nagda, Kim, and Truelove 2004). While it is tempting to believe that simply presenting people with data that contradict their personal beliefs will change their attitudes and behaviors, there is better evidence to support approaches that begin in dialogue and transformative experiences.

…the hyper-focus on teacher evaluation reinforces the belief that there are technical answers to solving the complex problems of low student achievement.…

Critical dialogue involves considering how members of a community wish to engage with each other. It requires mutual trust between the participants, a certain comfort—particularly by the facilitator—with ambiguity and conflict, and a belief that transforming the way we relate to one another begins with practicing new ways of relating to one another. Dialogue, however, requires many things: common time, common space, commitment from the participants, and openness on the part of the facilitator to invite participants’ vulnerability. Some of these challenges are technical—time, for example, in the context of a school day and school year in which there never seems to be enough time. The adaptive challenge, however, is for the school leader to cultivate a readiness within herself to create and hold these common spaces, both organically and in planned ways.

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Differentiating Supervision from Evaluation

A third troublesome adaptive challenge facing educational leaders throughout the state of Maine is providing meaningful supervision to teachers. When we use the word supervision, we separate it from evaluation.

Supervision is defined as formative feedback used to support reflection on instructional practices (Glickman, Gordon, and Ross-Gordon 2014; Zepeda 2017), while evaluation is defined as summative feedback used to document teacher performance and make decisions about teacher retention (Hazi and Rucinski 2009; Oliva and Pawlas 2004). Part of the problem facing educational leaders is that the terms are often used as synonyms (Mette et al. 2017), when in fact they mean very different things.

Evaluation has been increasingly used as a policy tool to target teachers with classrooms that produce low scores on standardized tests. Rather than address the complex social problems many students face today, educational leaders often feel pressure from state and federal policies that rely on teacher evaluation to increase focus on student achievement. In Maine, a recent analysis of performance evaluation and professional growth (PE/PG) systems found a large majority of districts focused more heavily on evaluation (Fairman and Mette 2017), which contributed little to the improvement of teachers’ instructional skills. Moreover, a focus on teacher evaluation promotes the notion of school leaders exercising power over, compared to power with or power to, teachers (Berger 2009). In short, the hyper-focus on teacher evaluation reinforces the belief that there are technical answers to solving the complex problems of low student achievement (Mette and Reigel 2018).

Supervision, on the other hand, serves a human development function that honors adult-learning theory through individualized professional development opportunities. Creating an educational environment that values supervision, however, is an adaptive challenge that requires school leaders to embrace their own vulnerability and accept uncertainties in their ability to serve as an instructional leader. Perhaps the greatest tension for an educational leader to acknowledge is that she, in fact, might not be the strongest instructor in a school!

But acknowledging personal shortfalls, however, not only allows for tapping the expertise of other instructors, but it also provides a greater self-knowledge and opportunities for leadership improvement.

To provide high-quality supervision, educational leaders need to be able to coach. By coach, we mean 40

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encouraging all educators in a school to see each other as conversation equals. Such leaders truly listen to what others have to say, encourage and promote autonomy within the school, suspend judgment when someone tries and fails at something, and allow conversation to breathe life into how formative feedback supports instructional growth (Knight 2016). This adaptive challenge requires interpersonal and intrapersonal reflection among leaders and, if addressed correctly, builds capacity among members of an educational organization.

Policy Implications and Conclusions We believe there are important policy implications to support innovative leadership throughout the state of Maine by improving leadership skills, addressing poverty, and differentiating supervision and evaluation. A relatively straightforward way to improve the skills of school leaders is for leadership development programs to work more closely with practitioners to address problems of practice (see Mette and Webb, this issue, for a discussion of such a program). Working together to understand the underlying challenges facing individual school districts may lead to opportunities to disrupt some of these problems. Such collaboration allows a group of stakeholders interested in improving education to alter the blame cycle (e.g., preparation programs do not produce good educators, poor families do not see the value of a good education, teachers do not try hard enough to help students succeed). Additionally, there is power in acknowledging that neither researchers, practitioners, nor policymakers have a solution to some of these adaptive challenges.

Many students and families in Maine are confronting the systemic issues of poverty and trauma associated with changing economic opportunities, rural isolation, uneven access to support for substance abuse and addiction, and lack of access to mental and physical health services. While a focus on technical solutions to poverty within school systems won’t produce improved living conditions for students, there are ways for policymakers to improve educational opportunities for students living in poverty. Throughout the country, and here in Maine (Mette et al., forthcoming), there are pockets of community-school partnerships that attempt to address the systemic issue of poverty by

• decreasing mobility rates of students moving from school to school; • providing access to free meals through food pantries throughout the weekend;

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• increasing access to mental and physical health for students and family members; • increasing access to neighborhood resources through community mapping; and • strengthening home-school communication and support structures.

To encourage these types of activities, however, policymakers should reconsider how create incentives and provide resources to school districts to meet the basic needs of students. With help in meeting students’ basic needs, schools could then focus on instruction, and thus increase student achievement.

Additionally, schools need to focus more on the supervision of teachers (developing formative feedback structures for instructional improvement) rather than the evaluation of teachers (assessing teachers on a continuum that offers no targeted development to improve instructional practices). As the most rural state in the country, and one with a declining population, we are ill prepared to evaluate teachers out of the profession.

We need instructional leaders who will meet teachers where they are in their professional ability, provide feedback that allows for reflection and improvement, and empower them to drive their own professional improvement around high-quality instruction. While Maine’s PE/PG system for teachers includes facets of supervision, over 85 percent of the focus of these systems is on evaluating teacher performance (Fairman and Mette 2017).

If policymakers want better instructors who will be able to support higher student achievement, they need to create policies that honor adult learning, support autonomy among teachers to grow professionally, and create conversations with teachers who value experimenting with new teaching strategies.

Maine students, educators, and communities deserve thoughtful and collaborative leadership to address the varied adaptive challenges that schools face.

In this article, we propose that it is acceptable, and perhaps even desirable, for school leaders to acknowledge what they know along with what they don’t know.

We recognize that adaptive challenges may cause us to feel nervous and vulnerable. Yet, what is the real leadership alternative? Should leaders act, even with false confidence, as if they know what they are doing when they don’t? In this article, we suggest that Maine needs an increased tolerance around the ambiguities of the adaptive leadership challenges in schools. We need to stop seeking simple, easy answers for problems that

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require strategies that honor interpersonal relationships, forge a genuine sense of community, and reward efforts of educational practitioners, policymakers, and researchers who reach out to new knowledge bases and collaborate on deeper levels.

This is a beginning. When leadership learning starts to question basic personal and organizational assumptions and values, new ways of interpreting events can emerge. The insight and the practices that follow such changes may enable leaders to behave more skillfully, compassionately, and courageously. In short, Maine must learn to adapt its policies and leadership practices in the face of emerging societal issues. Most importantly, we need to learn more about what we don’t know if we are to make our schools the bedrock of our communities and offer Maine children a brighter future. REFERENCES Ackerman, Richard H., and Pat Maslin-Ostrowski. 2004.

“The Wounded Leader and Emotional Learning in the Schoolhouse.” School Leadership and Management 24(3): 311–328.

Ackerman, Richard H., and Pat Maslin-Ostrowski. 2002.

The Wounded Leader: How Real Leadership Emerges in Times of Crisis. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Ackerman, Richard H., Gordon A. Donaldson Jr., Sarah V. Mackenzie, and George F. Marnik. 2011. “Leadership Learning That Makes a Difference in Schools: Pushing the Frontier at the University of Maine.” In International Handbook on Leadership for Learning, edited

by Tony Townsend and John MacBeath, 375–396.

Dordrecht: Springer Publishing.

Berger, Bruce K. 2009. “Power Over, Power With, and Power To Relations: Critical Reflections on Public Relations, the Dominant Coalition, and Activism.” Journal of Public Relations Research 17(1): 5–28.

Berliner, David C. 2013. “Effects of Inequality and Poverty vs.

Teachers and Schooling on America’s Youth.” Teachers College Record 115(12): 1–26.

Bradshaw, Ted K. 2007. “Theories of Poverty and Anti-Poverty Programs in Community Development.”

Community Development 38(1): 7–25. doi.org/10.1080 /15575330709490182 Brown, Brené C. 2012. Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead. New York: Penguin.

Costa, Arthur L., and Robert J. Garmston. 2002. Cognitive Coaching: A Foundation for Renaissance Schools, 2nd ed. Norwood, MA: Christopher-Gordon Publishers, Inc.

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Donaldson, Gordon A. 2008. How Leaders Learn: Cultivating Capacities for School Improvement. New York: Teachers College Press.

Fairman, Janet, and Ian M. Mette. 2017. Working Toward Implementation of Performance Evaluation and Professional Growth (PE/PG) Systems in Maine School Districts. Orono: Maine Education Policy Research Institute, University of Maine.

Freire, Paolo. 1970. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Herder & Herder.

Glickman, Carl D., Stephen P. Gordon, and Jovita M. Ross-Gordon. 2014. SuperVision and Instructional Leadership: A Developmental Approach, 9th ed.

Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Gorski, Paul C. 2013. Reaching and Teaching Students in Poverty: Strategies for Erasing the Opportunity Gap. New York: Teachers College Press.

Hazi, Helen M., and Daisy A. Rucinski. 2009. “Teacher Evaluation as a Policy Target for Improved Student Learning: A Fifty-State Review of Statute and Regulatory Action since NCLB.” Education Policy Analysis Archives 17(5): 1–19. dx.doi.org/10.14507/epaa.v17n5.2009 Heifetz, Ronald A. 1994. Leadership without Easy Answers.

Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Heifetz, Ronald A., and Marty Linsky. 2002. Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of Leading.

Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Iceland, John. 2013. Poverty in America: A Handbook.

Berkeley: University of California Press.

Jennings, James. 1999. “Persistent Poverty in the United States: Review of Theories and Explanations.” In A New Introduction to Poverty: The Role of Race, Power, and Politics, edited by L. Kushnick and J. Jennings, 13–38.

New York: New York University Press.

Jentz, Barry. 2009. “First Time in a Position of Authority.”

Phi Delta Kappan 91(1): 55–60.

Kegan, Robert, and Lisa Laskow Lahey. 2016. An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization. Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing.

Knight, Jim. 2016. Better Conversations: Coaching Ourselves and Each Other to Be More Credible, Caring, and Connected. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Margolin, Victor, and Richard Buchanan. 1995. The Idea of Design. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Marzano, Robert J., Timothy Waters, and Brian A. McNulty.

2005. School Leadership That Works: From Research to Results. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision & Curriculum.

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Mette, I. M., C. Biddle, M. Brown, and M. Tappan.

Forthcoming. “The TREE Branches of Community Support: How School community Partnerships Can Drive Rural Reform Efforts.” Journal of Maine Education.

Mette, Ian M., Bret G. Range, Jason Anderson, David J. Hvidston, Lisa Nieuwenhuizen, and Jon Doty. 2017.

“The Wicked Problem of the Intersection between Supervision and Evaluation.” International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education 9(3): 709–724.

Mette, Ian M., and Lisa Reigel. 2018. “Supervision, Systems Thinking, and the Impact of American School Reform Efforts on Instructional Leadership.” Journal of Cases in Educational Leadership (March). doi. org/10.1177/1555458918759696 Mette, Ian M., and Betsy Webb. 2018. “Developing Leadership Pipelines in Maine School Districts: Lessons Learned from a School-University Partnership.” Maine Policy Review 27(1): xx–xx.

Nagda, Birenee (Ratnesh) A., Chan‐woo Kim, and Yaffa Truelove. 2004. “Learning about Difference, Learning with Others, Learning to Transgress.” Journal of Social Issues 60:195–214.

Nagda, Biren A., Margaret L. Spearmon, Lynn C. Holley, Scott Harding, Mary Lou Balassone, Dominique Moïse-Swanson, and Stan De Mello. 1999. “Intergroup Dialogues: An Innovative Approach to Teaching about Diversity and Justice in Social Work Programs.” Journal of Social Work Education 35(3): 433–449.

Nonaka, Ikujiro, and Hirotaka Takeuchi. 1995. The Knowledge Creating Company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation. New York: Oxford University Press.

Northouse, Peter G. 2018. Leadership: Theory and Practice, 8th ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Oliva, Peter F., and George E. Pawlas. 2004. Supervision for Today’s Schools, 7th ed. New York: John Wiley and Sons.

Payne, Ruby K. 2005. A Framework for Understanding Poverty. Highlands, TX: aha! Process, Inc. Schön, Donald A. 1995. “Knowing-in-Action: The New Scholarship Requires a New Epistemology.” Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning 27(6): 27–34.

US Census. 2016. Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates Program. https://www.census.gov/data /datasets/2016/demo/saipe/2016-state-and-county.html

Richard Ackerman is a professor of educational leadership and coordinator of the Educational Leadership Program at the University of Maine. Since the late 1980s, he has led leadership retreats for teachers and principals, playing active roles in professional development for school leaders. Ackerman’s interests and research focuses on the inner landscapes of leadership formation. He lives on a saltwater farm with his wife, daughter, and assorted farm animals, including Derek Jeter, his beloved goat.

Catharine Biddle is an assistant professor of educational leadership at the University of Maine.

Her research focuses on ways in which rural schools and communities respond to social and economic change in the twenty-first century. She is particularly interested in how schools can more effectively leverage partnerships with external organizations or groups to address issues of social inequality and how nontraditional leaders—such as youth, parents, and other community members—may lead or serve as partners in these efforts.

Ian M. Mette is an assistant professor in the Educational Leadership Program at the University of Maine. His research interests include teacher supervision and evaluation, school reform, and bridging the gap between research and practice to inform and support school improvement efforts. Specifically, his work targets how educators, researchers, and policymakers can better inform one another to drive school improvement and reform policy.

Zepeda, Sally J. 2017. Instructional Supervision: Applying Tools and Concepts, 4th ed. New York: Routledge.

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LEADERSHIP PIPELINES

C O M M E N T A R Y

Developing Leadership Pipelines in Maine School Districts: Lessons Learned from a School-University Partnership

by Ian M. Mette and Betsy Webb

T

he School Leadership Task Force, which included Maine educators, university professors, and Maine legislators from the Education and Cultural Affairs Committee, highlights the pressing need to develop a large number of school administrators in the state of Maine in the upcoming years (Task Force 2016). School leadership is second only to classroom instruction with regard to the effect on student learning (Branch, Hanushek, and Rivkin 2013), and leadership that supports a trusting educational environment is often crucial to retaining high-quality teachers (Louis et al. 2010). To develop an informed and prepared pool of administrators, however, collaboration between practitioners and researchers to bridge the theory-practice gap is essential (McGarr, O’Grady, and Guilfoyle 2016). As such, the state needs to increase the connection between leadership preparation programs and districts developing future leaders if Maine is to produce a larger pool of competent and well-trained school leaders in our state. A pressing question for Mainers to consider is, How can school districts and leadership preparation programs develop new strategies to better train aspiring school leaders?

Starting in the fall of 2016, the Bangor School Department (BSD) and the University of Maine (UMaine) Educational Leadership Program entered into an agreement called the Bangor Educational Leadership Academy (BELA) to enable researchers and practitioners to work more collaboratively to bridge the theory-practice gap

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that often plagues schools. Working together, we have actively sought to address the problem of practice that has major implications for training and skill development. What is perhaps most novel about our work is the conscious and ongoing effort to communicate about leadership development beliefs and how this is translated into action. We meet several times each semester to ensure professional development and school improvement efforts are interwoven into coursework. Additionally, we identify several guest lecturers from BSD (current practicing administrators) to help ensure instructional alignment between theory and practice. Perhaps most impressive is that, through our collaboration and coursework, several practices and policies within BSD have been evaluated and updated. At the end of each school year, we conduct an evaluation to reflect on the leadership development taking place and identify strategies to further improve leadership development within BELA. The great challenge we have had to overcome is simply being willing to sit down and discuss how preparation programs might better connect theory to practice, as well as how practitioners might be able to better use practitioner-friendly research to inform best practices. Interestingly, we have discovered that the theory-practice gap is experienced in many other professions.

For example, we have learned that climate scientists and engineers experience similar disconnects. Health researchers and health practitioners

failing to find a nexus to their work is another example. Even wildlife biologists and land-use managers can struggle to find a greater understanding of each other and the work they produce. As such, there is a need to continue to focus on how research can affect people in the public sphere.

That said, we have found great value in our conversations on how we can work together to address pressing educational issues in Maine, and we believe further collaborative efforts can only strengthen our public school systems.

Specifically, our work offers important interim lessons about educational leadership development in Maine.

First, collaboration between researchers and practitioners to close the theory-practice gap requires dedicated and consistent planning between district and university personnel to ensure an alignment of current professional development efforts within school districts with the curriculum being taught in educational leadership programs. From our own efforts together, this means university personnel listening to practitioners to understand what is happening in practice to better link useful theory that will then drive leadership development.

Second, trust is a crucial component of this work. It takes time and concerted effort to build a trusting relationship where each side, both researchers and practitioners, truly value what the other has to offer. We have discovered that by focusing on deepening our trust as partners and valuing that relationship, we

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C O M M E N T A R Y can capitalize on leadership development that will improve the capacity of a school district to produce student outcomes. In doing so, we have created a learning laboratory where aspiring leaders can celebrate the strengths of a school district but also target opportunities for improvement.

Third, there is potential to develop this kind of leadership development network on a wider scale by working in regions throughout the state. As proposed by the Maine Department of Education, there are currently efforts to regionalize parts of our state to better support school districts in professional development efforts. We believe that, through our partnership structure and collaborative conversations, we can develop leadership that will support Maine educators in the twenty-first century.

By sitting down and working together, we believe researchers, practitioners, and policymakers can address what some refer to as the loading dock problem (Cash, Borck, and Patt 2003)— where we assume our practices, policies, and research is of importance and interest to others, but we don’t communicate with each other nearly enough about how our work is seen as useful to other parties. Through conversations about leadership development programs, we believe that school-university partnerships like the BELA program can reduce the theory-practice gap so often observed in the practice of educational leadership development.

Additionally, through regionalized efforts, we believe that smaller school districts can band together to address capacity development issues. By working together, we hope to continue to lead Maine into a brighter future. -

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REFERENCES Branch, Gregory F., Eric A. Hanushek, and Steven G. Rivkin. 2013. “School Leaders Matter: Measuring the Impact of Effective Principals.” Education Next 13(1): 62–69.

Cash, David W., Jonathan C. Borck, and Anthony G. Patt. 2003. “Countering the Loading-Dock Approach to Linking Science and Decision Making: Comparative Analysis of El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) Forecasting Systems.” Science, Technology, & Human Values 31(4): 465–494.

Louis, Karen S., Kenneth Leithwood, Karen L. Whalstrom, and Stephen E. Anderson. 2010. Learning from Leadership: Investigating the Links to Improved Student Learning. New York: The Wallace Foundation.

McGarr, Oliver, Emmanuel O’Grady, and Liam Guilfoyle. 2016. “Exploring the Theory-Practice Gap in Initial Teacher Education: Moving beyond Questions of Relevance to Issues of Power and Authority.” Journal of Education for Teaching 43(1): 48–60. doi: 10.1080/02607476.2017.1256040 Task Force on School Leadership. 2016.

Report of the Task Force. Augusta, ME: Maine State Legislature.

Ian M. Mette is an assistant professor in the educational leadership program at the University of Maine. His research interests include teacher supervision and evaluation, school reform, and bridging the gap between research and practice to inform and support school improvement efforts. Specifically, his work targets how educators, researchers, and policymakers can better inform one another to drive school improvement and reform policy.

Betsy Webb is the superintendent of the Bangor School Department.

Her educational passions include designing pathways to college, career, and life readiness for students, growing Maine educational leaders, providing high-quality professional development, bridging the gap between theory and practice to improve Maine schools, and leading the Bangor School Department to continued success.

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The Power of Invitation: Teacher Leaders as Agents of Change

by Bill Zoellick, Molly Meserve Auclair, and Sarah L. Kirn

regard to core dimensions of learning such as reading and numeracy, the Programs offered by universities and other entities outside the organizational boundsecondary process can provide teachers with supports related to aries of schools are an important source of ideas and support for educational improvescience education, foreign language ment. Such organizations can focus on important needs—such as improving teaching of instruction, arts education, and science—that schools perhaps cannot address on their own due to resource constraints. other knowledge and competencies.

In such cases, teacher leaders can play key roles in bringing the knowledge and insights One notable characteristic of from external organizations into schools, sharing them with colleagues, and gaining this second approach is that the administrative support. This kind of teacher leadership, responding to external initiaoutside organizations tend to focus tives rather than just to administrative priorities, is understudied, but programs in Maine initially on work with teachers and that connect schools to universities and nonprofit organizations provide insight into the bring administrators in as the project nature of such teacher leadership. We draw upon cases from two of these programs develops, rather than working first to offer suggestions to other organizations that might wish to develop programs for through district administrators, then teacher leaders in support of educational improvement. to building administrators, and finally to teachers. Not surprisingly, the professional development that these organizations offer is typically uch of the thinking and writing about educational focused on teachers’ work in classrooms and attends to change and improvement focuses on the politmatters such as strengthening teachers’ knowledge of ical and administrative structures of schools. Research subject matter or their ability to use particular instrucfrequently looks at how educational policy at the tional techniques or tools. In this paper, we argue that in federal and state levels is translated into decisions by addition to helping teachers work more effectively in school boards and district administrators and how those their classrooms, programs seeking to improve teaching decisions, in turn, are transformed again as policies are and learning should help teachers develop their capacity implemented by school principals and teachers. This to work with other teachers and with school administraimportant, complicated process has been the focus tors. In short, we argue for more explicit attention to of much study and analysis (see for example, Coburn teacher leadership. and Woulfin 2012; Donaldson et al. 2008; Little 2003; We begin by examining the cases of a number of Smylie and Denny 1990; Spillane and Hopkins 2013). teachers who work in leadership roles supported by This is the primary process of educational change. organizations outside their schools. We use these cases In this article, we draw attention to a second to create a picture of what teacher leadership looks like approach to supporting improvement and change in when it operates outside the structure of an official leadschools. This process does not work down through the ership role conferred by school administrators. We close official channels of the school hierarchy, but instead by drawing on this picture to offer suggestions that originates outside of schools with colleges, universities, might be useful to organizations that wish to strengthen and nonprofit organizations. This secondary process can their ability to cultivate and support teacher leaders who supplement the primary process. While the primary can, in turn, motivate and support teachers and adminprocess is often focused on moving the needle with istrators in pursuit of improved teaching and learning.

