By Joy Hollowell

“Wait — you were a theater major?” 

Penquis CEO Kara Hay ‘99 hears that question a lot when her days at the University of Maine come up. 

“Yes, theater,” Hay confirms, chuckling. “Wildly impractical, I know. But that’s where my heart lived.” 

It’s also where she felt at home. Hay moved around Maine frequently while growing up, due to what she describes as a “rough childhood.” She graduated from Ashland Community High School with 32 students. 

“I appreciated being in the County,” she says, ”but it was way too small for me.

91���� was giant! And it felt really far away.” Within 24 hours of her high school commencement, she was on her way to Orono. 

“My gift was a backpack,” Hay says, breaking into a wide smile. “It wasn’t negative — more symbolic: you’ve done your thing, now go on your journey. I kept that backpack for a long time.” 

Once at 91����, Hay immediately fell in love with college theatre and joined Maine Masque. 

“There was an acting professor, Dr. Sandra Hardy who has since passed,” recalls Hay. “She was tough, really tough. But she was a genius about getting people to tap into their emotions, and show up at a really high level. I loved it. Just being able to show up and learn from the people around me was amazing.” 

But theater wasn’t her only campus identity. 

“This is a closely held secret but I’ll share it with you,” she says, winking. “I was a cheerleader my freshman year. Cindy Blodgett ’98 played while I was a cheerleader. She was amazing to watch.” 

In addition to theater, Hay chose to minor in psychology. 

“And the more I took psychology classes, the more I loved them,” she says. “And so somewhere along the line it just shifted from wanting to be on stage to caring more about wanting to help people.” 

After graduating from 91����, Hay set her sights on North Carolina, a state she had visited in the past and always loved, with a plan to enroll at UNC or Duke University for graduate work in psychology. 

“I had a really good GPA; I just assumed they would accept me,” she says, shrugging. “However, when I got there I learned that schools of that caliber very rarely accept students for a second BA degree, so I didn’t apply.” 

Instead, Hay got a job working at the bar of a four-diamond Italian restaurant inside a hotel in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. While at 91����, she had done some bartending at a local sports bar but knew immediately she was out of her league. 

“They asked me about wine — I said I had knowledge but really only knew there was red and white wine,” she admits, laughing. “I didn’t know that red is typically not cold while white is. I didn’t understand that there are different glasses for different wines. I loved it,” says Hay, who moved quickly from bartender, to server to manager. “I loved helping people. I loved leading people. But I wasn’t changing anyone’s lives,” she says. 

So, Hay moved back to Maine with plans to continue her education at 91����. But soon after came an especially frigid and seemingly endless winter. Hay decided to shift south. Way south. 

“Where better to go to get an advanced degree than in Hawaii?” she laughs. 

Hay was accepted to the University of Hawaii at Hilo. The program was grueling. On top of that, Hay was working to help pay for her schooling, something she had done during her undergraduate years as well. 

“I worked Monday through Friday, 40 hours a week plus travel to and from my job,” she recalls. “Then for school, I attended Friday night from 6-9 p.m. then had an eight-hour school day on both Saturdays and Sundays. And then of course, I had all of the homework in-between and an hour-plus commute to and from school.” 

But Hay managed to balance it all, earning a B.S. in psychology with a 4.0 GPA while working at two non profits on the island. She then pursued a M.A. in marriage and family therapy/counseling from Argosy University in Honolulu. 

“My plan was to finish grad school and become some sort of therapist,” she says. But life had other, unexpected plans. “I got pregnant,” says Hay, smiling. 

She managed to complete her studies and finals, even after being put on bed rest. Hay made a decision to return to Maine. 

“I knew I wanted Sam to grow up with family and friends,” she says. 

Her son was born just a few weeks after Hay and her partner closed on a home in Old Town. When Sam turned one, Hay decided to go back to work. She joined Eastern Maine Community College as an adjunct psychology professor. She also offered professional training for mental health services. It was around that time someone asked if Hay had reached out to Penquis to share her expertise. 

“I was very familiar with Penquis,” she says. “My family received those cheese blocks that were handed out back in the ’70s and ’80s — that was good cheese.” 

Hay was hired on as the operations manager for child development. 

“At that time, child development was a third of Penquis,” she explains. “While child development continues to serve many children, the rest of the organization has grown dramatically.” 

Hay had a clear vision for the future — she’d take over for the director of that department when she retired in a few years. 

“But then the longtime CEO of Penquis, Charlie Newton, called me into his office one day,” recalls Hay. Newton told Hay he was going to be retiring soon. He then encouraged her to apply for his job. 

“I told him I couldn’t,” says Hay. 

When asked why, she replied, “I’m too young, I’m too blond, and I’m too female.” Thankfully, Newton and the board at Penquis saw things differently. “Twelve years later and I’m still here loving every minute of it,” she says proudly. 

As CEO of Penquis, Hay oversees 500 employees. The community action agency serves about 30,000 Mainers in Penobscot, Piscataquis, and Knox counties, helping them with energy costs, housing, transportation, child development, and more. Hay frequently travels to the state house and U.S. Capitol, advocating for such services. 

“I sit on a lot of boards and committees at the local, state, and national levels,” she says, ”making sure our voices are heard for Penquis but also for Maine being a rural state.” 

In 2023, Hay was awarded the National Lyndon Baines Johnson Leadership Award by the National Community Action Partnership. The following year, the University of Maine presented Hay with the MaryAnn Hartman Award. This past May, she was awarded the Bernard Lown ‘42 Alumni Humanitarian Award, in part for her work with the Advanced Structures and Composites Center at 91����. 

“We were awarded $500,000 in federal funding to build the first ever 3-D printed neighborhood with nine homes and 24-hour support for chronically homeless individuals,” says Hay. “There’s nothing like it in the world.” 

