For the past 20 years, I have had the privilege of instructing students at the University of New England’s Biddeford Campus. I am not an expert in the marine sciences or environmental sciences or one of the other signature programs that draw students from across the U.S. to our idyllic waterfront campus. I am a humanities person. I have spent my career teaching creative writing, composition, American literature, British literature, and global humanities to the occasional English and history major, but mostly to students who aspire to careers in other fields.

But I wouldn’t trade my career for anything. It has brought me great joy to kindle a spark of interest in the humanities in students who may not have felt one previously. And I’d like to think the doctors, dentists, physical therapist, scientists, and other exceptional professionals my former students have gone on to become have benefited from the curiosity, multi-disciplinary mindset, tolerance for ambiguity, and other attributes engagement with the humanities helps us develop.

Ten years ago, I took on a second position at UNE as a fellow in its Portland-based Center for Global Humanities (CGH). In so doing, I joined a program that welcomes scholars from across the humanities fields to UNE’s Portland Campus for the Health Sciences for monthly lectures and films. These events are always free and open to the public. And through the years, they have engendered a dedicated following of Portland residents, both young and not-so-young, representing a full range of life experiences, who gather to share in the communal experience of exploring topics that help us understand the human condition more deeply.

I have always thought that more than providing intellectual sustenance, the Center’s programming offers something of a salve for the increasing disconnection and isolation many of us feel in our frantic modern lives.

While I have long cherished the CGH community I have helped to build in Portland, as a Saco resident I have always felt a little bittersweet as I’ve steered my Subaru onto I-95 North one Monday night a month for these events in Portland. I have long suspected that my friends and neighbors in the Twin Cities and surrounding towns would derive the same pleasure from the Center’s events as I do … if only they were a bit closer to home.

That is why I am so very glad to share the news that the Center for Global Humanities is, at long last, expanding to UNE’s Biddeford Campus. In addition to hosting four events per semester in Portland, the Center will now be offering events in Biddeford, too.

This decision was not made lightly, but with the full confidence that my friends and future friends in the Saco, Biddeford, Old Orchard Beach, and Kennebunk communities will turn out to help build a new community together – a Center for Global Humanities-South, if you will. I have witnessed the way members of these towns have supported our Biddeford-based President’s Forum series, which hosts conversations around the difficult topics that too often divide us in today’s hyper-polarized society, and I am sure you will find our CGH events meaningful and enriching as well.

If you join us, you will find great talks awaiting you from visitors who help us understand our world and our place within it more deeply. But more than that, you will find fellowship in a world of ideas, and you will enjoy participation in a community experience that leaves you feeling a little bit more connected and more hopeful than when you walked in the room.

I hope you will join us at our first Biddeford Campus event on Wednesday, Oct. 23, when University of Kansas professor Sayvon JL Fosters presents “How College Athletics Shape Culture and Community.” It would be the perfect talk for area high school coaches to attend with their student-athletes, or for anyone interested in the intersection of sports, culture, and community. The event will take place at UNE’s Harold Alfond Forum. It will begin with a welcome reception offering drinks and snacks at 5 p.m., and then the lecture will run from 6 to 7 p.m. FMI visit: une.edu/cgh

Josh Pahigian is director of the University of New England Center for Global Humanities. He lives in Saco. You may email him at cgh@une.edu