Lucy Creevey - Microfinance... The Magic Bullet?
Date: January 22, 2010
Location: Birch Bay Village Inn
Time: Lunch 11:30; Lecture 12-1:00. Call the ASC office 288-9500 for reservations!
Description: Microfinance is the provision of financial services to low-income people who traditionally lack access to banking and related services. The principle component of microfinance is micro-credit or small loans but microfinance schemes may include savings schemes, training, introduction of new technologies and assistance with marketing and other business development services. This talk explores the impacts of microfinance schemes on those who have received loans in the poorest sectors of the population in developing countries. It asks the question whether the claims about the importance of these schemes to the ending of poverty and the stimulation of long term economic growth are valid. Is micro credit- the essential component of microfinance schemes - the magic bullet on which donors and government agencies should depend?
Lucy Creevey is Professor of Political Science Emeritus at the University of Connecticut and formerly was Director of the Program in Appropriate Technology and Energy Management for Development and Professor of City and Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania. She has been conducting research on the impacts of micro finance programs in the developing world since the 1980s.
Date: November 20, 2009
Location: Birch Bay Village Inn
Time: Lunch 11:30; Lecture 12-1:00. Call the ASC office 288-9500 for reservations!
Description: Is Maine out of the Ice Age completely and, if not, when and how will the next glacial phase start? And what does “global warming” have to do with these questions? Dr. Harold W. Borns, Jr. will address these timely questions in an Acadia Senior College Eat and Edify program, "Maine and the Current Ice Age” at Birch Bay Village on Friday, November 20 at noon.
The Ice Age is made up of at least nine 100,000 year long glacial periods during the last 2.5 million years, separated by short 10,000 year long
interglacial periods like we're now experiencing. Maine was completely deglaciated the last time about 9000 years ago. As Professor Emeritus of
Ice Age Geology at University of Maine, Dr. Borns brings a lifetime of study to answering the question: What comes next?
Dr. Borns has lead research expeditions in Maine and the Northeast, Antarctica, Greenland, India, Ireland, Norway, and the Yukon. He directed
Polar Glaciology within the U.S. Antarctic Program of the National Science Foundation. He was founding Director of the Climate Change Institute
(formerly The Institute for Quaternary Studies), and has received many honors in his field, including the naming of Borns Glacier in Antarctica.
China's Rise - What Can We Learn?
Date: October 23, 2009
Location: Birch Bay Village Inn
Time: Lunch 11:30; Lecture 12-1:00. Call the ASC office 288-9500 for reservations!
Description: In the past decade, China’s rapid rise has contrasted with United States difficulties and failures. How and why has China done so well? The Chinese economy is about ten times larger than a generation ago. Perhaps 400 million people have moved up from poverty into the world middle class. China is the world’s factory and holds the world’s largest financial reserves. Every American now owes the government of China about $4000, and this debt grows with every US deficit year.
China has sailed through the world economic crisis with its growth rate now back at 8%. China is at peace. Its world prestige is increasing. The People’s Liberation Army is acquiring advanced military technologies. The Chinese people, nationalists to the core, see their country on a roll; 87% say they are satisfied, compared to 36% in the US. Around the developing world, China’s peaceful rise is compared to American wars and the collapse of Wall Street, and China is increasingly seen as the country to learn from and to follow.
A Chinese leader recently remarked that China once learned from the American teacher, but it seems the teacher has now failed. So it may be time to ask what we, in our present difficulties, might learn from China’s success.
Seth Singleton studied Russian history and literature at Harvard and political science at Yale, where his dissertation on the Congo crisis won a national prize from the American Political Science Association. He has taught in colleges and research universities, been a Fellow at the Harvard Russian Research Center, and was academic dean of Pacific University in Oregon and of a new university in Ecuador. He has lived and worked in Tanzania, Russia, Ecuador, and Vietnam, and for shorter periods in China and Mongolia, and has lectured in about twenty countries, sometimes on behalf of the US government. Dr. Singleton lives in Hall Quarry and now teaches at the University of Maine.
The Psychology of Time
Date: September 25, 2009
Location: Birch Bay Village Inn
Time: Lunch 11:30; Lecture 12-1:00. Call the ASC office 288-9500 for reservations!
Description: The mantle is passed… Tom Watt steps into Art Dole’s rather large shoes (metaphorically speaking), as Art retires from the position of host for the former Lunch & Learn Series. The newly named Eat and Edify will begin on September 25 with Art Dole as speaker.
Art will talk about The Psychology of Time. His background is as a licensed psychologist and a psychology professor in Hawaii and Pennsylvania. He retired with emeritus status in 1988 as professor and chair of the Psychology in Education Division of the University of Pennsylvania.
Jim Clunan: Not Since Lincoln: How is Obama Doing?
Date: May 22, 2009
Location: Birch Bay Village Inn
Time: Lunch 11:30; Lecture 12-1:00. Call the ASC office 288-9500 for reservations!
Description: No American President since Lincoln has come to office facing as many problems
simultaneously as has Obama.
In foreign affairs, Truman and his successors through Reagan faced the single great challenge of the Cold War, namely, a nuclear-armed adversary able to destroy our civilization. Obama faces at least six: the “New Balkans” from Palestine to Pakistan, global terror networks, nuclear proliferation, the rise of China and India, energy and the environment, and global pandemic.
On May 22 we will hear Jim Clunan’s thoughts on how well Obama is doing in dealing with the foreign policy demands his new administration faces.