About the Fellowship Program
The Franco-American Collection piloted our Teaching with Franco-American Collections Faculty Fellowship in Fall 2021. The fellowship awards four (4) University of Southern Maine faculty members $500 to use Franco-American Collection items in their classrooms and raise students’ interest in archives, primary sources, and Franco-American history and culture. The fellowship is open to all University of Southern Maine Faculty, full or part time, undergraduate or graduate, all ranks, including lecturers.
Previous fellowship projects have included:
- Laima Sruoginis’ Creative Writing class in spring 2023 tasked students with formulating a travel writing piece about the history of Franco-Americans in Lewiston. To gather information for their papers, they either visited the Franco-American Collection for an in-person or virtual tour, or used the Specialized Collections mobile app to explore downtown Lewiston with one of our pre-created walking tours.
- Kari Payne’s Early Childhood Education class at the University of Maine, Farmington in fall 2022 were encouraged to develop a lesson plan that explored history through play, with a focus on the history of snowshoeing among Franco-Americans. Students used craft supplies to create “snowshoes” and then developed lesson plans of their own with different historical elements incorporated.
- Cassandra Dove’s Honors Technical Writing class in fall 2022 learned about how to use and cite archival materials, and find them online at the Collections’ Digital Commons site. The students included information they found there in cluster maps, along with secondary sources, which they then used to write a paper.
To learn more about all recent USM class visits to the Collection, take a look at our “classes” page.
For more information, and to apply, follow this link or email anna.faherty@maine.edu with questions. Phone call preferred? Call Anna at (207) 753-6545.