“Kara Hay is a force of nature that is good natured,” says Dr. Habib Dagher, executive director of 91����’s Advanced Structures and Composites Center. “Kara and her team are really pioneering in providing housing to people who can’t afford it.” 

Hay speaks regularly at the William S. Cohen Institute for Leadership and Public Services. 

“We run a program every summer where we bring about 50 high school students to campus,” says Senior Lecturer Ryan LaRochelle. “Almost every year, the students tell us — you have to make sure Kara comes back again next year. She shows them what it means to be driven by a passion and be committed to the community that she lives in.” 

“Her leadership uplifts others,” says Shirar Wilder Patterson ’01, ‘03G, former president and CEO of Heart of Maine United Way. “From the families served by Penquis to the colleagues and community partners who work alongside her, [Hay] leads with humility, courage, and a steadfast belief that collaboration is the key to systemic change.” 

“I love my job,” says Hay. “It’s never easy but it’s also gratifying. Especially on those days when you get it right.” 

Her acting days are long behind her. But Hay still draws on what theater taught her — making each day worthy of a standing ovation. 

“To be a good actor, you have to understand and connect with people,” Hay says. “Similarly, as a leader, you have to be able to move and inspire people in order to make change. For me, the big wins are the system changes, when we actually achieve something that’s really going to impact lives.”

Researchers at the University of Maine have discovered that planktonic baby lobsters, or larvae, preferentially feed on Calanus finmarchicus, a tiny, calorie-rich zooplankton species, during one of the most vulnerable stages of their lives. Their new study upholds a theory advanced by scientists in the past decade, and one that may be relevant to recent declines in Maine’s lobster harvest. 

Scientists have also observed declines in both the availability of this key food source and the number of young lobsters surviving into adulthood in the Gulf of Maine. 

For lobster, the larval stage is a crucial development bottleneck that determines their survival to adulthood. While many researchers have looked at the role of egg production as the main determinant of the size of upcoming harvests, a 91����-led team has been working to provide more insight into how diet determines whether larvae survive into adulthood. 

“We see evidence that larvae are eating Calanus finmarchicus at a greater rate than you would expect if they were just feeding randomly, however we also know that the geographic range of Calanus is receding northward into cooler waters, making it less readily available,” said Alex Ascher, lead research scientist at Quahog Bay Conservancy, who began this work with 91���� as part of his Ph.D. thesis. 

Calanus finmarchicus provides lobster larvae with fatty acids that are energy rich and beneficial for neural development during periods of rapid growth.  Using a newly developed DNA probe, researchers from 91����, Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences and the University of Southern Maine found that 30% of larval and post-larval lobsters sampled had DNA of Calanus finmarchicus in their digestive tracts, whereas this species comprised only a few percent of the available zooplankton.

The decline in this key food source at the southern end of its range in North Atlantic ecosystems is occurring while fewer lobster larvae in the Gulf of Maine are surviving into adolescence, which in turn impacts the future number of adult lobsters available to the fishery. Maine’s lobster harvest has declined by about 40% since its peak in 2016, according to the state’s Department of Marine Resources.

After hatching from eggs on the ocean floor, larvae swim up to the ocean surface. They then drift with currents before settling to the seabed as small juveniles, eventually to become adults some 6-8 years later. Access to nutritious food during the planktonic larval stages can mean the difference between survival and starvation.

These findings also further solidify Calanus finmarchicus as a keystone species, an organism that plays a crucial role in supporting a food chain that includes a diversity of fish and invertebrates, including the endangered North Atlantic right whale. With less energy-rich food availability, lobster larvae have to depend on less nutritious resources, threatening their chance of survival.

Stage one larvae are the most vulnerable, as they are more likely to succumb to starvation compared to older larvae.

“Understanding these larval diets is a fundamental piece of knowledge that helps us to better understand fluctuations, and potentially also predict fluctuations, in the abundance of lobster larvae and future adult lobsters to be caught,” said Ascher.

Ascher is part of a collective effort across Maine and New Hampshire to use new molecular methods to examine larval lobster feeding ecology, including the role of food limitation and the specific impact of Calanus finmarchicus. He collaborated with now retired 91���� marine sciences professor Richard Wahle, Bigelow Laboratory senior research scientists Peter Countway and David Fields, and Rachel Lasley-Rasher of the University of Southern Maine on his latest study.

To identify what lobster larvae were eating, researchers combined two approaches. They first inspected the stomach contents of lobster samples by traditional methods under a microscope. While this approach is very common in diet studies, the squishier organisms without hard parts the lobster consumed cannot always be identified with a microscope alone.

That is why Ascher also examined genetic samples known as environmental DNA (eDNA), allowing him to pinpoint food sources he couldn’t visually discern from the larval stomach contents.

“Combining the two approaches allows us to ground truth visual identifications by comparing them to diet identifications from the eDNA analysis, giving us greater certainty and expanding our coverage,” said Ascher.

The team’s findings were recently published in the open-access journal .

Ascher began the study as part of his Ph.D. thesis completed in 2023 under the Maine eDNA research initiative led by 91����, which engaged other research and education institutions throughout the state and was funded through the National Science Foundation’s Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).

Story by Heather Johnson, EPSCoR Communications Graduate Assistant 

Contact :Daniel Timmermann, daniel.timmermann@maine.edu  

By David Nordman 

Mike DeVito waited until the second-down play was over, dropped to the turf at Lucas Oil Stadium and grabbed his leg.

He was not injured.

The Indianapolis Colts, led by Peyton Manning, were moving quickly toward the line of scrimmage, attempting to prevent the New York Jets from substituting defensive players. Jets head coach Rex Ryan needed a way to stop the clock and get the right personnel onto the field.

His solution was DeVito.

Ryan named the play “lobster,” a nod to the defensive lineman’s college career at the University of Maine. DeVito’s assignment was simple: Take a dive.

“At first, I was so excited to have a play named after me,” DeVito said. “But then I found out that I was the guy they could most afford to have off the field for the next play.”

