In This Issue

Fall/Winter 2005
Volume 1 • Issue 2

Professors Receive
Allan Meyers Award

Director’s Corner

UM Students Receive
National Award

Center Updates Acronym

Prevention Center
of Excellence

$2.9M Reading Program Grant

Director Named
AUCD President

New Leadership for CAC

Search Tool Facilitates
Access to MEC Training

Grant to Increase Access
to Volunteer Opportunities

Intervention Methods
Subject of Conference

Screening Instrument
Under Development

Co-Instructional Model
Developed by CCIDS

Center Staff Star in
New Video

Guest Column:
CAC Member Tours
South Africa

Brain Research Informs
Best Practice

Partnership for EC
Health Formed

Presentations & Publications

CenterPoint Home

New Leadership for Community Advisory Committee

In a move to support a national trend by University Centers for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities (UCEDDs) to increase consumer participation in advisory committee activities, the Center for Community Inclusion and Disability Studies’ Community Advisory Committee (CAC) recently adopted a new co-chair leadership structure. This change, according to committee bylaws, requires that at least one of the elected co-chairs meet the definition of ‘consumer’ as an individual with a disability or a family member.

Responding to the shift in structure, members of the CAC recently voted to name Gail Fanjoy, of Katahdin Friends, Inc., Millinocket, and Maryann Preble, of Speaking Up For Us of Maine (SUFU), Augusta, co-chairs of the committee for the next two years. Fanjoy and Preble replace long-time chair, Clare Collins. Collins is the Executive Director of Sunrise Associates in Wells and a family member. Collins will continue to represent the Center with the Council on Consumer Affairs (COCA) of the Association of University Centers on Disability (AUCD).

“Despite the best of all our intentions, adults with disabilities are still largely living lives of segregation, poverty, and isolation,” Fanjoy stated recently. “I see my role [as co-chair] as helping the CAC to reflect where our past efforts have made a difference and where we might have an impact in the future.”

All three committee leaders attended the September 2005 Alliance for Full Participation (AFP) Many Voices, One Vision Summit in Washington, D.C. Prior to attending, Preble, who also serves as Chair of SUFU, stated she hoped to learn more about how COCA is addressing issues on a national level in order to bring the information back to the CAC, as well as SUFU. In her role as co-chair of CAC, Preble said she would like to see the committee “do more to raise awareness” and strengthen bonds with the Center’s “sister” institutions, the Maine Developmental Disabilities Council (DDC) and Maine Disability Rights Center (DRC) during the next two years.

Fanjoy is also hopeful of strengthening partnerships over the next two years by collaborating with the CAC to stage a retreat. She also expressed the goals of increasing the diversity of CAC membership and creating “ambassador roles” for committee members “to more effectively share information about the Center’s mission and accomplishments.”

— Kimberly Sawtelle