Abstract

M

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THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

T

eacher leadership means different things to different people. We begin with the relatively broad definition offered by York-Barr and Duke, who define teacher leadership as the process by which teachers, individually or collectively, influence their colleagues, principals, and other members of school communities to improve teaching and learning practices with the aim of increased student learning and achievement. (2004: 277–278)

Thinking of teacher leadership as influence is useful because influence can operate independently of the chain of command, moving up the hierarchy, laterally, and downwards as well as across organizational boundaries. In our inquiry into the sources of and supports for influence, we also draw upon Foucault’s (1982: 791) thinking about power, which he sees as “a way in which certain actions may structure the field of other possible actions.” Framed this way, power acts by making some courses of action more or less attractive and possible. A school principal is exercising power in offering a teacher a formal leadership position, but a teacher is also exercising power when she decides to help a colleague use new curriculum materials or instructional technology.

In both cases, one person is changing the other person’s “field of possible actions.” Foucault’s conception of power is useful in thinking about teacher leadership because, as the following cases illustrate, teacher leadership often consists of actions that are subtle and focused on creating opportunities, rather than actions that are dramatic or that seek to command response by others.

STUDY CONTEXT

W

e draw upon leadership demonstrated by teachers working in two different program contexts. One group comprises teachers who voluntarily participated in a two-year teacher leadership program offered within the Maine Physical Sciences Curriculum Partnership (MainePSP) at the University of Maine’s Center for Research in STEM Education (RiSE Center). This program is described elsewhere in this issue (McKay et al., this issue).

The second group consists of teachers who have agreed to lead communities within the Gulf of Maine Research Institute’s (GMRI) Regional Teacher

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Community (RTC) program. Each teacher leads a group of grade 5–8 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) educators from different schools within their geographic region. The driving focus of these RTCs is to grow and strengthen a community of teachers who support one another in doing more authentic science investigations. These teacher leaders joined the RTC program with the understanding that their role as a leader would evolve over time, beginning with more support from GMRI and shifting towards greater responsibility for leading a community that would grow and be sustainable over time. The names used here are pseudonyms.

THE CASES Anita Anita is a mid-career middle school science and math teacher working in a small school district. Her involvement in the MainePSP led to an opportunity to assist the RiSE Center in creating a new program aimed at K–5 teachers across Maine to help them become more proficient in use of productive talk—an approach to managing classroom discourse focused on student thinking (Michaels, Sohmer, and O’Connor 2006). In productive talk, teachers redirect student’s questions and assertions to other students, rather than to the teacher.

Productive talk was new to Anita, but it fit well with her general approach to teaching. Her skill in creating a classroom environment in which students listened and responded to each other developed to the point where other teachers expressed admiration and even some astonishment.

She invited other teachers to visit and observe her class whenever they wanted, but also wanted to go beyond that to organize professional development to enable colleagues in her school to create and support productive talk among their students. In her words, she wanted “to change the culture of our school, not just the teachers. You know…change the culture of the kids.”

However, Anita recognized that her principal at that time would not provide paid professional development time for such work. “They were like, ‘Nope you can’t use that time.’ And I would have had to do it on my own time after school and get volunteers to do it.” Her response was to hold off on her plans until she could see a way to proceed that seemed likely to be successful.

The arrival of a new principal created new opportunities. Anita responded by reengaging with work outside 47

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of her classroom and taking on additional work valued by the administration, for example, working as mentor to two new teachers. She also saw the opportunity to put forth her thinking about professional development focused on use of productive talk. Her new principal supported her proposal to offer all grade 6–12 teachers across the entire district such professional development during a portion of the district’s in-service program. She and a colleague from the MainePSP teacher leadership program led a three-hour workshop for approximately 40 teachers in the district.

Bonnie Bonnie, a middle school math and science teacher, had just finished her third year of teaching when she joined the MainePSP leadership program. She was dissatisfied with her teaching. Equally important, she felt that she needed to be working more with other teachers to move ahead, but her school’s culture kept her isolated.

During her first year in the leadership program, she took a leave of absence from her school to join the staff of the MainePSP. Her job involved delivering materials to and working with teachers across the state. As she met and talked with teachers, she developed something that she called a “facilitator role,” where she learned that she could add value by coordinating the work of others and, just as important, that she did not need to have all the answers herself.

When she returned to her school, there was a new principal who was more supportive of collaborative work. Bonnie found that other science teachers in both the middle school and high school were struggling with students’ use of claims, evidence, and reasoning (CER), so she proposed a book-study group to explore CER. She used a grant from the MainePSP to buy books and to organize a year’s worth of professional development.

Her new confidence that she could facilitate the work of others, even though she was just beginning to learn about CER, was essential to enabling her to take on this leadership role.

Her principal agreed that the book-study group could serve as a paid professional development option for teachers and also recognized Bonnie’s role by including her leadership as a professional goal within her annual evaluation. For Bonnie, the creation of a more collaborative culture in her school was just as important as the focus on CER.

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Caroline Caroline is a veteran science teacher with experience in a variety of settings and roles. After retiring from teaching in another state, she moved to Maine and took a job as the sole science teacher for grades 6–8 in an elementary school in a small rural community.

Aware of the potential for local misgivings about a teacher “from away,” she initially focused on connecting with the school’s other teachers rather than thinking in terms of leadership.

Over time, she saw that her participation in programs external to the local community could be useful to her community. Using a metaphor that reflects her new experiences living in a relatively isolated community, Caroline described the situation this way: “It’s like, you know, we leave one outpost and I’m going into the general store and I’m bringing back valuable items that we can’t create on our own.”

One particular incident increased Caroline’s confidence in the community’s acceptance of her role as someone bringing an outsider’s expertise and perspective. Her students were involved in study of ecological restoration of an area used by community residents. The students established a study site that they marked with flags and signs, but twice over a period of a week, local teenagers used the area as a party site and trashed the students’ work.

So, I had asked the kids...I want everybody to just write on a piece of scrap paper how this makes you feel. Why you’re angry; why you’re sad. And then, I just compiled their sentences into a letter to the editor. [...] So now I’m getting people tapping me on the elbow in the grocery store and saying that was a great letter.

Experiences such as this contributed to Caroline’s emerging as the science teacher in the community. She accepted that role and the implicit responsibility to speak for science education that came with it. Using a small grant from the MainePSP, she offered a series of five workshops for teachers at the K–5 level to introduce them to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) for those grade levels.

Well, darned if every single K–5 teacher didn’t show up.

And so did the reading specialist at K–2 and 3–5 and so did the math specialist. I had almost 20 people, and it’s a little school. I’m talking like every single staff member.

And they continue to come.

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Caroline’s freedom to innovate in her school was partially due to her filling a void. Before her arrival, the school had not had a teacher trained and committed to teaching science. But she recognized that it was also due to the support of her principal. In the second year of our conversations, Caroline received an award for her teaching. She said, “When I got the award, I said to the principal…he congratulated me…and I said to him in return, ‘Thank you for building an environment that I can be me in.’”

In interviews with Caroline over a period of three years, we saw that her work focused on objectives at multiple levels, ranging from near-term improvements in instruction to broader concerns about the future of students living in a rural community.

The kids that I teach, male and female, humor me and have fun with learning. But, they’re sure that they can graduate from high school and earn far more money being fishermen than going to college. And I’m not saying that they shouldn’t be fishermen. I’m just saying that they should see that there are other avenues. I can’t do that unless I can get them [out of the community] either physically or mentally. So me being part of a larger network is really valuable.…I’m just trying to broaden their scope of understanding.

Debra Debra is a fifth grade teacher at a small rural school and leads GMRI’s pilot RTC. She has 10 years of teaching experience, is an active member of her community outside school, and a leader in her district.

Concurrent with stepping into her role as teacher leader for her RTC, she was awarded GMRI’s annual award for innovative teaching. At her district, she was tapped to contribute to science curriculum design. All these points of encouragement not only opened up possibilities, but also invigorated her motivation to reach across districts and continue her practice and growth as a leader.

The community Debra leads covers two large counties in Maine; the teachers involved work with grades 5–8, teach various STEM subjects, and have different levels of comfort and experience with science. Over the two years this community has been running, Debra’s role has evolved into one where she, rather than the supporting external organization (GMRI), is seen as the primary contact.

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way they run. When asked by another GMRI RTC teacher leader what she had done to build the community’s confidence in her leadership, Debra said she “made herself vulnerable” to her group by making it clear that she is not an expert and is a learner like them. This vulnerability involves more than just saying that she does not know all the answers: Debra uses her own successes, challenges, interests, and questions as a teacher as the starting point for reflection on practice by her RTC, creating a space for sharing and group learning that is generative, innovative, and fun. Like Bonnie, Debra’s strength as a leader is focused more on her knowledge of how to work with other teachers rather than on knowledge of subject matter. Both Debra and Bonnie also have strong subject knowledge and pedagogical knowledge, but the distinctive characteristic of their leadership is their skill in supporting learning and pedagogical risk taking in other teachers.

Erin Before Erin was asked to lead her RTC, she had worked for a number of years with GMRI, collaborating on curriculum development and supporting introductory institutes focused on engaging students as citizen scientists in GMRI’s Vital Signs program. Erin was a key source of inspiration for the model of GMRI’s RTC program. Through her experience with various professional development models and in doing authentic science, Erin felt that learning together with her colleagues had the most impact. She did not think that having a prescribed curriculum structure would change classroom instruction. When asked why she was excited to be a part of a regional teacher community Erin said, I believe a strong regional group will help build a case to administrations and other teachers that cookie-cutter science labs cannot be the cornerstone of our instruction.

The country needs scientists, and we, as teachers, have a captive audience of very capable scientists. We can support each other in forming collaboratives and getting over the hurdles we all will face (from classroom management techniques to reluctant curriculum coordinators).

She has said many times that she misses having a team of science teachers to bounce ideas around with— something many rural teachers echo. Not only has this community been a way for her to connect with other teachers in her field, but her intellect, insight, experience, and drive inspire her fellow RTC members to try new things and deepen their science investigations. Erin 49

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chose to champion the online forum that connects this community in between formal meetings and has succeeded in increasing use of the forum. Fellow teachers have visited her classroom, emailed back and forth with questions; they see her as a leader and as a collaborator. She so badly wanted a professional community to engage that when the opportunity presented itself, she embraced it.

DISCUSSION

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LEADERSHIP IDENTITY AND LEGITIMACY

here are a number of features that emerge from looking across these cases.

• In each case, the teacher depended on support from the school principal and others in the administrative hierarchy. Two of the cases demonstrate that if such support is missing, some teacher leaders will wait for a change in administration rather than acting without support.

• In none of these cases did the innovation or improvement begin with the school administrators. It was the teacher, working in collaboration with an organization outside the school district, who decided to work toward improvements in the school or region.

• These teacher leaders took on their leadership roles in conjunction with a focus on larger goals. The larger goals involved matters such as changing the culture of students in a school, stimulating growth of a more collaborative culture in a school, stimulating a regional shift away from cookie-cutter science labs, and creating structures to make rural students aware of a broader range of opportunities. Although these goals were consistent with the objectives of the RiSE Center and GMRI programs, they were also different, reaching beyond immediate programmatic objectives to reflect the deeper concerns and beliefs of the individual teacher leaders.

• From the standpoint of the RiSE Center and GMRI, the investment in each of these teachers resulted in more than improvement in the teacher’s own classroom. By supporting development of teacher leadership within each of these individuals, the RiSE Center, GMRI, and these teachers achieved impact within entire schools and in some cases across multiple schools.

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In reflecting on these cases and on our experience with other teachers in these programs and others, we suggest that that there are four important elements that organizations outside the schools should focus on if they seek to develop teacher leadership capacity to support instructional improvement: (1) leadership identity and legitimacy, (2) leadership development opportunities, (3) a supportive community of practice, and (4) reflection on leadership as a practice.

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uccessful leadership depends on legitimacy in the eyes of the influenced. In Foucault’s (1982) framing of power relationships, power and the ability to influence others depend on differentiation. In highly hierarchical settings such as the military, differentiation is conferred in terms of rank and signified through titles, special insignia, and other means. School systems often use similar means to establish and reinforce differentiation, conferring special titles, the authority to make decisions and judgments, reserved parking spots, and other systems that distinguish intended leaders from intended followers. However, as is amply evidenced in research on teacher leadership (see for example, Donaldson et al. 2008; Little 1988), administratively assigned teacher leadership positions do not automatically translate into legitimacy in the eyes of other teachers, where the professional culture has strong traditions of teacher autonomy, egalitarian relationships among colleagues, and a tradition of legitimacy earned through seniority.

Outside organizations that might wish to recruit the teachers who come from within this same culture often have to convince teachers that there is a rationale that supports their taking on a leadership role. Both the RiSE Center and GMRI have found that offering an invitation to lead is a powerful first step in that process: the confidence that the RiSE Center, GMRI, or some other organization expresses in the teacher’s potential as a leader can help in answering the important questions of “Why me?” and “What can I do?” This counters the concern expressed by some potential teacher leaders that they are just a teacher, not a leader.

Once prospective teacher leaders give themselves permission to think about taking on leadership roles, it is important to help them develop conceptions of leadership that are consistent with their personalities and

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strengths. Professional development focused on leadership identity can be helpful towards this end. For example, the RiSE Center helped teachers realize that there is not just one approach to leading by engaging them in an icebreaker activity that involved choosing a quadrant, marked out on the floor, to stand in. One side of the two-by-two square distinguished between people who are more comfortable asking other people to do things and those who prefer to tell others what to do.

The other dimension distinguished between those who focus on getting tasks done and those who are more interested in people. After the teachers sorted themselves in quadrants, they talked about the strengths and weaknesses of their preferred approach to collaboration. This was followed by a discussion about the kinds of leadership that could be associated with each quadrant and a broader conversation about each participant’s own conceptions of leadership. The goal of this activity and others like it was to break down overly narrow conceptions of leadership that might constrain the teachers’ sense of leadership possibilities.

Beyond the important work of helping teachers learn to conceive of themselves as leaders, there is, of course, the matter of establishing legitimacy as a leader with other teachers. This is where Foucault’s observation about the importance of differentiation comes into play.

The cases we present here suggest that the particulars of differentiation are personal and vary greatly from teacher to teacher, but generally involve recognizing and then projecting a competence that, when shared, can modify “the field of possible actions” for other teachers.

For Anita, that competence involved use of productive talk. For Bonnie, it was the ability to facilitate learning in groups of colleagues. In Caroline’s and Erin’s cases, it grew out of subject matter knowledge and pedagogical expertise. In Debra’s case, it was the ability to use her own teaching experiences, both the successful ones and the others, as the basis for reflection and inquiry among colleagues. Organizations seeking to help teachers develop their leadership skills need to help them find their special skill, style of leadership, and basis for differentiation. To do that, the organizations must provide opportunities to practice leadership.

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITIES

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eople learn to lead by leading. Both the RiSE Center and GMRI provided opportunities for new teacher leaders to take on leadership roles where the

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risk (and cost) of failure is manageable. The RiSE Center did this by engaging teachers in leadership roles within the MainePSP itself, leading task forces, project workshops, collaborations with faculty, and other activities. In these settings, program staff could fill in if the new teacher leaders ran into difficulty, and if something did go wrong, the effects would be contained within the MainePSP program rather than affecting teachers and administrators in the teacher’s home school. It was only after the teachers had opportunities to practice leadership in a relatively safe space that the RiSE Center asked teachers to propose and implement leadership work back in their own schools. Similarly, GMRI staff provide significant support for teachers as they begin leading RTCs, which like the MainePSP, is a structure that exists outside of school and therefore poses a lower professional risk. RTC leaders begin by codesigning their community meetings and agendas in collaboration with GMRI education staff. Once RTC leaders have developed confidence and momentum, they will begin leading independently, planning and running gatherings, and setting the learning agenda for and with their community of teachers.

Leadership is difficult work.

Followers are free to not follow.

SUPPORTIVE COMMUNITY

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eadership is difficult work. Followers are free to not follow. Bringing teacher leaders together as a community helps them work through the almost inevitable crises of confidence inherent in learning new skills and unlocks the opportunity to learn from each other’s experiences. Both the RiSE Center and GMRI’s RTC program provide supportive communities in which teachers can practice and develop as leaders. The RiSE Center uses a cohort structure to ensure that teachers can work with others at the same stage of development, while leaving open the opportunity for meetings across cohorts so that less experienced leaders can learn from those with more experience. GMRI’s RTC program 51

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creates opportunities for the teacher leaders of different RTCs to meet and share ideas of how to expand their roles as leaders in their individual RTCs. Observation of teacher leaders working with the RiSE Center over a number of years suggests that providing teacher leaders with a support community can sometimes serve an additional, important purpose. As already noted, opportunities for teacher leaders to work effectively in their schools depend on the presence of a supportive administration. Turnover at the administrative level is frequent in many schools. If a supportive administrator is replaced by an unsupportive one, opportunities for the kind of leadership described here diminish.

As a colleague who spent years working on a statewide improvement initiative put it, one could almost see the lights blink out in a school when an unsupportive administrator took over. Support communities outside the school provide a place that helps keep the light burning. When the unsupportive administrator moves on, this support of the teacher leader during the interim gives the school a way to relight the change process.

REFLECTION ON LEADERSHIP AS A PRACTICE

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lthough leadership is learned by doing, learning only by doing is slow work that does not take advantage of what researchers and practitioners understand about the practice of leadership. It is not enough for teacher leaders just to talk about the difficulties associated with a particular workshop they are leading or difficulties with teachers’ misconceptions. They also need to reflect on the practice of leadership itself, so they have the opportunity to increase their own capacity as leadership practitioners.

Both the RiSE Center and GMRI support this kind of reflection by employing staff members who facilitate meetings and ensure that the teacher leaders are thinking in broader terms about leadership. In addition, the RiSE Center has involved teacher leaders in training in particular leadership skills, such as working productively with colleagues and superiors in settings where tensions and emotions can run high because the stakes are high and where there are potential differences in viewpoint on facts and objectives. The idea is that these leaders will be most effective in leading toward desired changes when they can work productively with others who may have different perspectives and concerns. GMRI’s RTC program practice of bringing teacher leaders together is

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designed to support similar reflection on leadership among regional leaders who may vary in style and desired outcomes of their leadership.

SUMMARY AND IMPLICATIONS

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everal purposes motivated our writing this paper.

One was simply to remind people working in and with schools that leadership by teachers who are working under the direction of school administrators toward objectives set by administrators is not the only kind of teacher leadership. Administratively directed teacher leadership will often be the primary means by which teachers support improvement, but teacher leadership supported from outside the school can play a complementary role. School administrators can benefit by recognizing and building upon this second source of leadership in support of change; a few of the cases presented here are evidence that some administrators recognize and act on that opportunity.

A second purpose was to contribute to understanding of how teacher leadership works. This paper documents some of the means by which this group of teacher leaders has established effective leadership roles and developed support from administrators and takes initial steps toward providing a theoretical framework to support such inquiry. There is much more work that can be done to develop a more complete understanding of how this kind of teacher leadership works and how to support its development.

The third purpose, which we see as the primary goal of this paper, is to encourage organizations that seek to improve teaching and learning within schools to consider teacher leadership development as a key element within their professional development programs. Many such organizations provide professional development in support of improved subject matter knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, use of technology, and other improvements focused on the classroom. Many of these organizations also understand that a theory of change that depends on working directly with each teacher is not scalable. Our conversations with colleagues suggest that there is at least an implicit, and sometimes an explicit, assumption that if they help one teacher in a school develop new competence or ways of engaging students, the improvement will spread to others in the school.

Our experience is that this kind of diffusion of innovation can happen, but it is rare and it takes a lot of

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work on the part of the individual teacher. This paper outlines some the reasons why this is so: teacher leadership in support of change is hard work that requires support and recognition that teacher leadership is a practice in itself. It is our hope that this paper will encourage other organizations that offer professional development for teachers to consider the practice of leadership as another important part of teacher development. Further, we hope that the ideas offered here about key supports for teacher leaders will be useful as other organizations design their own teacher leadership development programs. -

Smylie, Mark A., and Jack W. Denny. 1990. “Teacher Leadership: Tensions and Ambiguities in Organizational Perspective.” Educational Administration Quarterly 26(3): 235–259. doi.org/10.1177/0013161X90026003003 Spillane, James P., and Megan Hopkins. 2013. “Organizing for Instruction in Education Systems and School Organizations: How the Subject Matters.” Journal of Curriculum Studies 45(6): 721–747. doi.org/10.1080/00220272.2013.810783 York-Barr, Jennifer, and Karen Duke. 2004. “What Do We Know about Teacher Leadership? Findings from Two Decades of Scholarship.” Review of Educational Research 74(3): 255–316. doi.org/10.3102/00346543074003255

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grants No. DRL 0962805 and DUE 1557320, the NOAA Bay Watershed Education and Training (B-WET) program, the William Randolph Hearst Foundation, the Betterment Fund, the Birch Cove Fund of the Maine Community Fund, and the Kay E. Dopp Fund of the Maine Community Foundation. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of program funders.

REFERENCES Coburn, Cynthia E., and Sarah L. Woulfin. 2012. “Reading Coaches and the Relationship Between Policy and Practice.” Reading Research Quarterly 47(1): 5–30.

Donaldson, Morgaen L., Susan M. Johnson, Cheryl L. Kirkpatrick, Will Marinell, Jennifer L. Steele, and Stacy A. Szczesiul. 2008. “Angling for Access, Bartering for Change: How Second-Stage Teachers Experience Differentiated Roles in Schools.” Teachers College Record 110(5): 1088–1114.

Foucault, Michel. 1982. “The Subject and Power.” Critical Inquiry 8(4): 777–795.

Little, Judith W. 1988. “Assessing the Prospects for Teacher Leadership.” In Building a Professional Culture in Schools, edited by A. Lieberman, 78–106. New York: Teachers College Press.

Little, Judith W. 2003. “Constructions of Teacher Leadership in Three Periods of Policy and Reform Activism.”

School Leadership and Management 23(4): 401–419. doi.org/10.1080/1363243032000150944 Michaels, Sarah, Richard Sohmer, and Mary Catherine O’Connor. 2006. “Discourse in the Classroom.” In Sociolinguistics: An International Handbook of the Science of Language and Society, edited by U. Ammon, N. Dittmar, K. Mattheier, and P. Trudgill, 2351–2356.

Berlin: de Gruyter.

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Bill Zoellick works with teachers, schools, and scientists to provide students with opportunities to engage in authentic scientific work. His research includes the study of how teacher leadership and agency emerge as key components in support innovative approaches to student learning.

Zoellick serves as the education research director for the Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park.

