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Joseph McDonnell is the president of the University of Maine at Farmington.
At the University of Maine at Farmington, students learn by doing. And that doing is often in the form of service to our community.
That’s why I was so excited last month to help local preschool students, Gordon Bell and Henry Schoepnner, cut the ribbon on the new UMF Sweatt-Winter Child Care and Early Education Center.
After nearly five decades of serving families in western Maine in a small space on our historic campus, the center has moved into a state-of-the-art 10,000-square-foot facility at 274 Front St. in Farmington.
More than doubling Sweatt-Winter’s size enables UMF to expand affordable access in the area to high-quality child care, including for the first time to infants and toddlers. That’s critical here, where many families depend on two incomes and thus rely on reliable care for their young children so they can get to work.
But expanding Sweatt-Winter doesn’t just help families in Franklin County.
The state’s severe shortage of early childhood educators is a crisis for caregivers and our economy. A report released last year by ReadyNation says that lack of care for infants and toddlers (children under age 3) costs our state $403 million each year in lost economic opportunity, which Maine parents and employers can ill afford.
I believe no single institution in the state has the potential to strengthen the size and skill of this essential workforce more than UMF, which offers degrees in early childhood education and early childhood special education. While Sweatt-Winter has always played a part in these programs, the intentional enhancements and expansion of this laboratory school have truly transformed their delivery and will also allow for a 20 percent enrollment increase.
Observation areas are strategically placed throughout the new center to help pre- and in-service educators who come from across Maine and beyond see and understand children’s play, behavior and learning styles, and develop and refine their own teaching practices. Meanwhile, an undergraduate/graduate classroom with live feeds to the children’s spaces allows our faculty and students to connect their coursework to real kids in real time.
With the addition of infant and toddler classrooms, not only is UMF meeting a huge need within our community, but through their hands-on teaching, practicum and paid work-study experiences at Sweatt-Winter, our students now have the opportunity to observe and teach children who are as young as 6-weeks-old. This ensures they’ll be well prepared to fill the industry’s most acute vacancies and care for the youngest Mainers in this critical stage of development with competence, compassion and confidence.
While it takes a village to raise a child, it takes dedicated public officials to secure the funds to allow that village to build and sustain facilities and programs to educate our children and those who will teach them.
Thankfully, we have such leaders in Maine. Funding for the major renovation of the former call center that is now Sweatt-Winter was provided by Gov. Janet Mills’ Maine Jobs and Recovery Plan, one-time Congressionally Directed Spending secured by U.S. Sen. Susan Collins and through a bond for University of Maine System supported by the Maine Legislature and statewide voters.
Early childhood lab schools like Sweatt-Winter are a win-win-win. They provide young children and college students excellent educational opportunities and parents peace of mind and the ability to participate fully in the economy.
As cornerstones of their communities, UMF and other public universities with education, research and service missions are uniquely well-positioned to support these innovative schools.
I was pleased to learn that Sen. Collins, vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and Sen. Angus King recently secured federal funding for similar centers at the University of Maine and at the Katahdin Higher Education Center — a joint venture of the University of Maine at Augusta and Eastern Maine Community College.
That’s a smart investment that will pay dividends for Maine’s future. Here in Farmington, we’re off to a very strong start.