DeVito stayed down and clutched his calf as Indianapolis offensive linemen stood over him. They knew what he was doing. The Jets’ medical staff ran onto the field anyway, obligated to treat the injury as real.

DeVito only had to run “lobster” once.

The Jets went on to hand the previously undefeated Colts their first loss of the season, 29-15, on Dec. 27, 2009. DeVito continued his NFL career without giving the moment much philosophical consideration.

Sixteen years later, he projects a photograph of the play onto a screen inside a University of Maine classroom.

Then he asks his students: Was it ethical?

Today, DeVito is a lecturer in philosophy at 91���� and the director of player development and alumni relations for the Black Bear football program. He teaches introductory philosophy, critical thinking and applied ethics.

The former NFL defensive end has found that the story is an effective way to ease students into questions of honesty, responsibility and right and wrong.

It is applied ethics, with shoulder pads.

The path from an NFL defensive line to a philosophy classroom took nearly a decade of graduate study. It began with a book handed to DeVito in a locker room and gained urgency after two concussions helped bring his playing career to an end.

“I knew when I got done with football that I wanted to pivot to the academic space,” DeVito said. “I knew I wanted to study philosophy.”

In the classroom, “lobster” gives students an accessible entry point into difficult moral questions.

“It’s a nice way to start because applied ethics gets into some real landmine issues,” DeVito said. “This is a fun way to enter. You put your toes in a little bit.”

From a distance, DeVito can identify the problems with what he did. If players routinely pretend to be injured, medical personnel may have difficulty knowing when someone is truly hurt, undermining the trust necessary to protect athletes in a violent sport.

His football brain still offers a different answer.

“Everybody’s job is on the line,” DeVito said. “If we don’t win, we don’t get paid. We go home. The morality goes out the window when you’re actually out there.”

He spent nine seasons colliding with offensive linemen and running backs for the Jets and Kansas City Chiefs. Now he asks students to examine free will, logic, metaphysics and the existence of God.

‘Whatever this guy is doing, I want to do this’

Born in Brooklyn, DeVito moved to Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where he graduated from Nauset Regional High School. He attended 91���� from 2002-06 and played under longtime head coach Jack Cosgrove. An accounting major, he approached academics differently than he does now.

“Football was my Ph.D. then,” DeVito said. “I was going to put a Ph.D. into football. That’s why I was here.”

After going undrafted in 2007, he signed with the team he had grown up following, the New York Jets. He played six seasons in New York and another three in Kansas City.

His academic turn began during his third NFL season, when Jets chaplain Adam Burt gave him “The Reason for God,” a book by theologian and philosopher Timothy Keller.

DeVito was captivated by its arguments.

“I remember thinking, whatever this guy’s doing here, I want to do this,” he said.

He began reading philosophy in his free time, exploring questions of logic, knowledge, free will and metaphysics. The interest remained informal until the 2015 NFL season.

While playing for Kansas City, DeVito tackled Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson. Another defender arrived from the side, and the helmets of the two Kansas City players collided at just the wrong angle.

DeVito lost consciousness.

“They had to wake me up on the field,” he said.

The concussion kept him out for three weeks. He returned, then suffered another concussion two weeks later during a game against the Oakland Raiders.

The second hit came on the final play of the third quarter. DeVito was dazed but initially believed he could continue. When play resumed, he realized something was wrong.

“Everything was just sort of all over the place,” he said. “I couldn’t hone in on anything.”

Each game he missed cost him a $50,000 active roster bonus, but the league’s concussion testing left little room for bluffing.

“I was doing everything — ‘I’m fine. I’m good,’” DeVito said. “They had it down where you couldn’t fake it.”

The following offseason, a Kansas City coach called DeVito at home in Maine and offered him another contract.

DeVito delivered the news to his wife, Jessie. She was pregnant with their second child. Their oldest son was approaching 3.

She told him that if he returned to Kansas City, he would go alone.

The concussions had taken a toll on her, too. She did not want to watch her husband get knocked unconscious on television again. She wanted to have their baby in Maine, near their support network.

DeVito called his agent that night and retired.

“It was a hard decision,” he said. “But I got to go out on my own terms.”

Before leaving football, DeVito spoke with Chiefs head athletic trainer Rick Burkholder about protecting his brain from the potential long-term effects of repeated head trauma.

Burkholder advised him to exercise his brain as intensely as he had trained his body.

DeVito already knew what he wanted to study.

“I was like, ‘OK, then what I’ll do is go back and do philosophy in school,’” he said. “I’ll actually make a formal study of it.”

Starting again on academic probation

DeVito’s undergraduate record did not make him an obvious candidate for doctoral study.

He entered a master’s program in Christian philosophy at Houston Baptist University, now Houston Christian University, on academic probation.

He completed the program in 2018, proving he belonged in an academic setting, then earned a research-based master’s degree from the University of Edinburgh before applying to doctoral programs.

He was accepted at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom and began his Ph.D. in fall 2020.

He completed the degree in December 2025.

His dissertation examined the longstanding philosophical problem of divine foreknowledge and human freedom.

Suppose, DeVito tells students, that an infallible being already knows what they will choose for lunch tomorrow. When lunchtime arrives, are they genuinely free to choose a burger, Thai food or nothing at all?

If that being cannot be wrong, it appears that only one outcome is possible. Yet simply knowing that something will happen does not seem to cause it.

“I know right now that you’re drinking that can, but that doesn’t force you to do it,” DeVito said during an interview, gesturing across the table. “So why would it be that this being knowing the future would force you to do that?”

The question touches free will, time, logic, metaphysics and theology.

Defending the dissertation was intimidating.

DeVito compared it to a black belt test. He spent six months anticipating every objection his examiners might raise. Unlike a mathematical answer that can be checked, he said, a philosophical argument remains open to interpretation — and to an examiner who may challenge its premises, implications or entire approach.