Molly Auclair is the professional development coordinator with the Gulf of Maine Research Institute’s Vital Signs program. She works closely with communities of teachers across the state that are focused on engaging their students in more authentic science investigations.

Sarah Kirn is the education programs strategist at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, where she designed and developed the Vital Signs citizen science program. In her current role, she oversees development of GMRI’s next generation of tools to support citizen science investigations and data analysis in the Gulf of Maine bioregion. She serves on the board of the Citizen Science Association.

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INVESTING IN TEACHERS’ LEADERSHIP CAPACITY

Investing in Teachers’ Leadership Capacity: A Model from STEM Education

by Susan R. McKay, Laura A. Millay, Erika Allison, Elizabeth ByersSmall, Michael C. Wittmann, Mickie Flores, Jim Fratini, Bob Kumpa, Cynthia Lambert, Laura Matthews, Eric Pandiscio, and Michelle K. Smith

The RiSE Center has been conducting professional learning Teachers play a key role in the quality of education provided to students. The Maine programs for STEM teachers since 2010, funded primarily by over $18 Center for Research in STEM Education (RiSE Center) at the University of Maine has million in National Science worked with partners to design, implement, and evaluate several programs in the past Foundation (NSF) funds. The initial eight years to provide professional learning opportunities and support for Maine’s STEM focus was on the selection of highteachers, leading to significant impacts for teachers and students across the state. quality instructional materials for A strategic investment in developing teacher leadership capacity played a key role in middle school and ninth grade physexpanding the initial partnership to include teachers and school districts across the ical and earth sciences and on the state. With support from education researchers and staff at the RiSE Center, STEM implementation of a professional teachers have taken on roles as leaders of professional learning opportunities for peers learning program to support and as decision makers in a statewide professional community for improving STEM teachers in using those materials in education. This article describes the structures that have fostered teacher leadership the classroom. From 2013 to 2016, and how those structures emerged through partnership and collaboration, the ways in Maine Department of Education which teacher leadership has amplified the resources we have been able to provide to funding supported an expansion of RiSE Center professional developSTEM teachers across the state, and the outcomes for Maine students. ment from middle and high school science teachers to elementary school teachers. Additional funding OVERVIEW from NSF supported involvement of high school science and mathematics teachers and increased supports he Maine Center for Research in STEM Education for preservice science and mathematics teacher prepara(RiSE Center) at the University of Maine has tion. These partnerships had profound impacts on developed a statewide partnership to improve the STEM outcomes for Maine students in elementary, quality of science, technology, engineering, and mathmiddle, and high school as well as in undergraduate ematics (STEM) education for all Maine students education and preservice teacher preparation at the using research-supported practices. Education research University of Maine. Furthermore, this work has been has shown that the teacher is a primary factor in the disseminated to a national and international community quality of education provided to students—second only of educators and education researchers (Alvarado et al. to the quality of educational leadership in the school 2016; Barth-Cohen et al. 2016; Shemwell, Avargil, and (Leithwood et al. 2004). In an environment of changing Capps 2015; Wittmann, Alvarado, and Millay 2017). standards, teachers need ongoing professional learning Even though the major grant funding has concluded, opportunities to keep up with changes in recommenschool districts and the University of Maine continue to dations and expectations. Further, in our rural state, support a statewide community to improve STEM STEM teachers often teach multiple subject areas education, the Maine STEM Partnership at the RiSE including ones that are outside their fields of expertise Center, comprised of teachers, university faculty, educa(Millay 2018). tion researchers, administrators, and preservice teachers.

Abstract

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In our work over the past eight years, many members of our community have emerged as leaders and have collectively advanced development of a vibrant, multifaceted professional community that is strengthened by diverse expertise. Diversifying leadership has played a strategic role in supporting innovation, expansion, and sustainability in our work. A full description of this development is beyond the scope of this paper; here, we focus primarily on the development of our teacher leadership programs to show how increased opportunities for teacher leadership led to growth and sustainability in our programming. We seek to describe (1) structures that have fostered teacher leadership and how those structures emerged through partnership and collaboration, (2) ways in which teacher leadership has amplified the resources we have been able to provide to STEM teachers across the state, and (3) outcomes for Maine students.

Education researchers and policy experts regularly advocate for development of teacher leadership capacity to achieve multiple goals. One model of teacher leadership involves preparing teachers to take on administrative roles or to enable them to better support school administrators in implementing programs (Mette, Fairman, and Terzi 2017). In this model, leadership roles are conferred within a hierarchical structure. A second model of teacher leadership focuses on increasing teachers’ capacities as facilitators of learning and as advocates for education within their schools, districts, and larger communities (Childs-Bowen, Moller, and Scrivner 2000). The RiSE Center focuses on this second model in part because our initial focus was on developing a professional community in which teachers, faculty, and administrators all have a significant voice as decision makers in matters related to curriculum, instruction, assessment, and professional learning.

Calling on teachers to contribute significantly to these types of decisions collectively leads teachers to feel empowered and encourages a leadership model in which veteran teachers support the teachers who are new to our projects. The new participants include preservice teachers who are students in the University of Maine’s Master of Science in Teaching (MST) Program and undergraduate College of Education and Human Development programs.

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our model of distributed leadership is that teacher leaders are members of teams that are comprised of other professionals who bring additional expertise and experiences. This distributed-leadership model is a key element contributing to success in our programs.

IMPACTS ON STEM EDUCATION IN MAINE

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he work of the RiSE Center has had far-reaching impacts on Maine’s PK–12 STEM teachers and students over the past eight years. Although attributing outcomes to inputs is challenging in education research, we have found evidence of growth, some of which is documented in our program evaluations (Inverness Research 2016a; Zoellick and Millay 2016). Here, we highlight a few examples that showcase the impacts of teacher leadership.

Maine Physical Sciences Partnership Our first major project, the Maine Physical Sciences Partnership (MainePSP, 2010–2017) was funded by NSF and invested $14.4 million in improving STEM education in Maine. Initially, the project used many of these resources toward impacts in grades 6–9 instruction in the physical sciences, recognizing how critical the transition from middle school to high school is for many students. The development of STEM teacher leadership was initiated and initially funded by the MainePSP. In addition, the MainePSP’s professional community and models for professional learning have been refined and carried forward.

Figure 1 shows resources of the MainePSP (left side) that led to changes in PK–12 STEM education across the state (right side). Significant resources of the MainePSP included a variety of targeted professional learning opportunities supported by grant funding, including staff and faculty salaries, stipends for teacher participants, support for meetings and events, and rigorous instructional resources for classrooms. Grant funds were invested in ways that built a vibrant professional community focused on evidence-based improvement of STEM education. This community values the diverse expertise brought by education researchers, faculty, teachers, project staff, and preservice teachers.

The impacts to teachers of this professional experience included gains in content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge (Shulman 1986), improvements in confidence for teaching STEM, increased collaboration with colleagues, growth as 55

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Figure 1:

Resources Invested by the MainePSP and Their Impacts

Opportunities for Professional Learning within a Community of STEM Education Professionals

Shared Use of Rigorous Instructional Materials for Teaching Science

Teachers Strengthen Knowledge and Classroom Practices

Professional Growth for Teachers

Resources Education Research and Evidence-Guided Improvement

Professional Community Expands

Teacher Leadership Academy and Supported Leadership Opportunities

Improvements in STEM Achievement and Attitudes for Students

Teachers Take on New Leadership Roles

leaders, and changes in classroom practices (Inverness classrooms. Research conducted by Zoellick (for Research 2016a). Measurable impacts to students further discussion see Zoellick et al., this issue) included strengthened achievement and attitudes describes some of these roles and provides case studies toward STEM. For example, student achievement on of the transformation of teachers through the leaderthe eighth grade Maine Educational Assessment (MEA) ship program. As one teacher stated, for Science improved in schools that collaborated with I didn’t see myself as a leader going in and they helped me the RiSE Center through the MainePSP (see Figure 2). see the skills I have to be a leader and how I can put those In addition, interest in science careers increased for skills to use. It’s given me the confidence to say the things middle school students receiving two years of vertically I might not have said before and to meet with people aligned physical sciences instruction through the and have important conversations in a productive way.

MainePSP. Notably, 12 percent more students expressed (Inverness Research 2016b: 5) interest in a science career at the end of middle school compared to at the start, even though interest in science careers typically decreases through the middle school Maine Elementary Sciences Partnership years (Osborne, Simon, and Collins 2003). As indiTeacher leaders expanded the capacity of the cated in Figure 1, these changes can be attributed to a professional community facilitated by the RiSE Center. multipronged effort and a significant investment of Some of these teacher leaders took on key roles in the resources from multiple sources.

The MainePSP fostered Figure 2: Percentage of Students Meeting/Exceeding Proficiency teacher leadership through a

on the Grade 8 MEA for Science, RiSE Partner Schools variety of strategic decisions and

Compared to NonPartner Schools, 2009–2014 formal structures designed to involve teachers in making improvements to STEM educaInitial RiSE Partner Schools (N-24) 85% tion. Notably, a formal program NonPartner Schools (N-158) has provided opportunities for 62 teachers to develop and practice 75% leadership skills. Research and evaluation of this program revealed that participating teachers have taken on leadership 65% 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 roles that extend beyond their (PRE PSP) (Task Force) (Pilot Year) (Year 2) (Year 3) (Year 4) MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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Teachers

Districts Begin Paying to Participate

Figure 3: Teachers Participating in RiSE STEM Professional Development subsequent major grant and PK–12 Students Affected, 2011–2017 funded project of the RiSE Center, the Maine 1,200 36,000 Elementary Sciences Partnership (MaineESP, Teachers 2013–2016), funded Students by $1.7 million from the Maine Department of Education. To maxi18,000 600 mize project resources, the MaineESP provided direct learning opportunities facilitated by faculty, staff, and teachers to a group of 0 0 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 147 elementary school Year teachers. These 147 teachers were then supported in developing study groups that provided professional learning than six times as many teachers were able to participate opportunities to 1,285 teachers across the state. in professional learning opportunities. This number This distributed leadership model affected between increased to over 1,000 teachers through investments 10,500 and 18,500 students each year of the project, at from both the MainePSP and MaineESP in 2014, then a cost of less than $42 per student per year. Maine dipped in 2015 as the partnership began requiring that currently spends an average of $11,330 per student per participating districts pay part of the cost. In 2016 and year for education (MDOE 2015).

2017, the numbers of participating teachers increased, even as grant funding was significantly reduced and Maine STEM Partnership district payments continued to be required. Figure 3 The RiSE Center further refined this highly costalso shows the number of PK–12 students taught by effective model in 2016 when the major grant funding teachers actively involved in RiSE Center professional for the work ended and the MainePSP and MaineESP development. The map in Figure 4 shows growth in communities were combined to form the Maine STEM district membership.

Partnership. In the current model for some of the RiSE We have evidence that this model of statewide Center’s professional learning communities, a group of professional learning can be successful in positively 12 teacher leaders receives direct support from faculty affecting Maine students. The final evaluation for the and staff at the RiSE Center to lead professional MaineESP found positive impacts to grade 5 students’ learning for 90 colleagues, who then organize study MEA science test scores and attitudes toward STEM groups for an additional 600 teachers around the state. and STEM careers (Zoellick and Millay 2016). For These investments in leadership have allowed the RiSE example, 69 percent of students whose teachers particiCenter to provide high-quality professional learning pated in the MaineESP tested proficient or above on the opportunities for a large number of Maine’s STEM MEA science test, and 32 percent expressed interest in a teachers, even as the available resources have decreased. science career. In comparison, 64 percent of students Figure 3 shows the number of teachers participating in whose teachers did not participate tested proficient or the RiSE Center’s professional development from 2011 above on the MEA Science Achievement test, and 28 to 2017. In 2011 and 2012, fewer than 100 teachers percent expressed interest in a science career. The signifreceived intensive professional learning experiences at icance threshold for chi-squared testing of indepenthe RiSE Center. In 2013, through investments in dence was set at p<.05, and these differences are teacher leadership and use of teacher leaders to lead statistically significant. professional learning experiences for colleagues, more

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The RiSE Center’s School District Partners,

by Year of Entry

Figure 4:

2011-2012 2012-2013

2011–2012 2013-2014 2012–2013 2014-2015 2013–2014 2015-2016 2014–2015 2016-2017 2015–2016 2016–2017

0

12.5

25

50

75 Miles

KEY STRUCTURES SUPPORTING GROWTH FOR TEACHER LEADERS

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he history of teacher leadership at the RiSE Center involves structural decisions made about our reform projects and the transition to focused leadership

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programming and roles within our professional community. Through these structures, teachers have taken on new leadership roles within our projects and have gained skills and expertise in leadership.

The RiSE Center’s teacher leadership programs began with the MainePSP. The initial goal of this partnership between the University of Maine and 26 participating school districts was to improve the quality of grades 6–9 physical science instruction by selecting and implementing rigorous science instructional materials. Using grant funds, MainePSP purchased science materials so that they could be provided to schools free of cost, and MainePSP provided extensive and ongoing STEM professional learning opportunities that focused on implementation of the science program. In addition, the partnership sought to build a professional community among science teachers in the state that crossed school and district boundaries and connected teachers with faculty at the University of Maine, as well as with other community partners and stakeholders such as the Schoodic Institute.

Several key choices shaped the early years of our professional community, laying groundwork for science teachers to work with faculty and administrators to make decisions that would directly influence and advance their own classroom practices. An underlying philosophy of the project was to focus on investing in and supporting teachers as a strategy for building capacity to improve education in Maine. School administrators were involved with University of Maine faculty in the early development and grantwriting phase and supported a working model that included direct partnership between university faculty and science teachers. Given the rural setting of the early adopters of the MainePSP, many science teachers had great autonomy in their schools, and the building administrators were often happy to have them involved in a project that provided colleagues and resources. In addition, university faculty who were the initial leaders of the MainePSP hosted many early events at schools rather than at the University of Maine, to emphasize that the work was school centered, not university centered and to put faculty and teachers on more equal footing.

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Collaborative Selection of Science Instructional Materials

As work began in 2010 to select physical sciences instructional resources for use in grades 6–8, the RiSE Center involved middle and high school teachers, school administrators, and University of Maine postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, faculty, and staff. These task force members collaborated on the development and implementation of an evidence-guided process for selecting science instructional materials and used an evaluation protocol adapted from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (Roseman, Kesidou, and Stern 1997). The decisions made regarding materials selection and the reasoning behind those decisions formed the basis for subsequent years of targeted professional learning and evidence-guided improvements. The 28 members of the original task force, 20 of whom were teachers, became ambassadors to the larger community in communicating about the goals, priorities, and methods that task force members had negotiated. In addition, members of the first task force became leaders and facilitators of later task forces.

Since the first task force, the RiSE Center has facilitated four additional task forces to review and select instructional resources, and a fifth task force process is ongoing. In 2011, a second task force selected instructional resources for grade 9 instruction. In 2013, middle and high school teachers who had participated in the early processes worked with faculty and staff to guide a task force to select instructional materials for grades PK–5. In 2017, a fourth task force revisited the physical sciences materials selected for middle school and grade 9 and reviewed middle school life sciences materials.

Currently, a task force is reviewing new materials for elementary sciences instruction.

Through the process, teachers have collaborated with other members of our professional community to review evidence, consider the needs of students and teachers, consider standards and goals of instruction, and make key decisions for their own classrooms while making important recommendations to administrators and other teachers. These decisions are supported by the RiSE Center infrastructure that provides materials to schools at reasonable cost as well as ongoing support for implementation of the instructional resources.

Increasingly, these professional learning opportunities are facilitated through collaborations among teacher leaders and RiSE faculty, staff, and other partners. Prior

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to implementation, the community agrees upon assessments of student learning to use in determining the strengths and weaknesses of the instructional resources.

Data from these embedded assessments are collected and analyzed at the RiSE Center and guide the community’s ongoing improvements of the selected resources.

The diversity of perspectives brought by the members of each task force have strengthened the process and the collaborative work of the task forces has been foundational in building the Maine STEM Partnership.

Research faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and MST students from the RiSE Center bring expertise in the content, nature, and practice of the STEM disciplines; knowledge of literature and theory to guide improvements in education; an understanding of the frontiers of current academic knowledge about teaching and learning in the STEM disciplines; and practical experience from other research-guided improvement efforts. Teachers bring knowledge of schools, students, pedagogy, and the current on-the-ground reality of teaching and learning within their content areas. Preservice teachers bring content expertise from their previous education and, in some cases, diverse work experiences from previous positions in STEM, education, or other professional spheres.

Administrators bring perspectives on school and districtlevel priorities and challenges for student learning and vertical alignment of instruction.

A Collaborative Model for Professional Learning

RiSE Center professional learning experiences for teachers focus on building a diverse professional community while developing content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and specialized content knowledge to support inquiry-based and standards-aligned STEM teaching. University faculty, postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, staff, and teachers have all taken on roles as leaders of professional learning experiences, with sessions designed to meet community needs. Professional learning has been offered throughout the summer and school year, through a variety of structures and subcommunities. Ongoing evaluation and a culture of iterative improvement has supported growth and responsiveness to changes in the needs of the professional community.

Intensive Teacher Leadership Academies In addition to fostering professional collaborations that provide leadership opportunities, the RiSE Center runs a formal program to prepare and support teacher

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leaders. Development of the Leadership Academy in 2013 created an opportunity for teachers to participate in inquiry-based professional learning that was specifically focused on developing teacher leadership. Initially, 11 middle and high school STEM teachers began attending extra meetings focused on leadership during the school year and summer. Members of the leadership academy were asked to contribute to decisions about the direction of the program, considering questions about how to best move forward in building their own leadership while also developing their classroom practices.

Members also worked on team building, reflected on leadership styles and on themselves as leaders, and developed leadership skills in communication and facilitating adult learning.

Toward the end of the first year, teachers in the leadership academy developed projects that would give them practical leadership experiences within the RiSE Center professional community. Teachers learned about writing proposals and applied for internal grants for projects that included facilitating the task force for selection of elementary science materials, leading a professional development study group for fellow teachers that focused on increasing the quality of productive talk in science classrooms, and leading a cross-district collaboration to support proficiency-based grading of students’ competency with science practices.

The cohort continued to meet throughout a second academic year to discuss the projects and support development of the skills that members were practicing throughout the year. Members of the initial leadership cohort have taken on key leadership roles within the professional community, and the projects they began have continued, resulting in new opportunities for the teaching community. For example, some members of the cohort took on roles as co-investigators and developers for new programs that received external grant funding, including the Elementary Sciences Partnership and an NSF Teaching Fellowship Program. Some members moved into roles as school administrators or staff members at the RiSE Center and have contributed to professional learning experiences and leadership development for teachers in these capacities. Other leaders have taken on roles in presenting at national and state conferences, facilitating professional development sessions for new teachers, and mentoring preservice teachers. Ongoing support from, and participation in, the professional community with opportunities to take on a variety of roles has been important for leadership MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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development, with teachers simultaneously participating as leaders and as learners in different aspects of the collective work of the community.

TEACHER LEADERSHIP AS AN ENGINE OF CHANGE

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he RiSE Center has strategically invested in teacher leadership to improve PK–12 STEM education.

Empowering teachers as codesigners and coleaders of professional learning opportunities for other teachers has been an effective and cost-efficient way to bring about change and professional growth. Increasingly, teacher leaders have also taken on roles as presenters at national and state conferences. Due to demand from school districts, the RiSE Center is currently in the process of supporting teacher leaders in becoming professional coaches and consultants for school districts throughout the state.

The RiSE Center has also included teachers’ voices in the formal decision-making processes of the Maine STEM Partnership. Teacher leaders participate in the governance structure of the Maine STEM Partnership, which includes a leadership team and a curriculum modification review board comprised of representatives from across the STEM education community. The leadership team meets monthly to make strategic decisions about partnership activities and direction. The curriculum modification review board makes decisions about proposed changes to the STEM instructional materials recommended and supported by the RiSE Center for use in PK–12 classrooms. This structure has led to an improvement community that includes teachers, researchers, and professional staff in the leadership that plans, designs, and implements learning opportunities, responding to the needs of teachers and students.

New grants and initiatives have provided opportunities for teacher leaders to support preparation and induction of preservice teachers, some of whom have already begun to join the professional community as new teachers. The RiSE Center received additional funding from a National Science Foundation grant in 2016 to support recruitment, retention, and induction of new STEM teachers. This funding supported development of a group of mentor teachers and coaches to support new and preservice STEM teachers. Teacher leaders also are involved in preservice teacher-preparation courses along with faculty and staff.

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VISION AND FUTURE NEEDS

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eachers are leaders by nature in their professional position. They lead a classroom of students every day. They lead the design and implementation of yearlong learning progressions for their students, and they play a leading role in each individual student’s growth and developmental journey. The question is not whether teachers are leaders; it is whether they identify and feel valued as leaders beyond their classrooms.

The RiSE Center’s work has provided leadership preparation and supported opportunities that prepare teachers to use their expertise to strengthen STEM education more broadly. It has brought teachers working toward educational improvement to the decision-making table, along with faculty, administrators, and researchers, with each participant having a respected voice. For many teachers, the invitation to be part of a leadership cohort provided a new and empowering way to look at themselves as part of a significant enterprise to improve STEM education. Being able to have this far-reaching impact, while remaining teachers rather than administrators, has been attractive to these individuals and powerful for the community. This leadership development has led teachers to assume the professional agency present in other professions, in which leading members of the profession have a voice in defining the standards, needs, and policies related to their work. By assuming these broader, outside-the-classroom roles, teachers move from a reactive to a proactive position, crucial for using their expertise to guide the improvement of education.

With over 260 teachers statewide who have successfully assumed leadership roles connected with the RiSE Center and a model to expand this leadership capacity among teachers, Maine now has a powerful teacher leadership network. This network, launched and nurtured through the NSF and Maine Department of Education investments, positions the state to become a leader in STEM education. Furthermore, this network can sustain the improvements in science education achieved through the initial grants and also expand to provide high-quality, affordable professional learning opportunities for teachers to reach all Maine students in science and in important additional content areas such as mathematics and computer science.

