Four new Island Institute Fellows have accepted assignments at the request of island communities from Casco Bay to the Mount Desert region, bringing to eight the number of fellows who will live and work in these communities during the 2006-07 year.
Annie Tselikis (Stonington), David Steckler (North Haven), Alden Robinson (Long Island) and Scott Sell (Frenchboro) will bring their energy and expertise to projects including economic development, preschool and place-based education, and mapping town resources using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology.
The Island Institute matched the new fellows to their communities based on their skills and interests as they relate to the priorities outlined by their host towns. All communities that participate agree to support the new fellows in a variety of ways. Each community will provide mentors and advisers from community institutions and organizations to work closely with the fellows on their assigned projects. Towns requesting a fellow placement also agree to provide a financial contribution to each fellow, which may be in the form of funds or rent-reduced island housing.
Stonington Fellow Annie Tselikis will work as the town’s new Economic Development Coordinator, at the joint request of the town and the Stonington Opera House. Tselikis’s work will focus on using technology and media (including audio, video, websites, radio, and television) to enhance Stonington’s economic development goals. Her goal will be to create and sustain a supportive and positive climate for year-round businesses in Stonington. Among her tasks will be to create and implement a “buy local” campaign for the town, develop and publicize an online guide to business development in Stonington, and coordinate a two-town community access cable channel.
Tselikis, who is from Cape Elizabeth, received her undergraduate degree from Connecticut College, with a major in Culture and Documentary Studies. She spent a semester with the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, and a semester with the School for International Training: Multicultural and Social Change in Cape Town, South Africa. Most recently, she was employed as a deckhand on Casco Bay Lines.
“The various experiences that I have had living and spending time in diverse communities make me confident in my ability to live a life on an island or in a remote coastal town,” said Tselikis.
Environmental education is the special skill that North Haven’s new fellow, David Steckler, will bring to his new assignment at the North Haven Community School. Steckler will work with school faculty and a wide variety of community organizations on the island to develop and support place-based education projects, activities and curriculum in the school.
Steckler, with a master’s degree in ecological training and learning from Lesley University, and a B.A. in environmental studies and economics from Hobart and William Smith Colleges, has worked as a ninth grade biology and earth science teacher at the Hillside School in Marlborough, Mass., as math and science teacher at the North Country School in Lake Placid, NY, and as an Assistant Instructor with Hurricane Island Outward Bound School’s programs in Florida. He has also directed outdoor education programs at summer camps in Michigan and Massachusetts.
“I am excited by the opportunity to live in an island community where I can be of service as well as learn,” Steckler says. He and his artist wife, Laurie, are looking forward to life on North Haven.
The Town of Long Island’s ambitious plans have been limited only by the realities of a population too small to support the community’s many volunteer needs. Alden Robinson, the island’s new fellow, will be filling a critical role this year, assisting the town government with a host of community planning and GIS mapping needs. Robinson, who grew up in Bremen on Muscongus Bay, brings to his new assignment GIS skills honed while collecting and analyzing data for a World Bank-sponsored study of urbanization when he worked as a research assistant for the Williams College Department of Economics.
Robinson is a graduate of Williams College with a B.A. in American Studies/Maritime Studies. Like other Island Fellows who have contributed to the musical life of their communities, Robinson’s spare-time interests are likely to benefit the community’s social life. An avid Celtic fiddler for eight years, he spent a semester at the University College Cork, National University of Ireland, learning traditional Irish fiddle and performing with the university’s ceili band and traditional music ensemble.
Robinson is looking forward to his fellowship “because it promises to show me a familiar place in a new way.”
Frenchboro’s new Island Fellow, Connecticut native Scott Sell, will be bringing his strong liberal arts education and experience in broadcast and print journalism to a variety of projects on the island. These include working with teachers to develop curriculum materials, helping teach art, music and physical education classes, developing after-school programs for preschool and elementary school children, and writing grants for the schools and the town. One of the main goals for his fellowship is to help Long Island find the funds needed to set up telemedicine and instructional television programs on the island.
Sell received his B.A. in English with a concentration in Writing from Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland, where he was involved as a producer for the college’s student radio station. He spent an intensive semester with the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies in Portland, conducting documentary fieldwork, interviewing and archiving. He has also worked as a television production assistant in New York City, a freelance reporter for a Connecticut newspaper, and editor of Vagabond, a Baltimore-based art and literary magazine.
“I’d like to acquire all the essential understanding and skills of working with others so that I may someday teach what has inevitably changed the way in which I engage the world,” he says. “I feel if I can establish meaningful relationships over the course of the year while helping to serve a community, I will have succeeded.”
The four new Fellows will be joining a group of second-year Fellows that includes Jeremy Gabrielson (Machias), Siobhan Ryan (Swan’s Island/Frenchboro), Sarah Curran (Peaks Island), and Carly Knight (Chebeague). The Island Institute is still in the process of recruiting three new Island Fellows to work on Great Cranberry, Matinicus, and Islesboro. For more information on hosting–or becoming–a Fellow, contact Chris Wolff at 207-553-9006. q
Kathy Westra is the Island Institute’s Director of Communications.