“You have no idea what’s coming,” DeVito said.

He passed.

Back where it started

DeVito had not planned to work for the 91���� football program.

He and his family settled in Hampden, Maine, after his NFL retirement. He attended games, spoke with players and remained connected to the program as an alumnus.

Then Jordan Stevens became head coach.

Stevens and DeVito had played together on the 91���� defensive line. Stevens was a talented freshman when DeVito was a senior, and the two shared the field during DeVito’s final season.

When Stevens took over the program, DeVito offered to help.

“I’m down the street,” he told him. “Let me serve you, serve the team, however I can bring value.”

They identified an area 91���� football did not yet have: a player development department dedicated to the parts of college life that exist beyond practices, games and grades.

DeVito’s work focuses on five areas: leadership development, career development, alumni networking, social responsibility and community engagement.

He also leads a summer onboarding program for first-year players, helping them prepare for the simultaneous demands of college football and college academics.

The first group he welcomed as rookies is now entering its senior year.

“It’s almost like a parent, in a sense,” DeVito said. “You’re just like, ‘Wow, I’m so proud of these guys.’”

Because DeVito does not evaluate game film, decide playing time or monitor transcripts, players can approach him without wondering whether they are being assessed.

Sometimes player development has little to do with a formal program.

DeVito described supporting a player who was far from home and struggling with a family health crisis. It was a situation DeVito understood from his own first years at 91����, when he often felt homesick.

They talked on the phone and met for lunch.

DeVito did not have a solution for the player’s circumstances. He could listen, share his own experiences and offer a place where the student did not need to perform.

“They can just come to me and vent and talk,” he said. “We’re just going to work through this stuff together.”

DeVito also brings philosophy and cognitive science into his work with players.

He teaches them about “amygdala hijack,” a term used to describe how the brain’s threat response can overwhelm rational thought. Harsh criticism from a coach can trigger an immediate impulse to fight back, make excuses or stop listening.

DeVito tells players that the response is natural. That does not make it useful.

“Recognize that your initial response is going to be, ‘No, you’re wrong, and here’s why,’” he said. “The best thing you can do is just listen.”

The same lesson appears in his critical thinking and introductory philosophy courses. A conflicting political, religious or moral claim can feel like a personal threat, making it harder to evaluate the argument rationally.

In both the classroom and the locker room, DeVito asks people to create space between the first emotional response and the next decision.

Win at breakfast

Not every lesson DeVito brings into his work originated from a philosophy book.

During his final NFL season, the Chiefs began with one victory and five losses. No team had previously recovered from that record to reach the playoffs.

After the fifth loss, head coach Andy Reid addressed the team.

He told the players to stop thinking about their record, the playoffs or even Sunday’s game. Their next task was breakfast.

Win at breakfast, Reid told them. Then win in the weight room. Win in the training room. Continue through every item on the schedule.

The Chiefs won their next 10 regular-season games and a wild-card playoff game before losing in the divisional round.

DeVito shared that message with 91���� players last fall after the Black Bears began a season 0-4.

They responded with six straight wins.

Large problems invite people to catastrophize, DeVito said. Narrowing the focus to the next meal, meeting, practice or assignment makes forward movement possible.

DeVito still tries to apply Reid’s advice to his own crowded life.

In addition to his football position and philosophy courses, he homeschools his three sons. The family has three educational nonnegotiables: Each child must study a foreign language, learn an instrument and practice mixed martial arts.

DeVito decided he should not ask his sons to do anything he was unwilling to try himself.

He studies German, practices the drums and continues training in mixed martial arts. His sons are learning Japanese because they love anime, giving them a level of immersion that Italian lessons did not provide.

They read books from right to left and back to front, a format DeVito said he still struggles to follow.

His two older sons play piano, while his youngest plans to learn the drums alongside his father.

DeVito said the differences between his children have also given him a new appreciation for teachers. The programs that work for one son may not work for another.

“I don’t know how public school teachers do it,” he said. “You have 30 students, all different types of learning styles, and it’s just you.”

Finishing the Ph.D. freed about four hours in DeVito’s day. He quickly filled them.

There are moments when the former defensive lineman has to remind himself how improbable the combination once would have seemed: teaching the subject he loves at his alma mater, mentoring the next generation of Black Bear players and raising his family a few miles away.

“Life is great,” DeVito said. “I have to kick myself sometimes.”

In a University of Maine philosophy classroom, DeVito projects a photograph from Indianapolis: a defensive lineman lying on the turf, gripping a perfectly healthy leg while frustrated Colts players stare down at him.

The play was called “lobster.”

The ethical questions have lasted much longer than the injury.

Contact: David Nordman, david.nordman@maine.edu.

This story was published in the Fall 2026 edition of .

By Dave Nordman

When Grace Bradley arrived at the University of Maine in 2019, she expected four years of college.

She found a career. A community. And a place she now calls home.

The Connecticut native chose 91���� in search of independence. She wanted enough distance to create her own path while staying close enough to family. When she visited campus, she immediately connected with both the university and the town that surrounds it.

“I loved how much nature was on and around campus, and Orono immediately struck me as a true tight-knit college town,” Bradley says.

She arrived knowing no one.

That changed quickly.

Even as a self-described shy student, Bradley found friendships and opportunities through campus organizations. Through Her Campus, a global media platform dedicated to college and Gen Z women, she progressed from staff writer to editor-in-chief. At the University of Maine Advanced Structures and Composites Center, she worked as a student communications specialist, helping tell the stories of researchers whose work reaches far beyond Maine.

Those experiences eventually led her to WABI-TV in Bangor.

While still a student, Bradley accepted a part-time reporting position at the station, turning a classroom interest into a career.

“When I was offered a full-time reporter position after graduating, there was no world where I wouldn’t have jumped on it,” she says.