If Maine continues investing in this community, it can realize a vision of excellence as a national leader in STEM education and workforce development. The

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STEM disciplines, taught well, provide the communication skills, problem-solving abilities, teamwork practice, creativity, and critical-thinking development needed for innovation in the twenty-first-century workplace. With a tested, cost-effective model, we envision a state that provides an education that opens doors to the future for all students. Teacher leadership is an essential ingredient to this vision since it leads to the selection of high-quality instructional resources, targeted ongoing professional learning opportunities for teachers, evidence-guided continuing improvement in our educational system, and a supportive community for this change. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We would like to acknowledge support for this work from NSF DRL 0962805, NSF DUE 1340033, NSF DUE 1557320, and from Maine Department of Education contract numbers 20130724*0455, 20140818*0620, and 20150727*0365. We would also like to acknowledge contributions to our leadership work made by many members of our community: Helene Adams, Patricia Adams, Jason Baker, Katrina Black, Melanie Brown, Mitchell Bruce, Becky Carroll, Tom Coleman, Kathy Dixon-Wallace, Lauren Driscoll, Becky Allen Ducca, Amy Farmer, Andrew Ford, Brian Frank, Lauree Gott, Kirsten Gould, Beth Handley, Lynn Hanna, Michael Harris, Erin Hayes-Pontius, Beth Haynes, Travis Hall, Hillary Hoyt, Holly Humphrey, Keira Monahan Ithomitis, Kate Keefe, Johanna Klein, Melissa Lewis, Kelley Littlefield, Carla Magoon, Cheryl Marvinney, Michael Mason, Owen Maurais, John McKechnie, Bill McWeeny, Joanna Meyer, Elizabeth Muncey, Cynthia Nye, Susan O’Brien, Michelle Phillips, Taylor Pierce, Joshua Pietras, Maureen Raynes, Tracy Richardson, Heather Rockwell, Sheri Severance, Edie Sherman, Deborah Shulman, Lori Small, Patricia Smith, Jane Stackpole, MacKenzie Stetzer, Mark St. John, Amy Taylor, Joyce Tugel, Marina Van der Eb, Erin Vinson, and Bill Zoellick.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under the following grants: NSF DRL 0962805, NSF DUE 1340033, NSF DUE 1557320, and from Maine Department of Education contract numbers 20130724*0455, 20140818*0620, and 20150727*0365. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or of the Maine Department of Education.

REFERENCES Alvarado, Carolina, Michael C. Wittmann, Adam Z. Rogers, and Laura Millay. 2016. “Problematizing ‘Cold’ with K12 Science Teachers.” Paper presented at the Physics Education Research Conference 2016, Sacramento, CA, July 20–21. doi.org/10.1119/perc.2016.pr.003

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Barth-Cohen, Lauren A., Michelle K Smith, Daniel K. Capps, Justin D. Lewin, Jonathan T. Shemwell, and MacKenzie R. Stetzer. 2016. “What Are Middle School Students Talking about during Clicker Questions? Characterizing Small-Group Conversations Mediated by Classroom Response Systems.” Journal of Science Education and Technology 25(1): 50–61. doi.org/10.1007/s10956-0159576-2 Leithwood, Kenneth, Karen Seashore Louis, Stephen Anderson, and Kyla Wahlstrom. 2004. Review of Research: How Leadership Influences Student Learning. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement.

Inverness Research. 2016a. Maine Physical Sciences Partnership: Contributions to Students and Teachers.

Inverness, CA: Inverness Research.

Inverness Research. 2016b. Maine Physical Sciences Partnership: Building Teacher Leadership Capacity in Maine. Inverness, CA: Inverness Research.

MDOE (Maine Department of Education). 2015. Maine Resident Student Per Pupil Operating Costs. http://www.maine.gov/education/data/ppcosts /index.html [Accessed March 27, 2018] Mette, Ian M., Janet C. Fairman, and Seyma D. Terzi. 2017.

Strategies, Supports, and Supervision of Teacher Leaders and Development of Future School Leaders.

Orono: Maine Education Policy Research Institute, University of Maine.

Millay, Laura. 2018. Summary Report: Evidence of Need for Recruitment and Retention of Qualified Middle and High School Mathematics and Science Teachers in Rural Maine Districts. Orono, ME: RiSE Center.

Osborne, Jonathan, Shirley Simon, and Sue Collins.

2003. “Attitudes towards Science: A Review of the Literature and Its Implications.” International Journal of Science Education 25(9): 1049–1079. doi. org/10.1080/0950069032000032199 Roseman, Jo Ellen, Sofia Kesidou, and Luli Stern. 1997.

“Identifying Curriculum Materials for Science Literacy.

A Project 2061 Evaluation Tool.” Based on a paper prepared for the colloquium Using the National Science Education Standards to Guide the Evaluation, Selection, and Adaptation of Instructional Materials, National Research Council, November 10–12, 1996.

Shemwell, Jonathan T., Shirly Avargil, and Daniel K. Capps.

2015. “Grappling with Long-Term Learning in Science: A Qualitative Study of Teachers’ Views of Developmentally Oriented Instruction.” Journal of Research in Science Teaching 52(8): 1163–1187. doi.org/10.1002/tea.21239

Wittmann, Michael C, Carolina Alvarado, and Laura Millay.

2017. “Teacher Awareness of Problematic Facets of Meaningful Metaphors of Energy.” Latin American Journal of Physics Education 11(2): 2327-1–2327-8.

Zoellick, Bill, and Laura Millay. 2016. Maine Elementary Sciences Partnership: Final Year Evaluation and Overall Reflection. 10.13140/RG.2.2.27916.31368.

Zoellick, Bill, Molly Meserve Auclair, and Sarah L. Kirn. 2018.

“The Power of Invitation: Teacher Leaders as Agents of Change.” Maine Policy Review 27(1): 46–53.

Susan R. McKay is the founding director of the Maine Center for Research in STEM Education (RiSE Center) and a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Maine. She was the principal investigator for the grants discussed in this paper. Her research interests include strategies to engage all students in STEM learning and the development of cost-effective models to support STEM teachers.

Laura Millay has worked in her current capacity as research and evaluation coordinator at the University of Maine’s RiSE Center since 2014. She supports discipline-based and interdisciplinary STEM education research and conducts evaluations for programs to improve STEM education in PK–12 and university-level instruction.

Erika Allison currently works as member services director for 1Berkshire in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Erika was project director at the RiSE Center from 2011 to 2016. She left the corporate engineering world in 2008 to join the New York City Teaching Fellows and encourage more underrepresented youth to consider careers in STEM.

Shulman, Lee. 1986. “Those Who Understand: Knowledge Growth in Teaching.” Educational Researcher 15(2): 4–14. doi.org/http://www.jstor.org/stable/1175860

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Beth ByersSmall is the coordinator of the National Science Foundation Teaching Fellowship Program at the University of Maine’s RiSE Center. She has over 20 years of teaching experience at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. ByersSmall has also worked as an assessment developer for the Maine Mathematics and Science Alliance.

Michael C. Wittmann is a professor of physics at the University of Maine, a founding member of the RiSE Center and of the Physics Education Research Laboratory, and a Fellow of the American Physical Society. He was a coprincipal investigator on the NSF-funded Maine Physical Sciences Partnership. He conducts physics education research, teaches courses for physics students and preservice STEM teachers, and facilitates professional learning for teachers.

Mickie Flores, Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow and 2015 Hancock County Teacher of the Year, currently teaches grades 5–8 science and mathematics at Deer Isle-Stonington Elementary School in Deer Isle, Maine.

Jim Fratini is a middle school life and physical science teacher at Hermon Middle School in Hermon, Maine. He is also codirector of the Maine State Invention Convention.

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Bob Kumpa teaches grade 8 science at Brewer Community School in Brewer, Maine. He has taught middle school for the past 17 years and science for the past 14 years.

Cynthia Lambert is a National Board Certified STEM teacher at Trenton Elementary School in Trenton, Maine, and Mount Desert Elementary Schools in Northeast Harbor, Maine.

Eric Pandiscio is an associate professor of mathematics education at the University of Maine and a member of the RiSE Center.

He was a coprincipal investigator on the state-funded Maine Elementary Sciences Partnership.

Eric teaches mathematics education courses for current and prospective K–12 teachers. His research interests include proportional reasoning skills, analytic and synthetic geometric ideas, and inductive and deductive thinking.

Michelle Smith is an associate professor in the School of Biology and Ecology at the University of Maine, a member of the RiSE Center, and holds the Merrifield Professorship in Life Science Education. Her position was created through the Maine Physical Sciences Partnership.

Smith’s research focuses conceptual difficulties among biology students, factors that influence instructors’ decisions about teaching, and effective peer discussion.

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C O M M E N T A R Y

Hidden in Plain Sight: Making Maine’s Science Leadership Visible

by Kate Dickerson

L

eadership in science calls for a culture that supports science. But what happens when the population at large doesn’t know what is happening in the world of science? Science may be hidden from view especially when it takes place at educational institutions, nonprofit research laboratories, or businesses whose primary job is to do science, not market it. This concern is particularly relevant in Maine, where there are national and international leaders in their fields, but rarely public recognition of their work. How does Maine create a culture that pays attention to science and in which Maine’s students can see a future for themselves in these fields?

The lack of understanding about science opportunities in Maine has implications for both the present and the future. Policies we enact today may undercut the work of science leaders by not recognizing the impact of their research. For the future, young Mainers may not see the value of an education rooted in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM). And Maine may not be able to fill the growing number of STEM jobs. How do we correct this problem?

For science leadership in Maine to grow, we need to highlight and support the science leaders we currently have.

We need to expand the pool for the next generation of scientists and increase appreciation for the value of science, technology, and innovation in our state.

What I report here is an innovative strategy that shows great promise as a way to highlight Maine’s science leadership, to educate Mainers of all ages about Maine’s remarkable developments

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in science leadership, and to inspire both current and future generations of Maine’s science leaders by providing a space where they can talk about their work with the public.

The approach: a festival where attendees of all ages explore and celebrate the science happening in Maine.

Modeled on art or film festivals, the Maine Science Festival (MSF) provides the opportunity to hear from leading scientists, engineers, and innovators who work in Maine. These leaders talk about their work in an array of formats, including presentations, forums, workshops, films, exhibits, and hands-on activities, which fosters conversations with festivalgoers of all ages.

WHY SHOWCASE MAINE’S SCIENCE LEADERS

W

hile Maine has a higher percentage of high school graduates than the US average, the state has a lower percentage of citizens who graduate with either a four- or two-year degree than the US average. Although Maine is slightly ahead of the US average in STEM degrees/certificates awarded, most experts consider the numbers too low to meet future needs (ECS 2018). At the Maine Engineering Workforce Summit (September 29, 2016 in Augusta), Dana Connors of the Maine Chamber of Commerce noted there are four times as many job postings for engineers as there are students graduating with an engineering degree in Maine.

A further barrier may keep Maine students from studying STEM fields: lack of awareness of the variety of

science-based companies and organizations in Maine and the work that they do. For example, most Mainers are aware of the Jackson Laboratory (JAX), and think, “They are the mice producers.”

While true, that barely scratches the surface of the cutting-edge research at JAX, whose researchers are studying the pathways, background, and potential methods for curing everything from addiction to Alzheimer’s disease to cancer.

The Jackson Laboratory ranks among world leaders in genetics research, and its impact goes far beyond producing mice.

Educational and research institutions such as the University of Maine, University of New England, Husson University, Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, MDI Biological Laboratory, Schoodic Institute, and Gulf of Maine Research Institute play important roles in using science to understand the world. Maine science leaders also come from the many businesses that rely on STEM fields, including Idexx, GE Power, Eagre Games, Kennebec River Biosciences, Emera Maine, Baker Company, FMI, FMC, Corning, Inc., Redzone Wireless, Woodard & Curran, Cerahelix, Old Town Canoe, Pratt & Whitney, Backyard Farms, Alba-Technic, and Ocean’s Balance (to name just a few such companies that have been a part of the MSF).

There are Maine companies, large and small, that rely on Mainers’ knowledge and understanding of science, engineering, and innovation.

The importance of science-based leaders in Maine goes beyond understanding how the world works. Maine’s scientists and science-based businesses

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C O M M E N T A R Y also serve as an economic driver for the state. Recent developments in the areas of aquaculture (Cole, Langston, and Davis 2017), cross-laminated timber and start-up successes,1 combined with the continuing growth of established companies2 heighten the connection between strong science and engineering, as well as new industries and pathways for Maine.

MORE VISIBILITY FOR MAINE SCIENCE

O

ne way to highlight the science leadership we do have—for both students and the public—is to increase access to scientific knowledge outside formal school settings (Change the Equation 2012). The Maine Science Festival was designed to provide just such a program. The MSF weekend, launched in 2015, celebrates and explores Maine science, engineering, technology, and innovation. The festival spans four days over the third weekend of March (increasing to five days of events in 2019) and is held in Bangor.

At the MSF, we’ve created a new way to get the public interested in and excited about science, using events that are different from what people expect— talks in bars, workshops with artists and scientists working together, exhibits, and hands-on activities for all ages. To make Maine science, research, and innovation accessible to all Mainers regardless of income, festival events (other than the headliner) are available without charge.

MSF events provide festival attendees the opportunity to learn from researchers and practitioners about what they do in their labs or as part of their businesses.

We also have begun having MSF pop-up events—talks, presentations, film screenings—in different locations around the state throughout the rest of the year.

This allows us to maintain the focus on

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Maine science leaders and to encourage people to join us at the full MSF. The MSF has an established network of Maine-based partners representing many different scientific fields (https: / / w w w. m a i n e s c i e n c e f e s t i v a l . o r g /partners/). These partners include the organizations and people who make up Maine’s science leadership. With this approach, and our partnerships with arts organizations that have mastered the art of storytelling, the MSF connects scientific leaders with the public, so they can talk about Maine science.

CULTURE OF SCIENCE

O

ver the past four years, the MSF has become an important event for Maine science, a place where practitioners and supporters meet up, plan, celebrate, and explore new options for research, partnerships, and recruitment.

Just as important, the public has begun to recognize the value and importance of Maine’s scientists, innovators, and scientific enterprises. The MSF is especially important for festivalgoers from rural areas who are not as likely to have access to science-themed events.

The MSF highlights leaders in their fields, from up-and-coming to well-established researchers who are known worldwide. The festival provides an opportunity for Maine science leaders to meet with Maine leaders from other areas—policymakers, business leaders, and educators. For example, at a 2016 MSF event (5 Minute Genius), a scientist explained the work her company is doing to create a filtration system for immensely dirty water (think fracking).

Someone in the audience was inspired by the talk and became an investor in that company. Many collaborations have been created or fostered at the MSF, and these connections are paying

dividends for Maine’s place in the world and our basic understanding of the world around us.

We recognize that not every student in Maine will (or even should) end up being scientists or engineers. We also know that not every Mainer who has completed their formal education works in a science-based field. However, understanding the basics of science and engineering is vital to understanding how Maine can (and is) moving forward.

Ultimately, the MSF provides a forum for Maine’s scientific leaders—both people and organizations—to share their knowledge, expertise, and excitement with all of us. The MSF provides Mainers the opportunity to learn from, and be inspired by, the people who are the best in their fields. ENDNOTES 1 Several articles published in Mainebiz in 2018 highlight these successes: “Maine Company Unveils $250M Plan to Create Land-based Salmon Farm in Bucksport,” (http://www.mainebiz.biz /article/20180223/NEWS01/180229962 /maine-company-unveils-$250m-plan -to-create-land-based-salmon-farm-in -bucksport); “Cerahelix Secures $2 Million in Venture Capital Funding (http://www.mainebiz.biz/article /20180315/NEWS01/180319966 /cerahelix-secures-$2-million-in-venture -capital-funding); “SmartLam Becomes Second CLT Company to Locate in Maine.” (http://www.mainebiz.biz/article /20180216/NEWS01/180219957 /smartlam-becomes-second-clt -company-to-locate-in-maine).

2 For more about the success of some established Maine companies, see Anderson (2018), and the following press releases: http://www .forestsformainesfuture.org/fresh-from -the-woods-journal/sappi-westbrook -papermaking-on-the-fashion-frontier .html; https://www.idexx.com/en /about-idexx/news/idexx-laboratories -join-sp-500-index/

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C O M M E N T A R Y REFERENCES

COMMENTS FROM MSF ATTENDEES

Anderson, J. Craig. 2018. “Idexx Revenue Jumped by 11 Percent in 2017.”

Portland Press Herald (February 1). https://www.pressherald.com/2018/02 /01/idexx-revenue-jumped-by-11 -percent-in-2017/

Presenters • Jennifer Page, Hurricane Island: Individuals who may not have formerly seen themselves as interested in science walk away from MSF inspired to pursue new passions, ask new questions, and communicate the value of science as practitioners themselves.

Cole, Avery, Anne Langston, and Chris Davis. 2017. Maine Aquaculture Economic Impact Report. Orono: Aquaculture Research Institute, University of Maine. https://umaine .edu/aquaculture/wp-content/uploads /sites/134/2017/01/Aquaculture -Econ-Report.pdf

• Tom Bickford, Maine Robotics: The MSF is doing a great job of promoting science and giving us the opportunity to spend time with hundreds of visiting members of the public.

• Sharon Klein, University of Maine: Speaking at 5-minute Genius was a great experience—it pushed me to speak intelligibly, concisely, and quickly about my research to an audience with varied scientific backgrounds.

Change the Equation. 2012. Vital Signs: Reports on the Condition of STEM Learning in the U.S. Washington, DC: Change the Equation. http://www .education.rec.ri.cmu.edu/content /educators/research/files/Vital% 20Signs%20Lost%20Opportunity.pdf

• Anne Lichtenwalner, University of Maine: The MSF is also a two-way street; people often have intriguing narratives about wildlife or livestock in Maine that help inform us about emerging issues or educational outreach needs.

• Michael Burman, University of New England: The audiences are so enthusiastic. This is THE place to reach a general audience in Maine.

ECS (Education Commission of the States).

2018. Vital Signs Maine. Denver: ECS. http://vitalsigns.ecs.org/state/maine /demand

• Julie Peterson, University of New England: The MSF provided an opportunity to connect with the public and share social science research on implicit bias—a subject that has received much popular press, but not quite as much press on the actual psychological mechanisms responsible for these types of biases.

Kate Dickerson is the founder and director of the Maine Science Festival.

Prior to heading up the MSF, she worked in the energy and environmental field for more than 20 years, with positions in Rhode Island, Seattle, Washington, and most recently focusing on policy work. Kate is inspired daily by the work of Maine’s scientists, engineers, technologists, innovators, researchers, and students.

Festivalgoers • The 5 Minute Genius [event] is my favorite and I continue to be so amazed at all the wonderful stuff going on in Maine.

• The scope of this festival was far beyond what I could have even imagined. It was…the best weekend of [my daughter’s] life.

• After attending the MSF, I was amazed at the small and medium sized manufacturing businesses that rely on STEM graduate(s), both at a university level and at the community college level.

• We found one of the best things about the festival was that there were events for all ages.

• I just wanted to let you know how much my family enjoyed the festival. It was so much more than we had expected.

• We’ve come every year since you started, and it keeps getting better.

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LEADING BY EXAMPLE

C O M M E N T A R Y

Leading by Example

ADAPTIVE CHANGE

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by Yellow Light Breen, Jennifer Hutchins, and Marcia Sharp

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n January 2018, the board of directors of Lift360 voted to cease operations and transfer its programs to the Maine Development Foundation (MDF) and the Maine Association of Nonprofits (MANP). Lift360 was a 25-year-old organization with three well-regarded programs—the flagship Institute for Civic Leadership Intensive, Emerging Leaders, and Springboard—and more than 1,000 alumni. Nonetheless, Lift360 had difficulty responding to Portland’s changing marketplace and expanding its geographic footprint. Exploring how Lift360’s board reached its decision and what led to the transfer of collaborative programs provides valuable lessons.

MISSION OVER ORGANIZATION

ll three organizations stepped up to practice adaptive change. Leaders challenged themselves, their boards, and staff to embrace a change in plans and to imagine new solutions based on shared goals and aspirations. Lift360 did the seldom imaginable—it gave away its “children” to organizations that could better support and grow them. MANP stepped up to take on two programs that were clearly on mission, but not in its budget or plan, and which required the organization to refocus priorities on an enhanced vision for leadership development. MDF stepped up to offer the Leadership Intensive alongside its own Leadership Maine program, pursuing an opportunity to collaboratively apply best practices across programs, more clearly differentiate their curricula for participants and partners, and combine the impact of 1,100 Leadership Maine and 800 Leadership Intensive alumni.

TRUST AND TRANSPARENCY

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he Lift360 board put mission over organization. Through important difficult conversations, the board coalesced around its highest goal: to continue the programs by placing them together or separately to deliver the greatest value to the community, even if that meant closing the organization. The board sought partners that would honor Lift360’s central tenets of mission first, collaborative leadership, and community building, as well as commit to continuing opportunities for alumni engagement and statewide expansion. This approach— moving beyond a merger or ending the programs—was an exciting new option for the Lift360 board.

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ll three organizations committed to trust and transparency to prevent cultural and stylistic differences from threatening the collaboration. MDF’s strong roots in Maine’s corporate business community sometimes led to a different communication style that sent unintended signals. MANP’s nature as a nonprofit membership organization was more circumspect. Lift360’s devotion to its three programs produced overly high expectations for control of future program delivery. Navigating these cultural differences to collaborate on a fast timetable—while negotiating the details of transfers—called for a high degree of transparency and trust.

Maine’s future depends on individual and organizational leaders who can skillfully navigate the challenges and opportunities that naturally arise as organizations face accelerating change.

Ideally, this recent partnership serves as a useful example of making tough and creative choices, proceeding from trust, and staying focused on purpose. Yellow Light Breen’s passion is promoting economic and educational opportunity for all Mainers regardless of geography or background. He is CEO of the Maine Development Foundation, where he develops strategic direction, integration, and partnerships.

Jennifer Hutchins became the executive director of the Maine Association of Nonprofits in 2016. She has worked in the nonprofit sector for 25 years.

Marcia Sharp became chair of the Lift360 Board of Directors in 2017. Throughout her career, she has been particularly interested in how nonprofit and philanthropy organizations summon the will and vision to adapt to rapid change.

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Our Path: Empower Maine Women Network and Leadership

by Mufalo Chitam, Parivash Rohani, Laura de Does, Ghomri Rostampour, Oyinloluwa Fasehun, Bethany Smart, and Jan Morrill

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n 2016, Mufalo Chitam (now the executive director of the Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition) and Catherine Lee (founder of Justice for Women) created the Empower Maine Women Network, referred to as the Empower Network. Their goal was to address the isolation New Mainer women felt and to give women who have long called Maine their home the chance to interact with new members of their community.

The group meets regularly in Portland to connect New Mainers with nonimmigrant women so they can talk about the challenges they face and how to help each other overcome these challenges, as well as to highlight opportunities for engagement in the community. The meetings offer a special presentation featuring women speakers making a significant contribution to the Maine community.

