Olmstead receives Presidential Public Service Achievement Award

    ORONO — One of Aroostook County’s strongest advocates for community journalism was recognized during the University of Maine’s recent Academic Honors Convocation, held May 8 event at the Collins Center for the Arts.     Kathryn Olmstead, associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and associate professor of journalism, is the recipient of the Presidential Public Service Achievement Award. One of four esteemed UMaine professors honored during the ceremony, Olmstead was cited for her long-term service to the state and region as a volunteer editor, teacher and mentor for student journalists.
    “I am very touched and humbled by the hard work of my colleagues who nominated me for this award and the of people who gave them wonderful letters of support. It really represents an unusual intersection of my two lives — journalism teacher in Orono and magazine editor in Aroostook — which have been so separate for all these years. That the university should recognize both is a tremendous honor,” Olmstead said.
    In their letter of nomination, Associate Deans Amy Fried and Virginia Nees-Hatlen wrote: “Kathy’s profile of service has deeply enriched her work on campus. To have a faculty member and associate dean who is so embedded in our regional communities has raised the university’s profile and reputation and has enabled the University of Maine to do a better job in reaching out and telling the story of the university’s accomplishments.”
    A native of Battle Creek, Mich., with degrees in English from the Universities of Illinois and Wisconsin, Olmstead taught high school English and journalism in Wisconsin and New Hampshire before moving to Maine in 1974. She also worked in public relations for the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre and served as resident parent for the Concord, N.H., A Better Chance Program.
    After she and her husband settled on an abandoned farm in Westmanland, Olmstead served as district correspondent for the Bangor Daily News, then reporter and eventually editor of the weekly Aroostook Republican and News in Caribou. She also taught journalism at University of Maine campuses in Presque Isle and Fort Kent.
    From 1979 to 1984, Olmstead was regional representative for U.S. Senator William S. Cohen, maintaining his Presque Isle office and serving six months in Washington, D.C., as assistant press secretary. She was also the Maine correspondent for national and regional agricultural newspapers based in Kansas and Vermont.
    Olmstead joined the UMaine journalism faculty in 1984, where she taught print journalism and media ethics until becoming associate dean in 2003. In 1988, she co-founded ECHOES: Rediscovering Community, a quarterly magazine celebrating the cultural heritage and beauty of northern Maine, which she has edited after-hours for 20 years and continues to publish from her home in Caribou.
    “As editor of ECHOES, she has given an invaluable gift to the people of Aroostook County and beyond … That publication has given voice to all our feelings of pride about our home,” wrote Senator Susan Collins in support for the nomination.
    Olmstead also founded the Maine Center for Student Journalism at UMaine to foster the practice and teaching of journalism in Maine secondary schools, serving as its director from 1993 to 2004. “In founding and directing the Maine Center for Student Journalism, Kathy’s efforts have served the entire state. At the same time, Kathy’s work has been crucial in serving and empowering one of the ‘two Maines,’ in particular, the section of the state with lesser economic assets and critical stores of cultural and environmental resources,” wrote Fried and Nees-Hatlen.
    In addition to inspiring young Maine writers’ aspirations in journalism, she has played an integral role in an evolving conversation about the meaning, challenges and future of rural communities through her work on the magazine and as a board member for state press and cross-national organizations. Her achievements in journalism have been recognized with awards from the New England Scholastic Press Association, the Maine Centers for Women, Work and Community, the Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources, the Maine Chapter of the American Association of University Women, the Gannett Foundation, the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, the New England Press Association and the Maine Press Association.