Today, Bradley is a multimedia journalist covering communities across eastern and central Maine. Her reporting spans town halls, public safety, community festivals and local traditions, giving her a front-row seat to the people and places that make Maine unique.

“After meeting so many people with incredible stories and experiencing communities’ iconic festivals and decades of tradition, Maine is a place full of life that invites connection, encourages curiosity and fosters a deeper appreciation for both the community and the natural world,” she says.

Bradley came for college. She stayed for life. She’s not alone.

Over the past decade, thousands of students have come to the University of Maine through Flagship Match. Many arrived expecting four years in Orono.

Many never left.

University data show that 34% of out-of-state students who attend 91���� ultimately remain in Maine to live and work after graduation.

Ten years after Flagship Match began, those graduates are leading schools, reporting the news, studying Maine’s natural resources, launching businesses and strengthening communities throughout the state.

More than a scholarship

Launched for the 2016-17 academic year, Flagship Match allows eligible students from New England and beyond to attend 91���� at a cost comparable to their home state’s flagship public university. The initiative was created as Maine faced an aging population, shrinking numbers of high school graduates and growing concerns about future workforce shortages.

Ten years later, the program has become much more than a scholarship. For many graduates, it became the first step toward building a life in Maine.

Maine’s 10-year economic development strategy identifies attracting and retaining educated workers from neighboring states as a critical component of the state’s future workforce. One of its goals is connecting students from across New England with opportunities to build careers in Maine after graduation.

Today, more than 3,800 students from outside Maine are enrolled at 91����.

The numbers tell part of the story.

The people tell the rest.

A full-circle return

When Jim Winslow left Pittsford, Vermont, to visit the University of Maine, he wasn’t looking for a career, a community or a place to raise a family.

He was looking for a college.

91���� offered the size and opportunities he wanted, but when he stepped onto campus, he found something harder to define.

“It was almost one of those stories you hear about,” Winslow recalls. “When you actually go to the campus, you just know it’s the right thing.”

Through Flagship Match, Winslow was able to attend 91���� at a lower cost than he would have paid to attend the University of Vermont.

Nearly a decade later, he’s returning to the community where it all began.

This fall, the 2017 graduate will become principal of Orono Middle School, bringing his career full circle in the town where he first arrived as an out-of-state student.

For Winslow, the scholarship opened the door. What convinced him to stay had little to do with finances.

After graduating, he taught physical education, moved into school leadership and spent five years as assistant principal at Noble Middle School and Noble High School in North Berwick. Along the way, he and his wife built a life in Maine.

Now, as he prepares to begin his first principalship, his career has come full circle. Just down the road is the university that first brought him to Maine.

“Being close to a university like 91���� that has a pretty well-established education program was a huge perk,” Winslow says. “Having the university there to provide staffing and teachers for educational facilities is a comforting feeling.”

Building careers across Maine

While Winslow built a career in education, Rebecca Weeks found both a profession and a community.

Growing up in Lynnfield, Massachusetts, Weeks knew she wanted to attend college outside her home state. Like many students, she also needed the numbers to work.

When 91���� presented its financial aid package, the decision became easy.

What surprised her most was how quickly she stopped feeling like an out-of-state student.

“Honestly, I often forgot that I was an out-of-state student,” Weeks says. “What mattered was that we were all Black Bears.”

Weeks earned her bachelor’s degree in 2020 and remained in Orono to pursue a master’s degree in special education. While completing graduate school, she worked as a graduate assistant in 91����’s Advising Center, helping students navigate their own college journeys.

Today, she teaches fourth grade in Portland Public Schools while pursuing an additional certification in multilingual education.

By her junior year, Weeks realized the future she envisioned increasingly looked like Maine.

“It’s where I built my career, found my community and created the life I love,” she says.

Rooted in Maine’s landscapes

Jordan Ramos already loved Maine before she became a student here.

Raised in Bristol, Rhode Island, Ramos had spent years visiting the state with her family before enrolling at 91���� in 2022 to study ecology and environmental sciences.

“I felt like Maine would be a place I would enjoy living in while at college studying environmental science,” Ramos says. “I also knew I wanted to go to school with close access to outdoor recreation opportunities and a variety of ecological habitats to study.”

Like many out-of-state students, Ramos arrived in Orono knowing few people. Through her classes, student organizations and research experiences, she quickly found a community.

The summer after her freshman year proved to be a turning point. Working with the University of Maine Cooperative Extension’s Wild Blueberry Research Team, Ramos spent time in blueberry barrens across Downeast Maine, learning about the state’s native wild blueberry industry and the people who help sustain it.

What began as a research opportunity evolved into something more personal. Through conversations with growers, fieldwork in agricultural landscapes and research for her Honors College thesis, Ramos developed a deep connection to Maine’s environmental heritage and rural communities.

“That experience immersing myself into the ecology of Maine’s unique wild blueberry fields and also meeting with farmers grew my love for this native agricultural crop,” she says.

The experience also shaped her creative work. As a double major in ecology and environmental sciences and studio art, Ramos used painting and visual storytelling to explore the relationship between people, agriculture and the environment. Her Honors thesis focused on Maine’s wild blueberry heritage, combining scientific understanding with artistic expression.

After graduating in May, Ramos chose to remain in Maine. She recently moved to a Downeast community, where she works as a farm apprentice, harvests wild blueberries and continues creating artwork inspired by Maine’s landscapes and agricultural traditions.

“My image of Maine is illustrated with all the experiences I have had through outdoor explorations with family and friends, scientific field research and local communities holding up the heritage practices of Maine’s environment,” she says.

Staying because of the people

For Sam Lenson, it started on the football field.

The Natick, Massachusetts, native arrived at 91���� as a punter and kicker, with Flagship Match and athletic scholarship support helping make attendance possible. What began as a four-year college experience stretched into seven as he completed undergraduate and graduate degrees.