On March 24, 2018, the women of the Empower Network sat down to discuss the concept of leadership and their definition of what makes a leader. They were asked to reflect on the idea of empowerment and specifically tie empowerment to kindness, suffrage, and tolerance. The following excerpts demonstrate how the Empower Network relates to their definition of leadership.

PARIVASH ROHANI, PORTLAND, ME

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n 1979, near the beginning of Islamic Revolution, I left Iran for India. My family’s home, along with 500 other Baha’i homes, was burned to the ground by extremist groups, and we became homeless overnight.

I had to leave everything I loved behind and uproot myself to a land of unknowns.

Now, as I reflect on that part of my life, I try to make sense of something that was senseless. I am reminded and convinced that God created men and leaders, and work done in the spirt of service is the highest form of worship. It was the force of courage that brought me here. What seemed like a very simple decision at the time became a turning point that

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changed my entire life. I have come to believe that sometimes big changes happen with small decisions.

Often grassroots leaders making seemingly small decisions have a huge impact on the lives of ordinary people. I define courage as any intentional change making a difference in someone’s life. True leaders view their role differently than most. The apex of leadership is when we empower others. Leaders are the ones who ensure that change is positive and unifying.

By accompanying the process of change, we develop our own community’s resources as we highlight each person’s talents and abilities. We need to remember that everyone’s well-being is connected and all impact is felt by the whole.

LAURA DE DOES, CUMBERLAND, ME

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attended my first Empower Network meeting looking for a way to meet more women in my community who are new to the United States. My husband and I adopted our son from Ethiopia 10 years ago, and it has always been important to me to develop relationships with others who share his culture. We now have a second son from an African nation, and the present state of our country saddens me. Although my sons were the impetus for joining the Empower Network, what I have gained from being part of the group is what keeps me passionate about connecting to other New Mainers.

I went to my first meeting with an open mind, unsure of what to expect or what I might contribute. I was gifted with the opportunity of meeting the most amazing women. There were women from five countries, and each of them has strength and warmth that continues to humble me. They are all leaders in their own right. They do not focus on themselves or on their own attributes, but on the positive qualities and strengths of the others in the group. I am honored to call these women my friends, and I know in the years and months ahead I have much to learn from them.

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I believe all women are leaders, and it is up to us to discover, and then follow, our path. This path will empower us to best use our strengths, not dwell on our weaknesses, and do our part to make our community and our world a safer, more inclusive place for ourselves, our children, and our neighbors.

GHOMRI ROSTAMPOUR, SOUTH PORTLAND, ME

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rowing up in Iran, I faced many challenges: my Kurdish ethnicity meant I wasn’t recognized as an Iranian citizen; being a female limited my ability to make contributions to society.

In my family, we didn’t have an easy life. We weren’t living so much as we were surviving. Most of the time we didn’t have enough food; we didn’t have electricity or running water; we often had to flee our homes to avoid being killed. When we fled in the winter and early spring, we were forced to cross rivers overflowing with icy water, and we had no life jackets or boats. We had no protection. As we crossed snowcapped mountains, we weren’t sure if we would to die of cold or hunger. We didn’t know if we would drown or be shot. The money and land that we had were useless, meaningless, when our lives were at stake. We had to leave everything behind in order to live.

I am the middle child of nine siblings, and I was the first in my family to attend university at a time when most people in our area did not send their daughters to school. My father’s decision to prioritize my education, especially during that time and in a traditional society, showed his leadership.

I had a difficult time in high school and college because of frequent bombings, some of which were chemical weapons. I lost many of my friends and family and even witnessed bombings firsthand. I’ve seen hundreds of injured people and the devastation of bombs dropped by both Saddam and the Iranian regime. To date, my only living brother and I still suffer from internal injuries. However, despite all this hardship and sorrow, I was able to continue working towards my master’s degree and became a school principal.

Politically, my family opposed the Iranian regime, and our guerilla fighters—the peshmerga—were in our homes, protecting us from threats from both sides.

Although we were financially stable, we were still in danger because the Iranian intelligence was after us.

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Every time we realized there was a new threat, we were forced to flee again.

We first ran to Turkey, before going to America.

Around this time, the Iranian regime took all of our belongings, our land, and kicked my elderly mother out of the house. I came to the United States in 1999, and despite the fact that I was struggling both physically and emotionally, I was still able to handle it all. I immediately went to work full time and back to school as I raised two children.

Since coming to United States, I have received my associate’s degree in computer technology, worked in the Portland public schools, first as an English learning language assistant teacher, then as a multilingual, multicultural parent specialist for the Kurdish, Iranian, and Afghan communities. While still raising two children, I went back to school and received my bachelor’s degree in computer technology. Most recently, I was hired as a computer technician where I have worked for 14 years.

This country has given me the inspiration and freedom to accomplish all that I am capable of. I have come such a long way, and am so grateful that I have managed to build a good life for my children and support my family. I often think about my dreams to be a Kurdish female activist and to advocate for humanity all over the world, in order to try to bring peace to the Middle Eastern societies and to speak out against the war.

OYINLOLUWA FASEHUN, PORTLAND, ME

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came to the United States in August of 2015 for a master’s program in New York City. I left the job I had in Nigeria because I was terribly devastated by the path my career was taking. I was very fortunate to be connected with a prospective classmate by a professor at my new school. This classmate took me into her home and treated me as though we had known each other for many years. Initially, I felt scared that I was going to be living with a total stranger who was different from me, including the color of my skin. However, living with her and her family was one of the best things that happened to me. Kindness and tolerance can come from anyone regardless of their religious beliefs, skin color, or political views.

While I was attending graduate school, things took a turn for worse back home, and the Nigerian currency crashed. Despite all that was going on, I made a decision to excel in my studies and to be the best version of 69

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myself. I sat for the bar exam and passed. My colleagues back home who were planning to further their studies sought my support and guidance, and I was able to help them to the best of my abilities.

Leadership is taking control of whatever situation you are given and making it into something positive.

Everyone has the ability to be a leader. When you pursue your goals in spite of the challenges you face, you are a leader. Regardless of the career path you decide to follow, you can be a leader by being the best version of yourself and doing exceptional things in your field, and in doing so, you become a source of inspiration to those coming up behind you. You build leadership when your life provides positive examples for others around you.

MUFALO CHITAM, SOUTH PORTLAND, ME

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n March 12, 2018, I stood in a room at the Maine State House in Augusta on behalf of my organization, the Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition (MIRC), to testify against a bill, LD 1833 “An Act to Facilitate Compliance with Federal Immigration Law by State and Local Government Entities.” My daughter Grace was home on spring break, and while it was a privilege to have her there in the room to witness the work I have been so passionate about for much of her young life, it was also heartbreaking.

Eighteen years ago, I met a young man in my African country of Zambia. He was on vacation, and we met just a couple months before my husband, my then 2-year-old daughter, and I were about to emigrate to America. His words to me were simple: “Please come to Portland, Maine. It is a safe place to raise your family and even though there are few immigrants, Mainers are very nice and welcoming.” If LD 1833 had passed, it would have changed not only this narrative, but also how my daughter feels about Maine, the only place she has called home.

That day I was upholding our humanity, a value my late father taught me at an early age, so that this bill would not make immigrants feel less welcome in Maine.

I have spent my whole life constantly looking for small opportunities and for connections to improve someone else’s tomorrow. My role as executive director of MIRC grew from working with immigrant women from diverse countries, ethnicities, and religions. Leadership is seen in suffrage, shown in courage, tolerance, and kindness, and is driven by strength.

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BETHANY SMART, PORTLAND, ME

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few months ago, I attended an Empower Network meeting for the first time. I had already been connecting with the asylum-seeking community through volunteer work in Portland; however, attending this meeting felt like a step outside of my comfort zone.

I wanted a place to connect with and support women leaders from various backgrounds, but I wondered if I would be welcomed or if they would question why I, a white woman with all the attached privilege, would be coming to their group.

I need not have worried. This was the most accepting group of women I’ve ever known. We laughed and cried, and three hours later I left, amazed by the collective spirit of the women and their willingness to open their circle. It was truly empowering. These women—my new friends from Iran, Sudan, Somalia and beyond—like me, have a passionate hope for the future. A future where we listen to one another’s ideas and dreams and ask, “What do you need to get there?”

Leadership can be defined in many ways, but often it requires taking a step outside of your comfort zone. I believe leadership is connecting, living intentionally, and intentionally supporting one another to build the future together in community. The Empower Maine Women Network is full of women taking different forms of leadership: grassroots leadership, wisdom, vision, and support. By leaving our comfort zone, we can lead authentically, creating connections that will lead our city and our world to its brightest possible future.

CONCLUSIONS

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hese reflections confirm leadership is a collective effort. It isn’t individuals’ efforts, talents, or skill sets.

Leadership is the ability to lift up others and unify them in action. As Ms. Rohani noted, “the apex of leadership is when we empower others.” All women are capable of becoming leaders if they are empowered to follow a path of leadership and if they are able to find support along the way.

Another common theme is the belief that leaders are able to persevere in the face of significant barriers.

According to Ms. Fasehun, “when you pursue your goals, in spite of the challenges you face, you are a leader.”

Leaders draw on their inner sense of courage and are able to overcome daunting obstacles in seemingly

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hopeless situations. They are able to step outside their comfort zone to advocate for what they believe in. In turn, they create community from a place of courage and strength.

The women from the Empower Network see leadership as inextricably linked to community. Leaders cannot exist alone, which means they have to be embedded in a broader group of people. In becoming leaders, they look beyond their own needs to find ways to support not only other individuals but also work towards building a sense of shared humanity and common good. Mufalo Chitam is of Zambian descent and was raised in Lusaka, Zambia, with five brothers and four sisters. Since coming to the United States in 2000, Chitam has worked for the University of Southern Maine, United Way of Greater Portland, National Multiple Sclerosis Society, National Kidney Foundation, Easter Seals Maine, American Red Cross and Granite Bay Care. Currently, she is the executive director of the Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition.

Parivash Rohani left Iran and fled to India in 1979 due to religious persecution. She arrived in the United States in 1986 and currently lives in Portland with her husband and children. Rohani is a ICU registered nurse and has been involved with many humanitarian, environmental, and interfaith projects.

Laura de Does was born and raised in Maine. She is a part-time radiology technician and full-time mother to three sons and “Mama Laura” to many other young New Mainers. Laura cares deeply about equality, the environment, and both human and animal rights.

She loves meeting New Mainers and making them feel welcome in their new home.

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Ghomri Rostampour, a Kurd born in Iran, has faced issues with her ethnicity and nationality. She moved to the United States with her husband in 1999. Rostampour has worked for the Portland Public Schools as an ELL assistant teacher, a multilingual multicultural parent specialist for the Kurdish, Iranian, and Afghan community, and a computer technician.

Oyinloluwa Fasehun is originally from Nigeria and came to the United States as a master’s student in 2015. She has a background in criminal, civil, corporate, and real estate law in Nigeria and did advocacy work related to housing recently in New York before coming to Maine. She is currently seeking career opportunities in the Greater Portland area.

Bethany Smart lives in North Yarmouth with her husband and their two teenage girls. She volunteers for Hope Acts/Hope House and Greater Portland Family Promise and coordinates mentors for New Mainers. Involvement with Empower Women Network has brought Smart many new friendships and community connections that empower her work. Smart is trained in spiritual direction and is a passionate listener and friend.

Jan Morrill is a program manager at the Maine Mobile Health Program (MMHP)—the only private nonprofit organization in Maine acting as a safety-net provider for farmworkers statewide. Morrill oversees MMHP’s legislative outreach and community engagement programs. She also represents MMHP in a number of coalitions where she coordinates with other organizations striving to address the needs of Maine’s growing immigrant population.

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A Positive Change Trinity: Lean, Servant Leadership, and Maine

by William I. Maxwell and Joyce T. Gibson

quality, better customer service, reduced operating costs, and higher This article is a call to action for Maine’s entrepreneurial servant leaders. We believe employee morale. Obviously, Maine you can be a prime catalyst for positive change in Lean/Continuous Improvement initiaorganizations that improve in these areas enjoy a competitive advantage. tives across Maine. We are proposing that Maine’s servant leaders leverage the tool of It is also clear that some Lean initiaLean/Continuous Improvement to ignite a positive shift in organizational cultures. Our tives fail and some succeed. Gallup positive change trinity encompasses (1) Lean/Continuous Improvement as the process research suggests that more than 70 map of how to achieve new, sustainable growth; (2) servant leadership as the synergist percent of all large-scale organizathat humanizes this growth in the territory of Maine workers’ lived experience; and (3) tional development attempts fail Maine’s forward-thinking businesses as the real-world hosts for this growth.

(Leonard and Coltea 2013). No definitive research exists regarding the success rate of Lean initiatives in INTRODUCTION Maine, but anecdotal evidence indicates a similar mix of accomplishment and failure. lfred Korzybski (1933) famously pointed out that Long-term success requires a servant leadership that “the map is not the territory.” In this brief sentence, joins the two pillars of Lean: (1) respect people and (2) he reminds us not to confuse models of reality with continuous improvement. The two are often dealt with reality itself. As we know, maps—as tools—come in separately in Lean literature; ways leaders can respect many useful forms: processes, plans, and algorithms. people are rarely highlighted. Lean’s change maps for Maps are instruments by which something is effected or continuous improvement focus on systemic approaches done. Leadership, on the other hand, empowers us in and tools; when these change maps are used without the territory—in our lived experiences. careful attention to respect for people, the chance for The positive change trinity in our title encompasses: authentic success is diminished. The territory of lived (1) Lean/Continuous Improvement as the process map experience, intricate and always changing, requires of how to achieve new, sustainable growth; (2) servant leaders to rise up to serve the larger group. Respect for leadership as the synergist that humanizes this growth in people is at the heart of servant leadership—a simple the territory of Maine workers’ lived experience; and (3) phrase that implies the need for a complex understanding Maine’s forward-thinking businesses as the real-world of what actions will best serves others. In order to make hosts for this growth. Therefore, we call out to Maine’s the maps meaningful as an experience for employees and entrepreneurial servant leaders. We believe you can be a customers, leaders need to create environments where prime catalyst for positive change in Lean/Continuous the two pillars are united as one. Indeed, a powerful Improvement initiatives across Maine. We are proposing theme runs true in the successful Maine Lean initiatives: that Maine servant leaders leverage the tool of Lean/ respectful servant leadership is a prime catalyst making Continuous Improvement to ignite a positive shift in continuous improvement possible and sustainable. organizational culture.

To make our case, we will first discuss Lean and its Lean/Continuous Improvement (we will use Lean importance to Maine’s entrepreneurial and networking as shorthand) provides proven analysis and process resources. We will then discuss how unifying the two instruments. When implemented well, Lean enables pillars of Lean through servant leadership makes posiorganizations to achieve greater productivity, improved tive innovation more likely.

Abstract

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THE POSITIVE CHANGE TRINITY Part One: Principles of Lean/ Continuous Improvement

Let’s examine the second of Lean’s pillars first: continuous improvement. An anonymous proverb says, “Vision without implementation is hallucination.” Lean implementation tools are about improving processes.

Lean doesn’t arise from just what you see, though keen observation is key; Lean transforms organizations via the way one thinks. Lean practitioners Jamie Flinchbaugh and Andy Carlino (2006: 3) list five principles of Lean ways to think as follows: • Directly observe work as activities, connections, and flows • Systematic waste elimination • Establish high agreement of what and how • Systematic problem solving • Create a learning organization Neither sequential nor separate, these principles bring the synergy created by how they work together to create continuous improvement in real time. Flinchbaugh and Carlino (2006: 4) offer us a useful visual for “the house of lean principles” (Figure 1).

Principle one Principle one, directly observing work, is sometimes associated with a gemba walk. Gemba is loosely translated as “real place.” A gemba involves management going to where the work is being done to look for ways Figure 1:

The House of Lean Principles

Directly observe work as activities, connections, and flows Action Systematic waste elimination

Systematic problem solving

Create a learning organization Reflection

Establish high agreement of the “what” and “how” Source: Flinchbaugh and Carlino (2006).

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to improve processes. Gemba walks are unscripted, and the idea is to gather data from all sources through respectful questioning and observations. The walks don’t have to be physical; they are explorations of the work process. Principle one is about opening yourself up to seeing process and listening.

Principle two Principle two, systemic waste elimination, is probably the most well-known aspect of Lean. Lean practitioners commonly talk about the seven wastes: • Overproduction—producing more than customer needs or producing sooner than needed • Transportation—movement of information, material, or paper • Inventory—stockpiled parts, orders, time, or activities • Motion—any movement, including walking and reaching, that is not related to value-added work • Waiting—any downtime products or people spend waiting for material, information, or people • Overprocessing—doing more to a product or process than the customer requires • Defects—any process, product, or service error To determine waste, Lean practitioners consider whether something is value added. To be considered value added, the activity must meet three criteria: • The customer must value it and be willing to pay for it.

• It must change the form, fit, or function of the product or service.

• It must be done right the first time.

Principle three Principle three, establish high agreement of what and how, involves people closest to an activity or process having clarity about what is to be accomplished and how to go about the process. Organizations tend to spend a great deal of time on the what: goals, objectives, and tasks. How refers to improving processes.

Principle four Principle four, systematic problem solving, values finding and solving problems. A common Lean expression is, “No problem is a problem.” Systematic problem

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solving is a mind-set that looks to see problems (large and small), bring them out into the open, and deal with them.

Principle five Principle five, create a learning organization, is often referred to as the glue of Lean—a learning organization ensures the continuous in continuous improvement. At the heart of a Lean learning organization is the “plan, do, check, act” cycle (PDCA) of practical experience in the workplace. Lean leaders are students and teachers in the learning organization (Flinchbaugh and Carlino 2006).

What Lean isn’t and is Lean isn’t just continuous improvement; to understand it this way is a disservice. Lean initiatives are more than eliminating waste, cuts, and a dog-eat-dog mind-set.

Lean and greed have been conflated; however, when aligned with respectful leadership, Lean is never about greed. Lean practitioners who ignore the pillar of respect for people completely miss the Lean spirit of serving in the territory of lived employee experience.

As Sutherland and Sutherland (2014: 143) suggest, “Plan reality, not fantasy” and “Don’t fall in love with your plan. It’s almost certainly wrong.” Leaders empathetically aware of employee experiences in the territory, the place where the work is actually done, can embrace and inspire a cultural shift. Practitioners Liker and Convis underscore this need for a nuanced understanding: “The general conclusion that many practitioners of Lean have arrived at is that sustaining improvements requires a combination of top leadership commitment and a culture of continuous improvement” (Liker and Convis 2012: 4).

Said simply, true Lean involves respectful conversations between people with a shared mission. Further, instead of the stereotype that Lean is about cutting employees as part of eliminating waste, an authentic Lean message needs to be sent: “We would rather do more with the same number of people than the same with fewer people.” Eliminating the fear of staff reduction creates a safe place to tackle problems and fosters an environment that accelerates opportunities and productivity.

The information we just presented merely scratches the surface of the Lean methodology. So, too, is the Lean movement in Maine: it is only scratching the surface of what it can mean for Maine’s entrepreneurial spirit.

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Part Two: Servant Leadership and Lean Lean’s pillar of respect for people requires the passion of servant leaders. Effective leadership generally means that the leader or CEO has an approach and style that moves an organization to realize its vision, satisfy its board and stakeholders, while honoring the mission of the organization. Improving profits, reorganizing for changing trends and markets, or just staying competitive in an increasingly technological, global market require leaders to be knowledgeable in their field, resourceful enough to attract employees with talents unknown to them, yet nimble enough to keep other organization afloat (Northouse 2018) Understanding continuous improvement and practicing lean management requires leadership from everyone in the organization, not just senior or positional leaders.

The leadership theory that most reflects the alignment between lean tools and continuous improvement maps is servant leadership. Robert K. Greenleaf, then a retired AT&T executive, published his book in 1977 after many years of studying organizations and observing how they functioned and were led. Greenleaf asserts that the most important characteristic of leadership is service, demonstrating that leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types of approaches to leading. He explains how being servant-first, not only strengthens people in the organization, but also shapes new leaders for the future:

The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant-first to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served….The best test, and difficult to administer, is this: Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? What is the effect on the least privileged in society? Will they benefit or at least not be further deprived? (Greenleaf 1977: 27) This approach does not deny the well-researched responsibilities of leaders in organizations who show the way and give direction to organizations. This distinctive philosophy of caring for and serving the individual, recognizing that leading requires everyone who is committed to the goals of the organization, everyone working on the challenges, everyone exploring his talents to meet each other’s need is what sets this approach apart from other types of leadership and aligns with how lean management works.

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People from all types of institutions, businesses, educational institutions—public and private, governments, and religious—have identified and embraced Greenleaf ’s service-first leadership approach because it works!

One would ask now, “How does servant leadership manifest in organizations?” Servant leaders act on what they believe. They enlist others by attending to their needs through listening, fostering learning environments, and staying true to doing what is right despite the challenges confronted. Greenleaf ’s own description offers a perspective not practiced by most organizations today: A servant leader focuses primarily on the growth and well-being of people and the communities to which they belong. While traditional leadership generally involves the accumulation and exercise of power by one at the top of the pyramid, servant leadership is different. The servant leader shares power, puts the needs of others first, and helps people develop and perform as highly as possible (Greenleaf 1977). Elements of this approach include listening, deep inner work, systems thinking, intuition, and foresight.

• Listening—is key to servant leadership because each employee knows it is a sign of respect.

A leader who takes the time to learn what is happening with people and their activities, who accepts them and can empathizes with their situations earns trust. Listening well, accepting, and empathizing does not preclude meeting established goals or demanding high performance.

Lean culture encourages anyone in the organization to generate ideas as a way to learn how it might add to more-efficient operations. When there is a problem, leaders should listen to the front-line people in most organizations as they have deep experience with how things function day to day.

• Deep inner work—refers to taking the time to know oneself, understanding one’s values and the principles one lives by. Critical and honest reflections on mistakes and successes and appreciating how they have shaped one’s life experience, even how they differ from another’s experience and background, are important grounding for leaders.

• Systems thinking—is thinking about challenges holistically, not just about one aspect of a problem or just a few people, but the ultimate impact on

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everyone. Senge’s (1990) work on the learning organization emphasizes understanding the intersections of the patterns that manifest the “making the full patterns clearer, thus helping us to see how to change them effectively.” Understanding how each activity is related to or influences another is essential to creating a process and solution for continuous improvement that is sustainable.

A servant leader focuses primarily on the growth and well-being of people and the communities to which they belong.

• Intuition—is a feeling or an insight about what to do or what decisions to make about a new situation. It requires a deep level of experience that allows that sense to be realized. Servant leaders act on their intuition because they trust their experiences based on what Greenleaf calls an overarching conceptual insight, not a gimmick.

