Twitter
Facebook
Reddit
Digg
Tell us what you think!Send a letter to the editor about this or any other article in The Maine Campus.
For the past two decades, a weekly lunchtime lecture has been held by the University of Maine’s Women in the Curriculum and Women’s Studies Program. Faculty members and other guest speakers talk about women’s studies and related subjects.
The Women’s Walking Tour is a personal project of Sandra L Caron, Ph.D., Professor of Family Relations/Human Sexuality. “The goal is to highlight some of the amazing UMaine women and the contributions and accomplishments they have made and continue to make in shaping the state’s largest public university.” Caron said.
Caron’s inspiration for the project came from her time as a student at the University. She said she was getting a tour around campus from a male who pointed out all of the male accomplishments of the school. From then on she wondered what contributions women had made.
The Women’s Walking Tour is a self-guided tour that uses the iPointer, a device developed at the University of Maine. The iPointer lets users point at any building and is able to register what it is by using the angle of orientation and GPS technology. More information on how the iPointer works can be found at http://www.i-spatialtech.com.
During the presentation, Chris Frank of Intelligence Spatial Technologies took a group outside and demonstrated how the iPointer works. Frank said that from the steps of Fogler Library, the iPointer could register the Memorial Gym at the other end of the University Mall. When the iPointer is pointed at any building on campus, an audio file is transmitted to the iPointer, “which includes highlights of women’s contributions from the earliest days of our university,” and “women’s contributions today in such areas as politics, education, science, athletics and the arts,” Caron said.
Caron said she has been working on the script for the past three years. Faculty member Margaret Nagle helped her with the editing and Mike Scott helped put materials together. Caron spent a lot of her time in Fogler Library doing research. She says she used what she referred to as the “snowball technique” to find out about contributions made by women at the university. Caron personally e-mailed and communicated with hundreds of women on campus. “I asked each of them for suggestions of women who they felt should be included and then wrote to those women asking for their information, as well as their suggestions of who else to include,” Caron said.
The tour is divided into four sections, with Fogler Library in the center.
There is also a Web-based version of the tour that will be running soon. On the Web site, http://www.umaine.edu/walkingtourome, people can click on the building they want to know about and can either listen to or read a part of the script.
Two of the five women who did voice-overs are Naomi Cyr and Emily Cain. Both spoke at the lecture about how much they had learned being a part of the project. Emily Cain is a state representative who is also the coordinator of advancement for the honors college. Though he was unable to attend, Kim Mitchell was the person who did all of the work pertaining to the voice-overs. He did the recording and the editing.
Ann Maxim, senior women administrator and director of Academic Support Services for Athletes also spoke at the lecture. She showed how some of the material from the Script of the North tour, which focuses on athletics, was put on large posters for display for the Nation Girls and Women in Sports Day back in February.
Caron has made some updates to the tour and hopes to continue in keeping it current to recognize future women.
Bangor Daily News