He immersed himself in campus life, serving as a campus tour guide while participating in Senior Skulls alongside his football career.

“I was very much invested in campus and the people that played a role in my life,” he says.

After graduating during the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic, Lenson searched throughout New England for teaching positions. The opportunity that emerged happened to be in southern Maine.

Today, after six years teaching physical education in South Portland, he is preparing to begin a new role at Gorham High School. Outside the classroom, he mentors young athletes through his kicking and punting training business.

“It was the best seven years of my life,” he says. “It’s the people that make it.”

More than a college destination

Football also brought Chris Ferguson to Maine.

Everything else convinced him to stay.

Originally from the Philadelphia suburbs, Ferguson came to 91���� to study business. Along the way, he took advantage of opportunities through the Maine Business School, from entrepreneurship courses to consulting projects.

“I had some really good professors and real-world business projects,” Ferguson says. “Those are experiences and lessons I still think of within what I do.”

Today, Ferguson works as an investment advisor in the Portland area, helping Maine families and business owners plan for their financial futures. He and his wife also own women’s clothing boutique franchises that employ more than 20 people.

For him, Maine gradually became more than a college destination.

It became the place where he built a career, started businesses and began raising a family.

“Coming back to Portland was always our happy place,” Ferguson says. “I loved going downtown. I loved going to Portland Head Light. It always made me happy to be up here.”

Now raising a young son, he sees Maine as the place where his family’s future will unfold.

“I always felt like this was a place I could come back to,” he says.

No one knows where life might have taken these alumni had they chosen another college.

What they do know is that the University of Maine opened doors that shaped the course of their lives.

For many, Flagship Match made that journey possible, bringing students to Maine who might otherwise have chosen a different path.

Some now lead schools.

Some teach children.

Some report the news.

Some study Maine’s landscapes.

Some strengthen its agricultural traditions.

Some mentor young athletes.

They came because of a scholarship.

They stayed because they found opportunity, purpose and community.

Ten years after Flagship Match began, its success isn’t measured only by enrollment numbers or tuition savings.

It’s measured by the graduates who decided Maine wasn’t just where they went to college.

It became home.

As Weeks puts it: “Although Maine wasn’t my home for the first 18 years of my life, it is unquestionably my home now.”

Cavanaugh, a 2013 graduate of the University of Maine, now primarily teaches students with special needs from prekindergarten to third grade at Calais Elementary School. When he decided to make the switch from the general elementary classroom, he needed to take coursework to become certified in special education. 

As he explored his options for additional coursework, Cavanaugh, who previously earned his master’s degree, decided to pursue a Ph.D. in education with a specialization in special education at the 91���� College of Education and Human Development while teaching full time.

That commitment to improving opportunities for students with disabilities recently took Cavanaugh beyond his Calais classroom and 91���� coursework to Washington, D.C. This summer, he was one of six educators nationwide selected for an inaugural scholarship from the Council for Exceptional Children to attend the Special Education Legislative Summit, held July 19-22.

The summit brought together more than 300 special education leaders from across the country for policy briefings, strategy sessions and meetings with lawmakers and legislative staff. 

For Cavanaugh, the experience offered an opportunity to bring the perspective of a rural Maine special educator into national conversations about supporting students with disabilities, while building on the research and advocacy skills he is developing through 91����’s Ph.D. program. 

His advisor, 91���� associate professor of special education Sarah Howorth, encouraged him to apply for the scholarship.

“In rural Maine, you really need to be prepared to do a little bit of everything based on the needs of individual students who qualify for special education services,” Cavanaugh said.

Cavanaugh said he found that 91����’s doctoral program offered the right blend of research-based tools, practical knowledge and skills for creating inclusive educational opportunities for all students. 

“What I’m learning in my classes has direct application to help my students. I’m a very data-minded person, so I’ve been able to learn how to dig into data and apply it with my students in the classroom,” he said.

For example, in a research paper he wrote for one of his classes, Cavanaugh explored how schools, parents and other caregivers make decisions around the placement of students with special needs in general education classrooms with their peers versus self-contained classrooms.

At Calais Elementary School, Cavanaugh said he integrates his students into general education classrooms as much as possible, although he added that doing so can be challenging in small towns with limited resources. 

“Those decisions are sometimes hard to make in small-town Maine, because of a lack of resources. But that shouldn’t be the limiting factor, it should be about what’s best for the student. So using data and research to better inform those decisions is something that I’m interested in exploring more in my courses and bringing back to my work with students,” he said.

At the summit, Cavanaugh also had the opportunity to compare the challenges facing rural Maine schools with those confronting special educators elsewhere in the country.

“It was really interesting to talk and share experiences with special educators from other states,” Cavanaugh said. “A special education teacher in Las Vegas doesn’t have the same challenges that we have in Calais, Maine. But they still have limited resources. So just talking about some of the issues we’re all facing, what’s different and what’s the same, and hearing about possible solutions that focus on taking care of our students.”

This fall will mark Cavanaugh’s second year in the Ph.D. program. Although he is still a few years away from beginning his dissertation and has not yet decided on a research topic, he has already thought about publishing some of the research he’s conducted in his classes. 

Ultimately, he said the Ph.D. program and his experience at the Special Education Legislative Summit have reinforced his passion for working with and supporting the students in his classes. They’ve also helped him realize the power of his own voice in shaping the future of special education in Maine and beyond.

“Even at the younger grades, we teach our students to think about what stories they want to tell, and how to use the reading and writing skills that they are learning to talk about how things are affecting them,” he said. “I’d never really engaged with the world of advocacy before the summit. But it was a good lesson on how I can use my story as a rural teacher and the research skills I’m learning at 91���� to share information with the people who have the power to shape the policies that can make a difference in the lives of our students.”