• Foresight—is knowing what to expect and how to plan for the future and is often viewed as the most important skill of servant leaders. Foresight is not the same as vision; it is a process of gathering intelligence through listening, observing trends, understanding the market, understanding those the leader serves in relation to what is happening in the world.

When challenges arise—whether a demand for greater services or an internal glitch or breakdown of some kind—organizations that fully practice lean leadership are able to assess and determine different courses of actions quickly. These organizations have personnel who fully understand the organization and are monitoring and assessing their processes on a regular basis and leaders paying attention to internal and external forces affecting the organization. Determining whom to blame is not the immediate focus; instead, they focus on the processes that might have malfunctioned or the factors affected the expected results.

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Part Three: Implications for Positive Outcomes in Maine

Using the Lean servant leadership model that combines the two pillars of Lean is not only important for local or regional businesses and organizations, but also for the state. The growth, innovation, and quality resulting from this model are consistent with efforts to reinvigorate the Maine economy. Lean servant leadership embodies the same spirit displayed in the partnership between the Maine Development Foundation (MDF) and the Maine State Chamber of Commerce (MSCC). Since 2010, these two organizations have brought the forces of education, businesses, and nonprofits to work together to address the challenges of an aging workforce. In a joint MDF and MSCC press release (December 16, 2014), Harold Clossey, former CEO and president of MDF, succinctly stated “our strategic focus is a productive workforce that is educated, healthy, innovative and engaged in the economy and their community.” These two organizations began releasing reports every two years after conducting research on topics affecting the workforce. The reports offer updates on the progress of the economy while providing recommendations on which organizations could collaborate to move forward.

Lean’s two-pillars model builds entrepreneurial cultures, increases innovation, and is a catalyst for attracting loyalty of those the leader serves.

The MSCC’s two major goals also resonate with engaging a Lean model to drive the economy since one of their findings was that an overwhelming number of businesses believe the critical need was for an available and skilled workforce. Education, accessibility, skills, commitment for sustainability are all implied here and reflected in these goals: Goal 1: The Maine State Chamber of Commerce will help Maine reach and sustain

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2-3% Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth throughout the forecast by continuously improving the underlying processes that drive business investment throughout the state.

Goal 2: The Maine State Chamber of Commerce will enhance the quality of life for all Mainers by supporting processes that balance financial, social, and environmental needs of our communities. (MSCC 2013) Implicit in the MSCC’s goal setting is an understanding that change is needed for development and sustainability of the economy in order to meet the needs of the communities. Sustaining existing businesses and attracting new businesses to Maine has been challenging.

The challenges are related to the need for workers with higher educational levels and more skilled workers in technological fields. An overriding challenge involves leaders’ capacities to think bigger, to imagine greater success. This Lean leadership model relates well to some of the activities the MSCC pledged under these goals.

One activity involves building a network of corporate, not-for-profit, and academic relationships. Another pledged activity is increasing total investment in large and small businesses while creating greater access to research, development, and innovation.

Lean’s two-pillars model builds entrepreneurial cultures, increases innovation, and is a catalyst for attracting loyalty of those the leader serves. The Lean servant leadership model will also help sustain the existing workforce while increasing diversity. More people from inside and outside the state will want to engage in what the Maine economy has to offer.

The Lean servant leadership path is already established with success stories in Maine. Examples of businesses that are already embracing this model include • Rancourt & Co—established in 1967 and now an international shoe company, Rancourt has employed Lean manufacturing since the 1990s and attributes its ability to evolve and remain profitable to the principles of continuous improvement.

• Geiger—known to those of us in Maine as Geiger Brothers, is the largest family-owned promotional distributor firm in the United States, with 16 operations across the country and headquarters in Lewiston, Maine. The “Geiger Way” is all about quality, continuous improvement, and serving the customer. At Geiger, 76

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serving the customer means serving the staff first, including employing a manager of continuous improvement to support the workforce.

That these and other organizations are already thriving through Lean is encouraging. Based on recent data from the Lewiston Auburn (LA) Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, there is a lag in local organizations in terms of growth. One issue slowing expansion is that assistance for entrepreneurial initiatives has been lacking, but this gap is being filled.

The authors are part of a pilot project intending to enhance the Lewiston-Auburn region’s entrepreneurial business culture by implementing a Lean Management/Continuous Improvement Leadership Education (LM/CILE) program. The program will consist of courses, mentorship, and an interactive network. LM/CILE implementation and mentorship will help create and sustain economic development and innovation in the Lewiston-Auburn (LA) region and throughout Maine. Innovation is the critical link between ideas and the market.

The pilot project is sponsored by the Institute for Continuous Improvement (ICI) and represents a new and important collaboration between the LA Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and the University of Southern Maine’s Lewiston-Auburn College (LAC), which will organize, develop, and implement the pilot program. The grant provides the MSCC-LAC partnership the ability to enhance the productivity, prosperity, and growth of Maine businesses, organizations, and companies through improved leadership and management strategies and techniques.

Outcomes from the pilot project will include • increasing business development and growth in the LA region through teaching Lean and leadership practices that positively affect the entrepreneurial culture; • establishing an inventory of Lean practitioners and an interactive mentorship network to support the region’s business community; and • creating a sustainable LM/CILE program in the LA region and beyond.

The pilot project attracted experienced Lean business partners and funding from the state to begin what will be a strong engine to enhance the economy and support community development across the regions.

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CONCLUSION

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ffective servant leadership aligned with Lean’s effective maps can give Maine organizations a competitive edge. Success in our positive change trinity depends on Maine servant leaders who challenge the process. As a leader, please consider Lean as an effective tool. The two pillars of Lean, respect people and continuous improvement, require holding both ideas in mind simultaneously. This unity grounds servant leaders in terms of purpose and informs all of their actions.

Kouzes and Posner (2012: 157) point out “you don’t get anyplace different if you just keep doing the same things over and over again.” Successful Lean leaders seek opportunities by looking at processes to improve. They are willing to take incremental risks, to experiment, and to learn from both successes and failures. “Leaders don’t challenge for challenge’s sake” (Kouzes and Posner 2012: 169). Instead, they challenge with a sense of meaning and purpose. Lean practitioner Joakim Ahlstrom (2015) believes challenging the process is far better than leaving things alone. “Taking the first steps into the unknown may seem frightening, particularly if it means that you might come up against opposition or make mistakes. In comparison, talking is a safe activity, but if you want to make a real difference you need to stop talking and start making improvements” (Ahlstrom 2015: 14).

In conclusion, we ask you to consider making a real difference as a servant leader by leading with Lean in Maine. REFERENCES Ahlstrom, Joakim. 2015. How to Succeed with Continuous Improvement: A Primer for Becoming the Best in the World. New York: McGraw Hill Education.

Flinchbaugh, Jamie, and Andy Carlino. 2006. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Lean, Lessons from the Road.

Dearborn, MI: Society of Manufacturing Engineers.

Greenleaf, Robert. 1977. Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Power of Legitimate Power and Greatness.

New York: Paulist Press.

Korzybski, Alfred. 1933. Science and Sanity. Lancaster, PA: International Non-Aristotelian Library Publishing Company.

Kouzes, James, and Barry Posner. 2012. The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations. San Francisco: Wiley.

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Leonard, David, and Claude Coltea. 2013. “Most Change Initiatives Fail—But They Don’t Have to.”

Business Journal (May 24). http://news.gallup.com /businessjournal/162707/change-initiatives-fail-don.aspx Liker, Jeffrey, and Gary Convis. 2012. The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership: Achieving and Sustaining Excellence Through Leadership Development. New York: McGraw Hill.

MSCC (Maine State Chamber of Commerce). 2013.

Economic Strategy for Maine. Augusta: MSCC. http://www.mainechamber.org/documents/stratplan /StrategicPlan2013web.pdf Northouse, Peter G. 2018. Introduction to Leadership.

Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Senge, Peter. 1990. The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization. New York: Doubleday.

Sutherland, Jeff, and J.J. Sutherland. 2014. SCRUM: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time. New York: Crown Business, Crown Publishing Group.

William Maxwell is the founder of Bill Maxwell and Associates, a leadership and change consulting business. Maxwell is also a facilitator with the newly formed Maine Leadership Group.

Additionally, he is an instructor at the University of Southern Maine in the Leadership and Organizational Studies Department. Maxwell has presented nationally and internationally on a variety of topics, including leadership and change, the leader’s journey, and detoxifying the workplace.

Joyce Taylor Gibson has been dean of the University of Southern Maine’s (USM) Lewiston-Auburn College for nine years and is transitioning to full-time teaching in USM’s Leadership and Organizational Studies Program for fall 2018.

Prior to serving in Maine, she was an associate professor at the Graduate School of Education at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, and also served as associate vice chancellor responsible for enrollment management and student affairs. Gibson is an experienced leader in student affairs, community-university partnerships, and organizational change, with social justice as her lens.

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NEW WORKFORCE LEADERS IN TOURISM, HOSPITALITY, AND ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE

Injecting New Workforce Leaders in Tourism, Hospitality, and Environmental Science: A Community-Engaged Learning and Immersion Class

by Tracy S. Michaud and Robert M. Sanford

attainment through programs that engage and help retain students.

Tourism, especially nature-based tourism, is a major industry in Maine. Therefore, it For universities to produce future is important that colleges and universities graduate leaders into the Maine workforce leaders in Maine’s workforce, they have to graduate them first, and with specific knowledge of the tourism and hospitality industry and with a connection they have to graduate them mindful to the environment in which it flourishes. To graduate potential leaders, schools must of the connection between educado a better job at retaining and graduating students from diverse socioeconomic backtion, community, and leadership. grounds. Community-engaged learning, including immersion classes, are a key strategy Maine’s economy is heavily to increase student persistence in some programs at the University of Southern Maine based on tourism, notably tourism (USM). Two academic units at USM, the Program in Tourism and Hospitality and the that is environmentally connected Department of Environmental Science and Policy, collaborate in delivering a colocated (Colgan 2006). Maine’s tourism intensive immersion class for all new majors. This engagement early in their college industry is vital to the health of the career fosters a sense of community among the students and with the industry in which Maine economy, as tourism is they will work. We argue that this community engagement is a factor contributing to Maine’s largest export sector and student retention and success in these programs and will help create the creative, resilcould provide sustainable economic ient, locally active leaders needed to guide sustainable tourism development in Maine. growth for the state, especially in rural areas (Vail 2010). To address the challenges facing Maine’s tourism sector—such as uneven distribution conomists and development leaders at places like throughout the state, seasonality, public and private the University of Maine System, Maine Department landownership changes, and rural destination developof Economic and Community Development, and the ment—Maine needs leaders who are creative, innovative Maine Development Foundation have argued that problem solvers and have specific knowledge of the productivity (value added per worker) must increase challenges of Maine’s tourism and hospitality industry as for Maine’s economy to prosper. Maine is typically at well as the environment in which it flourishes. These the bottom of the nation in productivity. Two major challenges represent an excellent opportunity for collabfactors that could help drive productivity in Maine’s orative education and training between the Tourism and workforce are investment in innovation and increasing Hospitality Program (TAH) and the Department of skills and higher-education achievement (MDF 2017).

Environmental Science and Policy (ESP) at USM as they The recent Brookings Report on renewing America’s use community-engaged-learning techniques to help economic promise emphasizes the importance of higher graduate future leaders in this industry. Growing the education as a way for declining industrial communities next generation of leaders in Maine’s nature tourism to get ahead (Berube and Murray 2018). The University industry starts with education that engages and connects of Maine System (UMS) can take the lead on these them to Maine, the industry, and each other. issues in Maine. This paper looks at how two degree The University of Southern Maine, as do many programs at the University of Southern Maine (USM) UMS campuses, serves high percentages of firstare innovatively addressing issues of higher degree generation, nontraditional, and low-income students.

Abstract

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These demographically diverse populations need to be understood and supported because these students tend to have significant challenges to completing a degree, such as working full time or family responsibilities. Firstgeneration students, in particular, are more likely to drop out of college since they are often less familiar with the culture and process of college, tend to come from lower-income backgrounds, and “are frequently exposed to environmental stressors” (Vazquez Jacobus 2016: 9).

Community-engaged learning has been shown to have a positive effect on student retention with traditional-age students (Gallini and Moely 2003); notably though it has the strongest impact on “students on the margins.” In a study of northern New England university students, researchers found that “the connections developed through engagement classes, the mentoring relations nurtured with faculty, the sense of belonging with community, or career aspirations nourished through applied practica, can be the life preservers which buoy a student through to the next semester” (Vasquez Jacobus 2016: 10). Connecting the student with the community is one of the strongest benefits of teaching outside the normal classroom setting, as it nurtures the connection of the heart to the community and forms the basis for democratic leadership (hooks 2003).

BACKGROUND

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wo different academic units at USM, the Tourism and Hospitality Program and the Department of Environmental Science and Policy, collaborate in delivering a colocated intensive immersion class for all new majors. This engagement early in their college career with community partners and each other fosters a sense of community among the students and the industry in which they will work. We believe that this community engagement is a factor contributing to student success, is an important driver of retention in these programs, and contributes to the success of graduates in a communityminded workforce.

With majors in environmental science and environmental planning and policy, ESP takes an interdisciplinary and applied approach to the environment and to its students’ education, providing opportunities for increased civic engagement through real-world laboratories. ESP created the first-year immersion class 17 years ago. For the past 11 years, it has included a Thursday-to-Sunday overnight component; six of these immersions have been held at Camp Cedar

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(a long-standing Maine summer camp). ESP has one of the highest retention rates at USM and attributes this in part to the first-year immersion experience. It also has a strong record of alumni involvement in the department and in the community.

Seeing that tourism is one of the largest and fastest-growing industries in Maine, particularly naturebased tourism, USM created the TAH degree program six years ago, a growing program with various management and tourism development concentrations. Faculty and the program itself have received numerous teaching awards from the university and the Maine tourism industry for its community-engaged learning approach.

TAH students work every semester with the tourism industry in Maine through class projects and internships. To build community among the students for retention purposes, two years ago TAH, in conjunction with ESP, made mandatory a first-year immersion class for all majors. TAH has an active industry advisory board whose members participate in the immersion class as guest speakers, mentors, and project partners. Their participation primes students for the expectations of experiential learning activities that are embedded in both TAH’s and ESP’s classes.

Community-engaged learning (CEL) is a type of experiential learning that goes beyond the lecture to involve community partners in the classroom and has been shown to enhance student success in higher education (Kolb 1984). CEL engages students in real-world learning (students write tourism development reports for real communities or do sustainable environmental assessments for hotels). This type of work establishes deep connections to their community and program of study, and according to research on TAH students from 2015 to 2017, creates a sense of community among them, which they value. CEL can take the form of internships, field trips, guest speakers, mentor programs, and group research projects involving a reciprocal relationship with the community or individuals.

There is evidence that linking academic disciplines to industries through community-based participatory research and experiential learning projects improves student learning and employment opportunities (Deale 2017; Lee 2008; McCarthy and McCarthy 2006; Sanford 2012). Community-engaged learning, however, has not been as well studied for its contribution toward community building among the students participating in these activities and their completion of college.

Retention in college, typically lower for nontraditional 80

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students, is important to consider when judging student success in a diverse university (Tinto 1993; Vazquez Jacobus and Baskett 2010). Losing students who have started college is expensive for the students, who have likely increased their debt load significantly, and for Maine’s workforce, which loses potential leaders.

We believe there is a connection worth exploring between CEL, community building among students, retention, and leadership development, which can come together in a first-year immersion experience. Research

by Yeager et al. (2016) and Yeager and Dweck (2012) indicates that, particularly for first-generation, socially disadvantaged, or ethnically diverse students, even simply learning at the beginning of the college experience that the adversities first-year students face are common and improvable will help increase their resilience during the tough transition to college and decrease the achievement gap of these students throughout their college experience. The ESP and TAH field immersion class appears to foster these types of interactions.

THE FIRST-YEAR IMMERSION CLASS

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of intimacy and friendship, defining and allocating rewards (and other consequences), and explaining the obscure and difficult (he calls it “the unexplainable”).

These five components structure the activities for the immersion weekend and beg for input from the larger community. They underlie the strategy to bring discipline experts into the immersion class.

Surveys, interviews, and class evaluation analysis undertaken from 2015 to 2017 on TAH classes indicate the factors that students value in their learning and that make a difference in their retention in the major. The students highly value community-engaged learning activities that allow them to apply global concepts and theories to real-world local projects at all levels of their college experience. Specific types of CEL valued by students go beyond guest speakers and internships to part-time industry instructors teaching classes and group projects/research involving local people and realworld local issues (Figure 1). Further, students not only valued community-based real-world group projects for the learning and job connections they gained, but specifically for the community it built with their fellow students (Michaud-Stutzman 2017). Information from student evaluations in ESP classes indicates this is also true for ESP students.

TAH students most value part-time adjunct faculty (engaging with industry experts) and speaker-field trips for courses at the 100–200 (freshman and sophomore) level, and internships and speaker-field trips at the 300–400 (junior and senior) level. Student quotes on

uring the ESP and TAH immersion class students are introduced to CEL by living at and exploring a Maine summer camp that is a traditional tourist destination, having guest speakers, meeting industry mentors, and completing group projects, such as figuring out an event management plan for a cookout with camp staff, or navigating the woods with a compass. The field immersion experience is designed to build a culture of learning and adaptive change.

Figure 1: Community-Engaged Learning Strategies That Tourism and

Hospitality Students Value in Their Learning, 2015–2017 First-year students work together on meaningful challenges that 100% build community and nurture basic 100–200 Level Classes 300–400 Level Classes skills for the academic majors and 80% professional life. They listen to and learn from peer mentors, alumni, 60% and industry experts and share their issues as first-year students.

According to Schein (2004), a 40% culture of learning and adaptive change is achieved by creating a 20% common language and conceptual categories, defining group bound0% p ct ct ps ps aries and criteria for inclusion cts cts /Ca Tri Tri jun jun oje oje rn ld ld e Ad Ad Pr Pr e e t i i and exclusion, developing norms s s In r-F r-F las las C

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ke ea Sp

C

ke ea Sp

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Figure 2:

Community-Engaged Learning Strategies That Tourism and Hospitality Students Value for Employment (All Class Levels), 2015–2017

100% 80% 60%

40% 20% 0%

Speaker-Field Trip

Adjuncts

Figure 3:

Internhips

Class Projects

Community-Engaged Learning Strategies That Tourism and Hospitality Students Value for Joining/Retention in Major, 2015–2017

The first-year immersion class supports, connects, and engages students with adjuncts and guest speakers. Spending the weekend at summer camp is the ultimate field trip, and they work on group projects together. It includes all the factors students valued in this research for joining and staying in the major.

Student quotes from the immersion class further support this point: “You bond with those in your group and support each other afterward.”

NONTRADITIONAL STUDENTS AND FIRSTYEAR IMMERSION CLASS

T

AH and ESP often have a significant percentage of nontraditional students and some students of 100% ethnic diversity. Maine is one of the 100–200 Level Classes 300–400 Level Classes least ethnically diverse states in the 80% nation; however, ethnic diversity is increasing. According to Massey et 60% al. (2002), graduation is the most basic indicator of success in college, 40% and despite affirmative action, which began in the 1970s, differences in college degree attainment still persists 20% in diverse populations, with African American and Latino students having 0% p ts ts ct ct ps ps a c c i i n n r r C e e a much lower graduation (retention) j ju ju n/ oj ro dT dT Ad Ad Pr ter iel iel s sP n F F I s s rate than white students. r r ke ke Cla Cla ea ea p p Other types of nontraditional S S students at USM include first-generation college students from low-income families and those with CEL in classes include, “My skill set has definitely life-stage differences. Over the years, many ESP students increased over the past few years” and “I like how classes who are parents and grandparents reported that the make students jump right in.” period of intensity with their peers during the field Not surprisingly, when thinking about CEL and immersion class was something they seldom experiemployment potential, TAH students most value internenced, due to the demands of parenting. The field ships and real-world class projects at all levels (Figure 2). immersion had particular benefit for them despite the Quotes from students include, “This opened up many initial challenges in making arrangements so they could job opportunities” and “I made an impact.” attend. It was particularly important for those students While in 100- and 200-level classes, students valued to understand the faculty commitment to this course (all adjuncts and speaker-field trips for joining/retention in faculty spend the weekend at Camp Cedar, too) and the the major, in 300- and 400-level classes, students most reasons for it. The fee for the class, currently $200, valued adjuncts and class projects (Figure 3).

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FEATURES OF THE IMMERSION CLASS • All faculty and new student majors attend offsite long-weekend class.

• Articulate core values of their major, e.g., environmental sustainability and managing human impact on nature.

• Articulate and introduce basic professional skills that will improve success in college and in the workforce.

• Create a sense of place for students during the class. For Mainers, reconstructing the stereotypic and idealized camp experience of our imagined youth is directly pertinent to Maine tourism and environmental science, policy, and planning. For others, it might be creating an experience that represents an important part of the heritage and culture of the city or community in which the college is located.

• Recruit teaching assistants (senior students who act as peer mentors and share their experiences).

• Bring in alumni, community guest speakers, and project partners.

• Start with icebreaker activities once everyone arrives and then incorporate communitybuilding components into the basic content sections of the weekend. Time for networking and unstructured bonding should be included too.

• On-site assessment takes numerous forms during the weekend to test knowledge learned; ESP uses a series of field activities for this; face-to-face reflections are valuable and part of a TAH communication exercise.

• Traditional course evaluation after completing rest of semester activities (online). All students rated the fall 2017 class as good to excellent with the majority giving it the highest rating possible.

covers all food, accommodation, transportation, and class supplies, and is covered by financial aid, making it financially feasible for students to attend.

The first-year immersion class introduces students to CEL in an intensive but supportive environment of

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faculty and community partners. This experience of working with peers on projects and completing group bonding activities creates a sense of community among students. The student community is nurtured in the context of the greater community because mentors (often including alumni) arrive at different points in the weekend and participate in various activities. The coming and going of community members represents a conscious attempt to develop a sense of flow and continuity (and it is less taxing on their time).

In both TAH and ESP, faculty notice more extensive and frequent interactions between traditional and nontraditional students, students and faculty, and students and external partners starting immediately after the immersion class. Students are more likely to greet and chat with faculty in the halls, for example. We are in the processes of determining how to more formally quantify and assess interactions and student success based on the immersion class, but one potential indicator of success is that ESP regularly has one of the highest student retention rates of all departments in the university. In fall of 2015, the first-year retention rate for USM was 84.3 percent for the second term, and 61.08 percent for the second year; for ESP, 100 percent stayed for the second term and 75 percent for the second year.

