As you prepare to engage with the Lewiston-Auburn community, the materials below can orient you and build your understanding of the assets, opportunities, and challenges that exist in our area. Bates students have created these resources with faculty supervision as part of community-engaged learning courses, the Short-Term Action Research Team, and independent research projects. Every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the content, but we encourage you to use these resources in consultation with a range of other materials as you build your own understanding of our community. 

New Resources!

Black Artistry, Beauty, Self-Expression, and Community: Stories and Experiences from Black Barbershops and Salons in Lewiston/Auburn, Maine
A work of public scholarship, produced by the professors and students of Africana 100 at Bates College, Fall 2023

Embodying Activism 2023
A narrative and photographic profile of select Maine-based activists who served as community educators for the First Year Seminar, Embodying Activism, during Fall 2023.

Story Maps

The projects linked below were created as part of the Harward Center’s 2020-2021 Action/Research Team to help orient students to the partners they will be work with and the issues they will be encountering for their community-engagement work.

Kerry Manuel, “The L/A Community Engaged Experience“
Student accounts of their experiences working at a wide range of local partner sites.

Caroline Davis and Emma Morehouse-Hulbert, “Volunteering in L/A’s K-12 Public Schools”
An orientation to community-engagement in the L/A public school systems

Eliana Al-Konsul and Georgia Moses, “L/A Afterschool Programs”
An orientation to the wide range of local afterschool programs

Kate O’Loughlin, “Community Food Systems in Lewiston/Auburn and Maine”
An overview of opportunities and challenges in food production, distribution, and sustainability. 

Annika Mirchandani, “Food Insecurity and Lewiston and Auburn”
A closer look at hunger and food insecurity in the local community

Liz Casey, “Franco-American History in Lewiston/Auburn”
An orientation to history of the large Franco-American population of Lewiston-Auburn

Emma Johnston, “Public Health: Lead Poisoning”
An orientation to lead poisoning and housing challenges in Lewiston-Auburn, and the organizations working to address the problem

James Calhoon, “Public Health: Racial Disparities in Access to Healthcare”
An overview of the historical roots of racial disparities in access to healthcare, and an introduction to local partners working to address this issue in Lewiston-Auburn

Annotated Bibliographies

Students have created the annotated bibliographies linked below as part of classes, research projects, and the Short-Term Action Research Team. 

Maddie Santizo ’16, “Resources for Students and Faculty about Somali Communities in Maine,” 2016.
This annotated bibliography from the 2016 STA/RT cohort offers assessments of a range of resources that can help orient you to the history of Somali population of Maine, with a particular focus on the Somali Bantu Population. 

Aidan Richman, “Industrial Architecture in Lewiston,” 2019. 
This annotated bibliography from the 2019 First-Year Seminar, Lewiston: A Local Lens on Global Issues, offers an introduction to resources for learning about the architectural history of the mills of Lewiston. 

Course-Created Resources

Black Artistry, Beauty, Self-Expression, and Community: Stories and Experiences from Black Barbershops and Salons in Lewiston/Auburn, Maine
A work of public scholarship, produced by the professors and students of Africana 100 at Bates College, Fall 2023

Embodying Activism 2023
A narrative and photographic profile of select Maine-based activists who served as community educators for the First Year Seminar, Embodying Activism, during Fall 2023.

Climate Change in Maine
Students in Elizabeth Rush Mueller’s short-term course in 2016 interviewed individuals from a wide range of communities and industries to help document the impact of climate change on Maine. This Story Map includes interviews, recordings, and analysis from their project. 

Wabanaki Place Names of Western Maine
As part of their coursework for the short-term course, Wabanaki History in Maine, students compiled Wabanaki place names and their definitions, and mapped their locations. 

Oral Histories

For their final assignment in the First-Year Seminar, Lewiston: A Local Lens on Global Issues, students interviewed a range of community partners about their experiences responding to the COVID-19 pandemic (learn more about this project here). Their interviews were preserved in a collection of COVID-19 oral histories for the Lewiston Public Library as part of broader initiative by Maine Public Libraries to document the pandemic. In addition to providing insight into the community’s experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic, the oral histories linked below can help to build your understanding of our partner organizations and the wider community. 

• COVID-19 Oral History with Klara Tammany, Sophia’s House resident & former Director of the Center for Wisdom’s Women
• COVID-19 Oral History with Heritier Nosso, Health Promotion Coordinator at Healthy Androscoggin, Community Organizer, and Attorney-at-Law in Democratic Republic of Congo
• COVID-19 Oral History with Alyssa Morgosh, The Root Cellar
• COVID-19 Oral History with Catherine Ryder, Executive Director of Tri-County Mental Health Services
• COVID-19 Oral History with Chris Bicknell, Executive Director of New Beginnings 
• COVID-19 Oral History with Adam Platz, President of Baxter Outdoors and Operations Manager at Baxter Brew Pub
• COVID-19 Oral History with Mohamed Ali Ibrahim, Maine People’s Alliance
• COVID-19 Oral History with Chris White and Noah Riskind of Rosati Leadership Academy, a youth soccer and leadership training program
• COVID-19 Oral History with David Bell, Owner/Operator of Bell Farms in Auburn
• COVID-19 Oral History with Mohamed Dekow, Director of the Sustainable Livelihoods Relief Organization, and member of Isuken Co-Op, and New Roots Farm
• COVID-19 Oral History with Deb Marron, Activities Coordinator Clover Healthcare (senior care) 
• COVID-19 Oral History with Vicky Wiegman, Substance Use Prevention Coordinator/Counselor, Lewiston High School Guidance office

SCARAB Repository of Student Research

Before beginning a research project on an issue relating to the Lewiston-Auburn community, please review the collection of previous student research in SCARAB carefully in order to ensure that you are building on rather than repeating the work that others have done. This maximizes the impact of your work and avoids overburdening our partners and community members. There are a number of pages in SCARAB devoted specifically to community-engaged work and resources for building understanding of the community. These include:

Community Engaged Research Reports 
A repository of the projects submitted for ES 417: Community-Engaged Research in Environmental Studies

Harward Center for Community Partnerships 
This page serves as a repository for our Harward Center Annual Reports, which include listings of research projects undertaken as part of courses and student research, as well as several bibliographies that students in Professor Elizabeth Eames’ classes compiled of resources relating to the arrival of Somalis in Lewiston.