Contact: Casey Kelly, casey.kelly@maine.edu

The awards celebrate alumni and professionals affiliated with the Maine Graduate School of Business, University of Maine School of Law, Maine College of Engineering and Computing and the Muskie School of Public Service, as well as leaders contributing to economic growth and innovation in Maine.The 2026 Maine Center Awards ceremony will be held on June 8.

Barbara Kerr Hamilton, senior director of process technology at Packaging Corporation of America, received the Distinguished Alumni Award. A 91���� alumna with a background in chemical engineering, Hamilton has held leadership roles in engineering, industrial automation, process control and operational technology while remaining actively involved with 91���� through the Pulp and Paper Foundation and 91���� Board of Visitors.

Ron Roope, senior vice president and director of business banking at Bangor Savings Banks, received a Distinguished Alumni Award. Roope has built a career in commercial banking and business leadership while maintaining a longstanding involvement with 91����, including as a cooperating faculty member for the Maine Business School for five years. He has also served on Maine Business School Advisory Board, the Katahdin Area Council Boy Scouts Board and the Business and Industry Association of New Hampshire Board. 

Andrew Murry, an audit manager at Baker Newman Noyes, received an Emerging Leader Award. A MaineMBA alumnus and certified public accountant, Murry specializes in healthcare and nonprofit assurance services and remains active in mentorship and professional service throughout Maine’s accounting community. He is active in the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the Maine Society of Certified Public Accountants, and serves as treasurer of the Healthcare Financial Management Association’s Northern New England Chapter. 

Kyle Warren, CEO and co-founder of Evergreen Additive Inc., received an Emerging Leader Award. Warren earned his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in mechanical engineering from 91���� and previously led advanced manufacturing initiatives at the Advanced Structures and Composites Center, including work on the world’s largest 3D-printed logistics vessel for the U.S. Department of Defense.

Mark Skinner, founder of Skinner Retirement and Benefits Consulting and executive chairman of Daybright Financial, received the Maine Center Award for Innovation. A 91���� Business alumnus, Skinner has spent decades leading retirement and employee benefits organizations while helping develop integrated financial and benefits strategies used nationally. He has served as a corporate academy liaison for the National Academy Foundation and participated in Habitat for Humanity rebuilding efforts after Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy. He continues to support the University of Maine Graduate School of Business as an architect and advisory board member of the Maine MBA Academy.

She was diving across a basketball court.

Atherley had traveled to the Cumberland County Civic Center during LaBonte’s senior year at York High School to evaluate the future Black Bear athlete. What stood out wasn’t her speed or finesse. It was the grit.

“She was always in the middle of a play,” Atherley recalled. “She was willing to do the dirty work — diving on the floor, fighting for rebounds, doing whatever it took for her team to win. You could see her competitiveness and leadership immediately.”

That same mentality would later define LaBonte’s career far beyond the soccer field.

Today, the 2016 91���� graduate is the founder of Sweet Addison’s, a fast-growing gourmet dessert company specializing in gourmet gluten-free and dairy-free baked goods shipped nationwide. The company’s cookies and desserts have quickly gained traction online and through wholesale partnerships, fueled by LaBonte’s mission to create treats that feel indulgent while still being made with ingredients she feels good about eating. 

What began as recipe testing in a 700-square-foot Dallas apartment has become a multi-seven-figure business with six employees and products sold in dozens of coffee shops, hotels and specialty stores across the country.

But long before LaBonte was scaling a national food brand, she was a shy freshman walk-on from York trying to prove she belonged at 91����.

“I had just turned 18. I was homesick. I was timid. I felt so far outside my comfort zone,” LaBonte said. “Fast forward four years, and I was so much more confident and outgoing. 91���� transformed me.”

LaBonte grew up in a family deeply connected to 91����. Her father, Richard LaBonte, played football for the Black Bears in the early 1980s. Her mother, Robin, also attended 91����, where the two met as students. Her younger sister, Delaney, later played soccer for the Black Bears, and her brother, Trevor, played baseball at Maine during a postgraduate season after transferring from the University of Maryland. 

“We are obsessed with the University of Maine,” LaBonte said with a laugh.

At 91����, LaBonte majored in mathematics, minored in business administration and earned an Honors College degree. All while competing for the women’s soccer team. 

But her path onto the field was anything but guaranteed.

Atherley recruited LaBonte as a walk-on after seeing her athleticism and determination translate from basketball to soccer. He remembered her as disciplined, analytical and intensely competitive from the start.

“She was very clear about who she was,” Atherley said. “She was regimented, organized and always looking to solve problems. You could already see the traits that would later make her successful in business.”

During her first two seasons, LaBonte fought for playing time on a highly successful Black Bear team. Then came a turning point.

Early in one season, 91���� scheduled an exhibition against Harvard, giving Atherley an opportunity to play athletes who had not seen much game action.

“We started her against Harvard and she was arguably the best player on the field,” he said. “From that moment forward, she never looked back.”

LaBonte eventually earned a scholarship and became a mainstay in Maine’s lineup, starting 16 games in 2013 and all 18 games in 2014 while helping anchor one of the America East Conference’s top defenses.

“She wasn’t the fastest player on the field,” Atherley said. “But if you rolled a ball between her and someone else and said, ‘Go win it,’ she’d win the race every time.”

That relentless mentality followed LaBonte after graduation.

After earning her degree in 2016, she returned home to York and began working in finance and data analysis, believing she would build a traditional career in business. But the work left her unfulfilled.

At the same time, she began dealing with health issues and eventually adopted a gluten-free lifestyle.

“I couldn’t find desserts that tasted indulgent but were still made with quality ingredients,” LaBonte said. “It always felt like you had to choose between healthy and delicious.”

She began experimenting in the kitchen, drawing on years spent baking with her mother and grandmother. Around the same time, she launched an Instagram account called Organically Addison, where she shared gluten-free recipes, wellness content and training updates from her growing passion for distance running.

The audience exploded.