ESP holds an annual end-of-semester dinner, honoring graduating seniors but involving the entire department and community guests. Field immersion is frequently mentioned fondly as students reflect on the beginning of their educational paths. The sense of community created through the field immersion class is regularly valued by students in both ESP and TAH class evaluations. Sample comments include: • “Enjoyed our small community” • “This weekend gathered everyone into a common place working in teams.”

• “I made friends and learned things. We promoted community. We really got to know each other.”

• “I drove from Michigan to Maine right before class started and did not know anyone, but now I feel like I belong here.”

• “I have been at USM for three years and did not know most of my classmates’ names because I work full time and commute to class. It feels good to know I am part of a team and we know each other’s names.”

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CONCLUSION

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sense of community can be important for student success in college, and this peer interaction can be an important factor in retention and ultimately graduation of nontraditional students in universities (Kowaleski 2016; Walton and Cohen 2011; Vazquez Jacobus and Basket 2010). These students will bring a depth of experience and diversity to leadership in Maine, especially to Maine’s tourism industry. Community building, in combination with CEL, fosters the mind-set that they are not alone, they can succeed, and their work makes a real difference. The Maine summer camp is an archetypical Maine experience, which is why it was chosen as the base for USM’s TAH and ESP first-year immersion class, but this could just as easily been done in a different setting. The point is the shared values, time commitment, and intensity of the immersive experience.

On-site assessment at the end of the immersion class weekend indicates students most strongly favor “to learn” and “to build community” as their top goals for what they achieve in attending. Because the class is run at the beginning of the semester (always the second weekend, leaving the first week for finding classes and getting organized) for all new students, transfer students, and students who switch majors, it sets an example that can guide the students for the rest of their stay at the university and on a path of resiliency and life-long engaged learning, important leadership traits. The collaboration between two units at different colleges of the university also shows the value of connections and networking within the university as a model for engaging the university in community participation and leadership development. REFERENCES Berube, Alan, and Cecile Murray. 2018. Renewing America’s Economic Promise through Older Industrial Cities.

Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution.

Colgan, Charles S. 2006. The Maine Economy: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution.

Deale, Cynthia S. (2017). “Learning through Engagement: Undergraduate Students Engaging in Community-based Participatory Research (CPBR) in Hospitality and Tourism Education.” Journal of Teaching in Travel & Tourism 17(1): 55–61. doi: 10.1080/15313220.2016.1270180

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Gallini, Sarah M., and Barbara E. Moely. 2003. “ServiceLearning and Engagement, Academic Challenge, and Retention.” Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning 10(Fall): 5–14. hooks, bell. 2003. Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope. New York: Routledge.

Kolb, David A. 1984. Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development. Upper Saddle River, NJ: FT Press.

Kowaleski, B.M. 2016. “Examining the Role of Campus Culture in Retention and Success.” Presentation at Campus Compact Conference, Accelerating Change: Campus Compact Celebrates 30 Years of Educating Citizens and Building Communities. Boston, MA. Lee, Scott A. 2008. “Increasing Student Learning: A Comparison of Students’ Perceptions of Learning in the Classroom Environment and Their Industrybased Experiential Learning Assignments.” Journal of Teaching in Travel & Tourism 7(4): 37–54. doi: 10.1080/15313220802033310 MDF (Maine Development Foundation). 2017. Measures of Growth 2017. Augusta: Maine Economic Growth Council and MDF. http://www.mdf.org/publications/ Measures-of-Growth-2017/922/ Massey, Douglas S., Camille Z. Charles, Garvey Lundy, and Mary J. Fischer. 2002. The Source of the River.

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

McCarthy, Patricia R., and Henry M. McCarthy. 2006. “When Case Studies Are Not Enough: Integrating Experiential Learning into Business Curricula.” Journal of Education for Business 81(4): 201–204.

Michaud-Stutzman, Tracy S. 2017. “The Case for Community-Engaged Learning in USM Tourism and Hospitality.” Poster presented at ICHRIE NENA Annual Conference, Philadelphia, PA. Sanford, Robert. 2012. “Using Team Service-Learning Projects in Environmental Science.” Groupwork 22(2): 39–55.

Schein, Edgar. 2004. Organizational Culture and Leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Tinto, Vincent. 1993. Leaving College: Rethinking the Causes and Cures of Student Attrition, 2nd ed. Chicago: University Press.

Walton, Gregory M., and Geoffrey L. Cohen. 2011. “A Brief Social-Belonging Intervention Improves Academic and Health Outcomes of Minority Students.” Science 331(6023): 1447–1451. doi: 10.1126/science.1198364 Vail, David. 2010. Amenity Investments and Tourist Destination Development: Policy Insights from Three Rural Maine Regions. Augusta: Maine Center for Economic Policy.

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Vazquez Jacobus, Michelle. 2016. Diversity and Community Engagement at the University of Maine: Report of Visiting Libra Diversity Professor. University of Maine, Orono.

Vazquez Jacobus, Michelle, and Robert Baskett. 2010.

“Building Community Capacity through School-based Service-Learning.” Metropolitan Universities Journal 22(3): 93–110.

Yaeger, David Scott, and Carol S. Dweck 2012. “Mindsets That Promote Resilience: When Students Believe That Personal Characteristics Can Be Developed.”

Educational Psychologist 47(4): 302–314.

Yeager, David S., Gregory M. Walton, Shannon T. Brady, Ezgi N. Akcinar, David Paunesky, Laura Keane, Donald Kamentz, et al. 2016. Teaching a Lay Theory before College Narrows Achievement Gaps at Scale.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113 (24) E3341–E3348. doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1524360113.

Tracy S. Michaud is assistant professor and chair of the Tourism and Hospitality Program at the University of Southern Maine. She joined the faculty at USM after a decade of anthropologically based community arts and tourism development in rural Maine.

Through collaborating with the tourism industry and Maine communities, she focuses her teaching and research on sustainable community tourism development and community-engaged pedagogy.

Robert M. Sanford, a former environmental regulator for the state of Vermont, is chair of the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at the University of Southern Maine, where he has taught since 1996.

His research interests include environmental planning, cultural resources management, and environmental education.

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The Importance of Leadership: Insights from Major Business Leaders in Maine

by Linda Silka

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lthough a small state, Maine has many innovative business leaders who care deeply about the issue of leadership and who have devoted considerable thought to the role of business leadership for the state’s economic well-being. In March of this year, as part of the University of Maine’s Faculty Fellow Program,1 the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center hosted a discussion between cutting-edge Maine business leaders and Susan Corbett is the chief executive officer for Axiom Technologies. She is a preeminent authority on rural broadband deployment and works closely with economic development and rural organizations to advance internet and wireless technologies and their adoption. Corbett’s clear company-wide direction has garnered Axiom recognition in the form of awards, media coverage, and grants. Most recently, Axiom was awarded a Microsoft grant to provide internet access to homes in Washington County, Maine, using TV white space. In the fall of 2017, Ms. Corbett launched the National Digital Equity Center, collaborating with local and global change makers, relentlessly driving disruptive strategies to close the digital divide in Maine and across the United States.

Kimberly A. Hamilton is the president of Focus Maine.

Prior to assuming the presidency of Focus Maine, she was the chief impact officer at Feeding America, the nation’s largest hungerrelief organization, where she led research, nutrition, and ending-hunger programs. Hamilton has

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the 2017–2018 class of faculty fellows. Three of these leaders generously agreed to be interviewed and to share their ideas and insights on leadership for this special issue of Maine Policy Review. They were asked a series of questions about their own experiences in leadership and what they see as emerging challenges or opportunities that leaders face in Maine.

served in a variety of senior roles at Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, including director of strategy, planning and management for global policy and advocacy. During her time with the foundation, she also led grant-making programs and developed advocacy strategies to advance the foundation’s goals in a variety of fields. Hamilton has also worked for NetAid, the Migration Policy Institute, and a variety of other think tanks and philanthropic organizations.

Peter Triandafillou is the vice president of Woodlands for Huber Resources Corporation. Triandafillou is responsible for J.M. Huber’s timber management business. He has worked at HRC for 20 years and in the forest products industry for 37 years. Triandafillou and his team are responsible for the management of approximately 650,000 acres of timberland in Maine, Wisconsin, New York, Oklahoma, Texas, and Georgia for a variety of clients including families, individuals, timber investment management organizations, and conservation organizations. Triandafillou also manages Huber’s policy work in Maine and holds board positions at Farm Credit East, Farm Credit Council, the Maine Forest Products Council, and the Forest Society of Maine.

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FRAMING QUESTIONS FOR BUSINESS LEADER INTERVIEWS • Do you have a story or two about a leader ship challenge you encountered and how you addressed that challenge?

• Of your leadership successes, which are you most proud?

• Are there things you wish you had known before you took on various leadership roles?

• What emerging opportunities do you see in Maine? Obstacles? What does this suggest to you about our state’s future leadership needs?

• Are there certain leaders in Maine whom you see as being especially important models?

• What skills will future leaders need and how best can we prepare future leaders to have these skills?

RAPID CHANGE AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR LEADERSHIP

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ll three leaders highlighted change and the fact that things are changing so fast in their responses.

Triandafillou noted that things are changing faster and faster, which he captured in a vivid example. He described recently buying a 1980ish Volkswagen van.

The 1980s didn’t seem that long ago to him, yet he couldn’t believe how much things have changed in automotive technology. Corbett noted that all technology will be old in five years. She thinks that everyone will need to develop analytical skills and skills that can grow, that no matter the occupation and industry, everyone will need digital skills. These ideas raise the important question, What is our plan for digital equity to ensure everyone can develop the skills needed for this changing economy? Hamilton agreed with the others that change is happening faster than ever before. She believes that strategies used to move businesses forward will need to be refreshed more often. Talent will need to stay on top of new skills, and our institutions of higher learning will need to respond to everfaster cycles of change to adapt and grow with these challenges.

Much of the commentary by all three leaders pointed out that Maine faces some particular challenges in these times of change. Pointing to demographic

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and opportunity gaps, Hamilton noted that we are at a pivotal moment in Maine, facing demographic and related labor force challenges coupled with the widening income and opportunity gap that have grown. These combined forces create a difficult environment for any leader.

At the same time, the interviewees also described emerging opportunities that come with the change.

Hamilton noted that her organization sees tremendous opportunity in Maine in areas related to the food economy, including agriculture and aquaculture.

Corbett also talked about the rich opportunities in Maine that people too often fail to see. She described moving up from Massachusetts in 1998 and finding opportunities here that she would not have had in Massachusetts. Contrary to what many people believe, Corbett finds that the rural context encourages opportunities as there is not a lot of competition. She see opportunities to focus on digital literacy and work with small businesses. Triandafillou noted that people sometimes draw the wrong conclusions. For example, many people think the forestry industry is dead. But, the industry is anything but dead, and there is still a robust forest economy in Maine. Although there may no longer be mills on the Penobscot, the state does have a dark night sky, which offers new tourism opportunities, and great forests with rich markets nearby. Because forest products are heavy and expensive to transport, the fact that Maine forests are close to major markets is a distinct advantage.

Triandafillou also noted, for some key industries, change might be more subtle. In some parts of the forestry industry many of the big changes are changes in ownership. The traditional culture of industrial timber ownership was dominated by the paper industry and timber families with long-term horizons.

But the paper industry divested of its timberlands in the 1980s and 1990s, and was replaced by a variety of institutional investors. These owners have a shorter time horizon that may seem contrary to timber’s longterm nature. However, all owners need returns, and they thus have an interest in the long-term value of their property. Because of this, while the owners have changed, the culture and management has changed only slightly. This transition can still be hard.

Triandafillou offered a story about a leadership challenge that involved the need to give up control when a landowner sells timberland to another entity.

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on that forest for their jobs, can find the transition difficult. So do the owners who have made long-term investment in their forests. They worry, “Will the new owners treat the land with the same care?”

“Will we still be the ones managing the forest?” In his leadership role, he empowered his employees to be professional and part of the transition process, which helped ensure their continued role in the management of the forest.

THE KIND OF LEADERSHIP THAT WILL BE NEEDED

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sked for their reflections on leaders in Maine, they pointed to Maine’s history of great leaders from whom we can all learn. They noted that Maine has received great press in the past for its leaders and continues to draw national attention for the leadership strengths in the state. They mentioned Senators William Cohen, Susan Collins, Angus King, George Mitchell, and Olympia Snowe. One important characteristic that was noted was the capacity of these Maine leaders to reach across the aisle.

Triandafillou noted that he heard Senator King give a talk in which the senator mentioned that members of Congress no longer stay in Washington, DC, on weekends. They travel home every weekend now, which was not the case in the past. One result, King said, was that the two sides rarely socialize and get to know each other.

King didn’t wait for someone else to solve this problem, however; he started hosting dinners in which half of the guests were Democrats and half were Republican. The goal was just to share and learn from each other and it worked to build relationships.

Corbett also called attention to the importance of local and state leaders to Maine’s successes. She noted the leaders of Maine’s many foundations and colleges and universities. Corbett was struck by how much they support, instead of compete against, each other. She believes this collaboration is important if we are to make progress in Maine. In some systems, people do not understand the importance of collaborative leadership.

In the health care industry, where Corbett began her work, she observed a lot of innovative collaboration. As she moved to other fields, however she saw less collaboration. Corbett looked for ways to increase the collaboration and often started dialogues by asking providers why they were not collaborating. She has served as an important resource in developing collaborative strategies.

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All three interviewees noted that collaboration is increasingly important in both the public and private sectors. According to Hamilton, FocusMaine is a great model of collaborative leadership. She noted that FocusMaine has brought together many of Maine’s most accomplished private-sector leaders around a shared goal to create 20,000 jobs in the state. The model is important because the leadership team checks their specific industry interests at the door and musters their own experience, own wisdom, and passion for the state of Maine. Together, this team has learned about new issues beyond their day-to-day areas of interest, listened to stakeholders, and used that knowledge to chart a path toward job growth working with partners to implement the vision. This kind of leadership, Hamilton noted, is not easy. It’s collaborative, but there are tough conversations. It’s built on a shared vision, but with clear accountability. Most importantly, it’s time bound, which means that urgency is a part of the DNA. The leaders pointed out that some leadership skills always seem highly necessary. Hamilton noted that there are perennial leadership characteristics that all leaders need to master: the power of saying “No,” skill at stepping into adversity, the ability to embrace diversity, and the recognition that urgency matters. Corbett pointed to the importance of being willing to be a risk taker. She is a risk taker and feels that it has been important to her success to be able to take reasonable risks. All three leaders alluded to the importance of resilience in successful leaders as tough times are to be expected. In the face of those tough times, what strategies will be needed to build up resilience?

The interviewees considered emerging leadership issues that are increasingly important for the future.

Some of the issues they see as important include how to increase educational attainment, how to help small businesses provide health care to employees, and how to improve access to broadband particularly in rural areas.

WHERE DOES ONE LEARN LEADERSHIP SKILLS?

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he leaders were asked their thoughts about how they came to develop or learn their leadership skills and what kinds of training or experiences should we as a state try to provide. Their thoughtful responses added many interesting points. One set of responses had to do with the value and importance of mentoring and providing mentoring opportunities. Hamilton noted 88

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that there is nothing better than actual experience coupled with reflection and great mentoring support to grow one’s own leadership style. Even having had much success as a leader, Hamilton still finds it important to consult some of her most influential mentors on tough issues. She pointed out the value of different perspectives on solving important challenges. According to Hamilton, “we often hear that it’s lonely at the top. I rather think of leadership as a team sport.”

Concerning the cultivation of leadership skills, the interviewees acknowledged the importance of starting early. Hamilton noted that there is growing awareness that some leadership skills can be cultivated from an early age. Yet, opportunities to learn leadership skills may not be equally available across the state. Corbett feels state leaders need to consider how to encourage and support leadership training opportunities in rural areas.

The leaders pointed out that Maine has organizations that offer great professional leadership development training. Corbett described the Maine Development Foundation’s statewide program, Leadership Maine and Sunrise County Economic Development’s Washington County Leadership Institute, as two examples. Through these programs, local and regional leaders are learning how to network. Corbett noted how helpful it might be if young people were introduced to network training in high school or college.

ENLARGED VIEWS OF LEADERSHIP

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he leaders were asked whether there was anything they wished they had known before they moved into leadership positions. They all said, “Of course!”

Hamilton remarked that this was something one can only know in hindsight. She pointed out that with each new leadership opportunity one asks better questions, but there are always challenges. Part of taking on new leadership roles, she said, is having the confidence that you can manage through the unknowns.

Corbett pointed out that leaders can be of many sorts, and we need to learn from these differences. Staff who lead from behind are often the engines and are important leaders. Thus, we may need to redefine what we mean by the term leaders. Corbett believes that business leaders and employers have a responsibility to invest in staff so that they will be ready for leadership. Leaders sometimes worry that if they invest in staff training, then the staff will leave. She counters with “What if you don’t train them and they stay?”

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Leadership calls for an array of different skills.

Although many see leaders as just telling people what to do, Hamilton emphasized that leaders need to be listeners and learners. According to Hamilton, no one can possibly have all the answers, but we all have an endless capacity to learn, to assess, to incorporate new findings. Leading means listening more and talking less.

Triandafillou added that we can’t really know beforehand what type of leadership will be needed. He believes that leadership is about jumping in, going where angels fear to tread. According to Triandafillou, “Someone said what differentiates good leaders from others is that they are ‘able to look around the corners and see what’s coming; look around corners.’”

Leadership challenges come in all sizes. For Hamilton, the best advice she ever received came from Doris Meissner, the former commissioner of the then US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). As Hamilton was taking on her first executive director role, Meissner told her that many of the decisions one needs to make as a leader are “51/49,” meaning that there isn’t a decisive path. In these situations, judgment matters. It is important to weigh both sides and make a decision that allows the team to move on. There are always consequences to decisions that can’t be foreseen, but it is important to manage through.

CONCLUSION

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aine is fortunate to be home to great leaders who can guide us all as we move through changing times. As we look across the various articles on leadership in this issue, we see the many changes that are occurring and the opportunities and challenges they represent.

Guidance and insights from leaders such as Susan Corbett, Kimberly Hamilton, and Peter Triandafillou point to ways we can prepare for those changes. ENDNOTES

1 The Faculty Fellows Program, coordinated by the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center, creates a network of trained faculty leaders who can communicate the importance of UMaine and their research to Maine citizens and organizations. The fellows serve as ambassadors to the legislature, business, and wider community. They are selected from departments across campus and are trained in core leadership and communication skills.

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Collaborative Leadership Is Key for Maine’s Forest Products Industry

by Brooke Hafford MacDonald, Lydia Horne, Sandra De Urioste-Stone, Jane Haskell, and Aaron Weiskittel

kinds of paper and wood products, demand for which will increase as The forest products industry is economically, socially, culturally, and environmentally both human population and standards of living increase. In addition, important to Maine. Thus, Maine’s future economy depends greatly on the leadership cross-laminated timber panels; tall in this industry. Effective leadership grows out of understanding the changes that are wood buildings; high-tech paper, taking place in the industry and finding innovative ways to address unexpected challengpanel, and packaging materials; es and emerging opportunities. During times of change, many industry leaders settle for wood-derived chemicals; bioenergy; maintaining the status quo. The forest products industry in Maine, however, is systemand nanomaterials all promise new atically assessing the ways the landscape is changing. Rather than continuing on the opportunities in wood products same path, the industry is gathering insights that could lead to a vibrant, but perhaps markets. Maine is poised to attract different, future. What we report here is an innovative process that actively solicits the capital investment needed to insights reflecting the diverse perspectives of those who work in different subsectors build new mills and value-added of the industry. What is emerging is evidence of the importance of collective leadership manufacturing opportunities for its that brings together different areas of knowledge. We report on the process, the emergforest products industry. ing findings, and the implications for leadership in moving forward.

Leadership should not focus on the little things; it should focus on the big things. With good leaderRESEARCH TO SUPPORT FUTURE ship, times of trouble can become times of opportunity.

LEADERSHIP DECISIONS To know what to do, industry leaders need information from diverse, knowledgeable voices. They need to seek aine’s forest and forest products industry are vital out different perspectives and weave them together. To to Maine’s economy. Recent estimates by the that end, we report on an extensive study aimed at University of Maine indicate that the total economic providing information that leaders in the forest industry impact of Maine’s forest products industry in 2016 can use in this challenging time. Our study was was $8.5 billion, representing 6 percent of state gross designed to identify Maine’s advantages for capturing domestic product (GDP) and approximately 4 percent emerging forest products markets and to determine the of state employment compared to $9.8 billion of challenges that government and industry leaders must economic impact generated in 2014 (MFPC 2016). overcome to capture such markets. Current and future Besides the downward effects on the forest industry’s leaders can use these data to better understand leadertotal economic contribution, the closures of six pulp ship qualities needed for decision making involving and paper mills between 2010 and 2016 also affected opportunities and challenges. over 7,500 jobs in the state. While ongoing efforts are This article summarizes key points from interviews focused on alleviating the short-term impact of these and focus groups with leaders in Maine’s forest prodchanges in rural communities, it is crucial that Maine ucts industry held between November 2017 and also develop a broad and long-term strategic plan to March 2018. To date, 24 individuals have participated promote and build its future forest products subsecin the study, representing the following categories: tors. Maine has the opportunity to capture growing (1) land management, (2) landownership, (3) logging, global demand for forest products, including various (4) transportation, (5) sawmills, (6) pulp and paper mills, Abstract

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(7) bioenergy, (8) forest-related professional services, and (9) forest-related professional groups.

The interviews and focus-group discussions offer revealing insights, suggestions, and visions for the future of Maine’s forest products industry. Themes for industry leaders emerged as the participants discussed what is working well, the biggest challenges, and key opportunities.

WHAT IS WORKING WELL Industry Cluster Maine’s forest leaders are increasingly recognizing the strength of working together. The different subsectors participating in this study are all highly codependent. The success of one subsector relies on the success of the others. A simplified chain of events illustrating codependence might look like this. Landowners depend on their land managers to oversee operations related to timber production. Land managers depend on contractors—loggers and truckers—to remove trees, prepare them for transport, and deliver them to mills. Different trees will go to different mills. Sawmills process hardwood species and large pine logs to produce furniture, flooring, and other building materials. Pulp and paper mills handle softwood trees such as balsam fir and spruce species, which are easily compressed into paper, boxboard, or tissue. The wood product left over from sawmills, chips, bark, sawdust, and other residuals, may go to a paper mill or biomass plant. Biomass plants compress wood waste into small briquettes and pellets, which are burned to produce heat or electricity. Energy and heat produced from biomass may be provided to businesses located near large biomass plants or sold elsewhere. Unlike many states, Maine has every piece of the cluster within its borders, so members of each subsector are able to form and maintain strong professional relationships.

Our study is showing that it will be important for industry leaders to continue to facilitate subsector cooperation. This includes making all pieces of the cluster easily accessible to other subsectors in the cluster.

Legislative leaders, when provided with relevant and timely information, can champion and support policies that favor and enhance continued subsector cooperation.

Additionally, leaders can continue to make the cluster accessible to new businesses to ensure growth, diversification, and the constant flow of new products and ideas as value is added within each subsector.

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Remaining Mills in Maine Pulp and paper mills that did not close—Sappi, Verso, and Woodland, for example—are still doing well.

In 2017, according to a Bangor Daily News article (February 8, 2017) Sappi, a global pulp and paper provider, announced a $165 million investment in a paper machine for its Skowhegan mill. In 2014, Woodland LLC, a pulp and paper mill based in Baileyville, announced a $120 million investment to add tissue-manufacturing capabilities (Bangor Daily News, March 13, 2014). This investment allowed Woodland LLC to diversify its product line and take advantage of a strong tissue market. This mill also distributes pulp to China, where demand far outweighs supply. According to an article in the Bangor Daily News (February 15, 2018), Verso paper recently announced it was upgrading and reopening their mill in Jay, which will provide 120 jobs, the same number of jobs lost when the mill closed in 2017.

Maine’s forest leaders are increasingly recognizing the strength of working together.

Switching from making paper to other products— boxboard/packaging, tissue, specialty papers—has been important for mills staying in business. For example, Sappi also produces dissolving wood pulp and develops textile and food applications (Bangor Daily News, February 28, 2014; April 24, 2016). Some participants in our study suggested that key elements for the sustainability of Maine’s forest resources industry include having a global presence, using cutting-edge technology, and developing innovative wood products.

While many pulp and paper mills have closed, sawmills continue to thrive or even grow. Participants said Maine’s sawmills are able to produce world-class products and are internationally competitive. Sawmills and remaining pulp and paper mills provide good wages and benefits to Maine workers. Because these mills are located in rural parts of Maine, the jobs are important for keeping these small communities alive.

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I come from a long line of loggers and mill operators, dating back to when my hometown, Allagash, Maine, was first settled in 1886. My great grandfather, Jim Hafford, was a cook at the lumber camps and also worked as a river driver. After felling trees with handheld bucksaws and axes, the men at these camps would prepare logs and load them onto horsedrawn sleighs. The sleighs would transport the logs to landings near the riverbanks for the winter, and after the spring thaw, the river drivers would release the logs into the open water. The icy, raging currents would sweep the logs to their destination, and the river drivers would ride rafts of logs as they traveled through the water. The men would jump from log to log, making sure the logs didn’t jam or get stuck on a rock or riverbank. The work was very dangerous.

Jim’s son, my grandfather Lee, also worked as a logger and a transporter. The introduction of chainsaws and motorized vehicles made his work a bit more tolerable. I say “a bit” because even with the increased mechanization that came during the early 1950s, these were still some of the most dangerous and physically demanding jobs available. And it wasn’t just the woods jobs: my maternal grandfather, Elmer McBreairty, owned and operated his own cedar sawmill and reminded me of the dangers of his work every time he raised his weathered, two-fingered left hand.

When my father, Michael L. Hafford, was in his twenties, he bought a skidder and started working in the woods. The work was still challenging, and he was faced with either not having any work at all or spending significant time away from his family. He never encouraged my brother or me to work in the woods. I have never held a forestry-related job, but I have always carried a great amount of respect for those who continue these traditions. Forestry occupations are essential for rural Maine. And the Maine logger archetype—rugged, strong, flannel-wearing men (and women)—is as much a part of the Maine identity as the lobsterman, hunter, and potato or blueberry farmer.

In the 1980s, retired teacher Faye O’Leary Hafford, my grandmother, began keeping written records of Allagash folklore. She compiled interviews, old stories, poems, songs, and recipes, and eventually published them as short books. Most of her publications were

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Allagash river drivers. Photo courtesy of Faye O’Leary Hafford. inspired by the North Woods timber industry. In the introduction to the book The Fall of the Forest: Tales of the Last Generation, she wrote: I am writing this book for the men and women who are still trying to make a living in the lumber industry and for those who had to give up for one reason or another. Read their stories. Think about how they are feeling. Could we have done anything different to help them to have stayed in the industry? What will the future bring?

(Hafford 2001) Last fall, I joined a team of researchers who are using focus groups and interviews with current forest resources professionals to study Maine’s forest products. I was interested in learning about the status of the forestry industry as a whole. What is currently working well? What are the biggest challenges?

What are the most exciting opportunities? What does the industry aspire to look like in the future? As our research team conducted interviews and focus groups, I learned that many problems my family experienced—physical demands, high business costs, time spent away from families—are still experienced by workers in today’s forest industry. And there is a suite of new, complex challenges that older generations could not have predicted. The good news is that many industry leaders are willing to work together to solve the problems and promote the industry. Our research also revealed what it takes to be a good leader, particularly during a period of industry transition and what will be required of future leaders as the industry reinvents itself.

—Brooke Hafford McDonald

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diversifying their operations. They saw the need to adapt to changes in market conditions, such as recognizing demand for specialty paper production as well as thinking “outside the box.” Given that many rural communities are highly dependent on mill jobs, it is crucial to assess how open and prepared the residents are to job diversification and learning new skills. Investing in technology to increase efficiency will also be important for the future of Maine’s forestry industry. These and other investments will help Maine continue to produce world-class products and may facilitate new opportunities for access to global markets.

Integrity of Forests

Maine has a large, healthy wood basket. Ninety percent of the state remains forested (http://www .forestsformainesfuture.org/forest-facts/) despite being actively harvested for 200 years. Forestland tracts remain large, uninterrupted, and undeveloped as illustrated by aerial photos of the United States at night (Figure 1). The remarkable contrast shows eastern United States glowing brightly and very developed, while Maine is almost entirely dark. The bright lights of Boston, Quebec, Montreal, New York, and other nearby cities remind forest leaders of the opportunity that Maine is within a one-day drive of 70 million people (Curran 2017). Some participants noted that Maine’s mixed species forests regrow quickly and naturally without much interference or active management, which can lead to the production of diverse products and the capture of various markets.

Even though industry leaders are currently focused on Maine’s surplus of softwood, Maine’s ability to grow a good balance of hardwood and softwood is viewed as a positive for long-term strategies and product development opportunities.

Maine also has the highest percentage of sustainably managed forestland in the country and is a national leader in forest conservation easements. Maine landowners are environmentally responsible, seek certifications, and are committed to a high standard of conservation. Landowners and land managers consider ecological value while maintaining working forests.

As one participant noted, Maine citizens are interested in conservation while also interested in having working forests. Participants noted that it will be important for future leaders to balance wood harvesting while ensuring the forest remains intact for future generations.

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Consumers show a growing interest in sustainably sourced products. Leaders can appeal to the environmentally conscious consumers by highlighting Maine’s sustainable forest practices, emphasizing both the high-quality product and the responsible forestry practices. As leaders balance conservation and economic goals, they should promote forest certifications as a way to help build positive public relationships with Maine residents.

THE BIGGEST CHALLENGES High Cost of Business Start-up costs are not a unique concern for investors; they are felt across the industry. Logging and trucking contractors typically provide their own equipment—participants informed us that a single 18-wheeler hauling truck could cost up to $200,000. Additional overhead costs such as insurance, maintenance, and fuel are major expenses that fluctuate dramatically according to global situations and equipment age. In a 2007 interview with the Bangor Daily News (November 14, Figure 1:

Northeastern United States at Night (Photograph from NASA website 2012)

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2007), wood hauler Albert Raymond said: “My fuel bill last week was $2,200 for 10 loads of wood. That left $1,300 and out of that, I take my [truck] payments, insurance, tires….There’s supposed to be something left there for a wage, but for me, there’s nothing.” Several study participants echoed Raymond’s situation that the truckers’ wages become nonlivable after they pay their high overhead costs. Yet, one study participant reported that some young people in rural Maine are willing to assume massive debt simply to continue to live and work near where they are from, a financial risk that might not pay off.

High energy costs concerned participants across all subsectors. Maine’s extended winters and cold temperatures lead to high electricity use. While Maine’s energy costs are still lower than in other New England states, potential investors will find they are higher than the national average.

We cannot change Maine’s weather, but industry leaders can invest in more energy-efficient upgrades to reduce the cost associated with maintaining production.

They can replace energy-inefficient equipment and apply for grants to make larger upgrades to facilities. Leaders also noted that they must continue to lobby collectively for business-friendly tax laws that might include subsidies, incentives for sustainable energy upgrades, and tax considerations to alleviate contractors’ large start-up costs. Legislative leaders will play a pivotal role in helping the state’s forestry businesses thrive.

Workforce Maine has the oldest population coupled with one of the lowest birth rates in the United States (https:// factfinder.census.gov/). As such, the state faces the challenge of attracting and retaining young people to work in its businesses and enhance its tax base. The leaders who participated in our study all expressed concerns about the state’s aging workforce although specific labor issues varied across subsectors. Participants made the following points:

• The current workforce is good but old. What will happen when those workers retire?

• It is difficult to attract young talent for skilled positions. Maine has no research and development (R&D) hub, and drawing young talent to live in Maine is a challenge.

• If a business can attract a qualified worker to apply, that person may not accept the job offer

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because there are no job opportunities for the spouse, or good schools, or good hospitals.

• Young people are not as willing as people were in the past to spend time away from home, work long hours, or perform difficult manual labor, especially if the wages are not competitive, and there are other income options.

One solution suggested by participants is to be more active in schools—working with children and parents—to show that Maine has a thriving forestry industry with many opportunities for earning a living in rural Maine. Rather than assuming other people know about the industry, forest leaders could highlight current and emerging aspects and the benefits of forest-related jobs as a way to help youth consider Maine’s forestry industry as a viable career option. Positive media features about a growing, thriving industry are crucial to attract labor. Continued partnership with universities with forestry programs in New England will also be important for attracting and promoting skilled labor, especially without an R&D hub.

Multiple Use Several participants grappled with balancing management of lands for forestry purposes while also allowing use of the land by the public. Use of forestland can be particularly challenging for landowners, especially when people are destructive and cause financial burdens for the landowners. According to some participants, however, limiting or removing public access to lands is not a viable option. Their experiences revealed that some members of the public think they are owed access to the land and become upset if access is limited.

Some users leave trash; others destroy property or tear up roads with off-road vehicles. Hikers and cyclists are also in danger when log trucks are on the road. As one participant said, “It’s a fine line because, let’s face it, mountain bikes and logging trucks don’t mix.”

Solutions to these problems include increasing public awareness about the forest industry’s importance to the state of Maine and educating the public about safety hazards during what forest professionals call “unorganized use.” Forest industry leaders should clearly post information in different venues about where and when recreation can (or cannot) take place. By explaining the reasons for any restrictions, forestry leaders may reduce conflict surrounding multiple-use issues and increase safety for recreationists and forest professionals.

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Changing Weather Patterns

Maine forests are changing. One highly visible example is the change in the start of Maine’s maple syrup season, which used to start consistently in late February, but now often starts in January (Bangor Daily News, March 23, 2018). Another noticeable change is that beech trees, which are normally associated with areas of higher precipitation and temperatures, used primarily for firewood, and not as commercially valuable as species like sugar maple, appear to be taking over much of Maine’s forest (Bose et al. 2017). On the other hand, as one study participant noted, warmer weather might bring in more white pine, a highly valuable species. As Martin Dovciak, of the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, notes in a Bangor Daily News (February 26, 2017) interview, “It’s important to realize that the species composition that we are used to, in terms of forest management, might be different in the future.”

Warmer winters and earlier springs can result in a longer mud season, the period of time when the ground is soft and many forestry operations come to a halt.

Maine’s mud season historically began in mid- to late March and lasted through April, but in recent years, it has started as early as February (Bangor Daily News, March 4, 2017). While mud season is a well-known reality for the forestry industry, being out of work for longer periods has serious economic consequences.

Landowners lose money. Contractors are laid off for longer periods and may need to seek other work. One study participant mentioned that if his workers run out of unemployment benefits and are required to seek work elsewhere (in construction, for example), he risks losing a significant chunk of his labor force. Working when the ground is too soft also ruts soil surfaces. One participant explained how increased rutting can put a company’s environmental certifications in danger. Another noted that longer, warmer winters lead to more frequent freeze-thaw cycles and road washouts, which are expensive to repair.

As climate change continues to impact Maine’s forests, industry leaders are preparing to adapt. Improved understanding of predicted effects of climate change for the state of Maine will be an important step as forest leaders plan for the future. Collaboration and collective planning will make the industry better able to adapt when changes, shifts, and unpredictable events strike, thus increasing the industry’s long-term resilience. A collaborative planning process will also help the forestry MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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industry take advantage of emerging opportunities resulting from climate change.

KEY OPPORTUNITIES Market Opportunities The remaining pulp and paper mills in Maine are still successful and competitive due to their diversification of products via innovative development and production. Industry leaders see more such opportunities on the horizon and are already capitalizing on emerging markets.

...remaining pulp and paper mills in Maine are still successful and competitive due to their diversification of product….

Maine is strategically located near large domestic and international markets. Participants recognize that proximity to Boston, New York, Quebec, and Montreal is an excellent opportunity to increase market share. An additional opportunity would be to capitalize on the state’s existing deepwater ports in Portland, Bucksport, Searsport, and Eastport, which would make Maine even more competitive on an international scale. However, industry leaders warn that infrastructure, including roads, railroads, and ports, needs to be improved before this opportunity can be fully realized.

Mill owners are already expanding their business ventures, seizing product-diversification opportunities, and investing in new technology. Through product diversification and infrastructure improvements, leaders can help Maine’s forestry industry reach new markets while also increasing job stability.

Technological Advancement Several participants believe that technological advancements will create new opportunities to use Maine’s surplus wood pulp. In February 2018, two companies announced they were creating new plants to produce cross-laminated timber, a composite wood product strong enough to replace concrete in construction 95

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projects. SmartLam LLC, from Montana, announced it would open a $25 million dollar facility that would create 100 jobs. That same week, LignaTerra Global LLC, from North Carolina, announced it would open a $30 million dollar facility that would create 100 jobs in Millinocket (Portland Press Herald, February 16, 2018).

Maine Coasters and Bio-Boards is currently working with the University of Maine to develop innovative beverage coasters with softwood pulp and spent grain from local breweries (Bangor Daily News, March 27, 2018). This company was able to identify and capture a niche that capitalizes on Maine’s growing small-scale beer breweries while tapping into Maine’s surplus of pulp.

Technological advancements in the development of biofuels has recently gained traction. Companies such as the Ensyn Corporation in Ontario that provides fuel to Bates College in Lewiston take leftover mill wood and develop it into heating fuel (Portland Press Herald, February 21, 2017). According to an article in the Portland Press Herald (October 18, 2017), the University of Maine’s Forest Bioproducts Research Institute received $3.3 million from the Defense Logistics Agency to support research in converting wood fiber into jet fuel.

Industry leaders…recognize that university-private partnerships are critically important for advancing wood technology in the state.

Participants in our study also mentioned advancements in nanocellulose and fiberboard. Nanocellulose, which is derived from wood pulp, could replace plastics and other nonrecyclable material used in packaging (coatings in potato chip bags, for example), and their use in paper coatings may even replace disposable, plastic biomedical tools (Bangor Daily News, April 5, 2018). Low-density fiberboards, also known as insulation boards, are made from wood chips and shavings and have the potential to replace traditional foam insulation commonly used in the ceilings and walls of homes (Portland Press Herald, August 17, 2017).

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Industry leaders in our study recognize that university-private partnerships are critically important for advancing wood technology in the state. New products developed through technological advancement can use the state’s current abundance of wood pulp and bring jobs back to our rural communities. However, participants cautioned that just because it works in the lab does not mean it will work for a business—new technologies need to be tested in real-world settings. Study participants also noted that new technologies could attract different sources of labor with different specialties, which could potentially support an R&D hub in the long term.

Inspiration from Europe Several industry leaders in our study have visited or studied forestry practices in Europe—Finland and Sweden, for example—and say that Maine can learn from these areas. Leaders are impressed by how much the public and government support the forestry industry in these countries and are inspired by how communities there are able to sustain themselves almost exclusively with wood. One participant stated that Maine and Finland have nearly the same amount of forestland (19 million acres and 23 million acres, respectively), but “Finland has twenty paper mills while Maine is down to six.” There are roughly 800 combined heat and power plants in Finland, one for every community; the fuel of choice is woody biomass (The Chronicle Herald, March 30 2018). Finnish communities are willing to support the local economy rather than depend on foreign oil, especially when the result is more environmentally friendly. So why are things so different? Can Maine also become more self-sustainable by using its own timber?

Several study participants noted that young people in Finland are educated about the importance of forestry, which results in widespread, sustained public support.

The Finnish government is also supportive and has made extensive investments in R&D (IIF 2017). Perhaps the primary reason for Finnish support for the wood industry, however, is the actual cost of energy. One Maine leader told us that in Finland oil is heavily taxed and that a single gallon of gasoline can cost up to $12.

This participant also said that other energy sources are subsidized—much more so than they are in Maine— which makes biomass costs more competitive. This is illustrated, participants said, by the significant increase in Maine wood pellet sales when oil prices rise. Study 96

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participants suggested that Mainers would also show the same kind of support if oil prices remained high.

Networking with Europeans, continuing to examine the success of European practices, and emulating what works well could, participants said, help industry leaders increase public support, government support, market competitiveness, and demand for wood products. Continuing to foster university-private partnerships will be important to expand investment in sustainable bioenergy research and product innovation.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR THE FUTURE?

B

ased on what we have heard from the focus group and interview participants, Maine’s forest products industry has much to be hopeful about, but there are areas that need improvement. Forest industry leaders should continue to work cooperatively, between subsectors, across land-use groups, and maybe even across continents, as they create essential partnerships. In addition to business partnerships, the industry needs to obtain community buy-in and political cooperation to create an atmosphere of acceptance and support for business development. Industry leaders recognize they must look for new opportunities, management strategies, and technologies so they can think globally, while acting for the benefit of local communities.

Participants identified that this current period of rapid change for the forestry industry has the potential for economic, political, and social instability. Conversely, participants are also excited about the industry’s prospects, its growth, new products, and potential. Maine’s sustainable management practices will enable the forest industry to grow and thrive in an environmentally friendly way. Addressing concerns about negative press and multiple use conflicts are key to maintaining the social sustainability of the industry, while diversification, new markets, and technological advancements can help the industry absorb economic uncertainty. Continuing to be involved in more positive promotion of the industry, marketing efforts, connecting with communities, networking with other forestry professionals, strengthening university-private partnerships, and lobbying legislative leaders will all be increasingly important steps to overcome the challenges identified by participants to ensure a resilient forestry industry for Maine’s future.

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Generations of Maine foresters have faced uncertainty. This study has strengthened the beliefs of its participants and authors, that with a proactive view and preparation, combined with collaborations across the subsectors and in collaboration with universities, industry changes will benefit the state as a whole. As industry leaders continue to talk, share, and listen to each other, the future they envision is very bright indeed. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Our research was funded by the US Forest Service, State and Private Forestry, and USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture: Agriculture Economics and Rural Communities grant. We thank our interview and focus group participants for sharing their expertise and supporting our study. We thank Linda Silka (Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions, University of Maine) for her wisdom and guidance as we developed this project. We thank our undergraduate researchers, Nathaniel Burke, Asha Dimatteo-LePape, and Hope Kohtala (School of Forest Resources, University of Maine), for their assistance with interviews and focus groups. We also thank Brian Roth (Cooperative Forestry Research Unity, School of Forest Resources, University of Maine), Robert G. Wagner (Department of Forestry and Natural Resources, Purdue University), Sarah Curran (Maine Development Foundation), and the Maine Forest Products Council for their support.

REFERENCES Bose, Arun, Aaron Weiskittel, and Robert G. Wagner. 2017.

“A Three Decade Assessment of Climate‐Associated Changes in Forest Composition across the North‐ Eastern USA.” Journal of Applied Ecology 54(6): 1592– 1604. doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.12917 Curran, Sarah. 2017. “Vision and Roadmap for Maine’s Forest Sector.” Presented at Maine Forest Products Council Annual Meeting, Sebasco Harbor, ME. September 18. http://maineforest.org/wp-content /uploads/2017/09/Roadmap-presentation-9-18-2017.pdf Hafford, Faye O’Leary. 2001. Fall of the Forest: Tales of the Last Generation. Fort Kent, ME: St. John Valley Times Print Shop.

IIF (Invest in Finland). 2017. Finland Fact Book 2018.

Helsinki: IIF https://www.investinfinland.fi/documents /162753/197730/Finland+Fact+Book/7b46dfaa-209f-4e27 -9147-3b7ed6624d8a MFPC (Maine Forest Products Council). 2016. Maine’s Forest Economy. Augusta: MFPC.

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Brooke Hafford MacDonald is a master’s student in ecology and environmental sciences at the University of Maine. Her research interests are in applied ecology and human dimensions of conservation biology and natural resource management.

She received her B.A. in human ecology from the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine.

Lydia Horne is a Ph.D. student in ecology and environmental sciences at the University of Maine. Her research interests are human dimensions of climate change and natural resource management. She received her B.S. in conservation biology from St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, and her M.S. in forest resources from the University of Maine.

Sandra De Urioste-Stone is an assistant professor of naturebased tourism in the School of Forest Resources at the University of Maine. She is an applied social scientist, working on various aspects of collaborative management of natural resources in the United States and Latin America.

She has also worked for a conservation nonprofit organization on community-based tourism and sustainable development in Guatemala.

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Jane Haskell is an extension professor at University of Maine Cooperative Extension. She has 25 years experience in helping communities increase their vitality and has trained hundreds of citizens to be more effective community facilitators using an award-winning, internationally used curriculum she coauthored. Her recent online, public value education programs help nonprofits identify and practice methods to tell how their organizations benefit users and, as importantly, those who do not use their service, thereby increasing community vitality.

Aaron Weiskittel is a professor of forest biometrics and modeling and the Irving Chair of Forest Ecosystem Management in the University of Maine’s School of Forest Resources. He is the director of the Center for Research on Sustainable Forests and the National Science Foundation’s Center for Advanced Forestry Systems. He has been at the University of Maine since 2008 after two years with Weyerhaeuser.

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