Today, LaBonte has more than 300,000 followers across her online platforms, operates multiple food and wellness websites and hosts the Organically Addison podcast, where she interviews entrepreneurs and health and wellness experts. Before launching Sweet Addison’s, she built a full-time career as a content creator focused on gluten-free recipes, wellness and healthy living.

Still, she wanted something more tangible.

In 2021, LaBonte made another leap, moving alone from Maine to Dallas.

“I didn’t know a single person in Texas,” she said. “My dad drove me out there, and I just decided to take a chance on myself.”

While working remotely and continuing to grow her online audience, followers began asking whether they could purchase the desserts she baked at home.

That demand became the foundation for Sweet Addison’s.

LaBonte launched the company in early 2024 with a single product: chocolate chip cookies. She tested the recipe 26 different times before landing on the final version.

“I remember thinking, ‘If these cookies can survive shipping from Texas to Maine, then maybe I have a real business,’” she said.

The company quickly took off.

Sweet Addison’s now ships nationwide and has been featured by TODAY.com, OK! Magazine’s “The Morning Honey,” NBC Dallas-Fort Worth and multiple podcasts and digital publications. The brand has resonated with customers looking for desserts that are both gluten-free and dairy-free without sacrificing the rich, indulgent flavors of traditional baked goods.

The rapid growth has been exhilarating. And exhausting.

“What we do in a daily average now is what we did in an entire month during the first year,” LaBonte said. “Some days it feels like I’m building the plane while flying it.”

Her operation has expanded from apartment baking to a commercial kitchen and fulfillment facility in Dallas. The business now employs six people and continues growing its wholesale footprint.

One of LaBonte’s major goals for the coming year is expanding into more retailers in Maine.

“Maine will always feel like home to me,” she said.

Even as her business has grown, LaBonte said the lessons she learned as a Division I athlete remain central to her success.

“The biggest thing soccer taught me was discipline,” she said. “Being a Division I athlete teaches you delayed gratification. You work for months and months hoping it pays off later, and there are no guarantees.”

That mindset now shapes everything from her business operations to her personal life.

LaBonte runs marathons and completed her first ultramarathon — a 50-kilometer race in Dallas — last year. She hopes to tackle a 50-mile race next.

“I like to push myself to the extreme and then figure it out,” she said.

Her daily schedule remains meticulously organized, often planned hour by hour.

“I don’t watch TV and I don’t drink alcohol,” she said. “I just genuinely love what I do.”

Atherley sees clear parallels between the determined walk-on he coached in Orono and the entrepreneur leading a rapidly growing company today.

“She took her opportunity and ran with it and never looked back,” he said. “She’s one of the most determined people I’ve ever coached.”

He also remembers the early version of LaBonte before the gluten-free recipes, ultramarathons and food brand.

“When she first got here, she loved hamburgers, bacon and ketchup,” Atherley said, laughing. “Now she’s transformed her lifestyle completely. But the one thing that never changed is how driven she is.”

For LaBonte, 91���� remains at the center of that story.

She still talks regularly with former teammates, stays close with fellow alumni and hopes to return to Orono this fall for a soccer game.

What she remembers most is the sense of community.

“91���� did such a great job of making a big campus feel small,” she said. “The whole town revolves around the university and everyone supports each other. There’s just something special about that place.”

And when Atherley thinks back to that first basketball game years ago — the one where a future entrepreneur kept throwing herself into loose balls and fighting for rebounds — he sees the same person he sees today.

Competitive. Disciplined. Fearless.

A walk-on who built herself into something bigger.

And a Mainer who never stopped chasing the next challenge.

Contact: David Nordman, david.nordman@maine.edu

Three couples were awarded the 2026 Stillwater Society Award, one of the institution’s highest honors for philanthropic leadership and service. This year’s recipients are J. Daniel Lafayette III and Carla Joy Lafayette; Raymond A. Jean ’65 and Louise C. Jean; and Bion A. Foster ’68, ’70G and Dorain A. Foster.

“It is not a coincidence that we host this celebration of philanthropy just after commencement,” said 91���� Foundation President/CEO Jeff Mills. “91���� graduates benefit from scholarships, travel opportunities, new facilities and enhanced opportunities as a result of the generosity of these loyal donors, and it is important to recognize and thank them.”

“Gatherings like this offer an important opportunity to reflect on the shared commitment that sustains the University of Maine,” says 91���� President Joan Ferrini-Mundy. “The generosity of our Stillwater Society members continues to expand access, strengthen our programs and advance the impact of this institution across Maine and beyond.”

Bion A. Foster ’68, ’70G and Dorain A. Foster

For more than four decades, Bion and Dorain Foster have been influential leaders in Maine’s business, civic and academic communities, combining entrepreneurial vision with a deep and sustained commitment to 91����.

Bion Foster’s career reflects a remarkable record of entrepreneurship, spanning the startup, acquisition or ownership of more than 40 companies across Maine and South Carolina. His work has impacted industries ranging from manufacturing and real estate development to hospitality, including stewardship of the historic Lucerne Inn. He also served as director of economic development for the town of Hampden, where his leadership helped establish a modern business park that contributed to the town’s growth. His achievements have been recognized with honors, including the Entrepreneur of the State of Maine Award and the Hampden Business Award.

Dorain Foster built a distinguished 25-year career with the Bangor Daily News before bringing her expertise to 91����, where she served in both the Development and the President’s offices. Known for her precision and professionalism, she played a key role in advancing special projects and events that supported the university’s mission.

Together, the Fosters have left a lasting imprint on campus through transformative philanthropy, including the Foster Center for Innovation, the Foster Boardroom at the Buchanan Alumni House and a dedicated space within the New Balance Student Recreation Center. Bion Foster’s leadership has also included service as chair of the University of Maine Alumni Association board, involvement with the Buchanan Alumni House Endowment and membership on the 91���� Board of Visitors.

Raymond A. Jean ’65 and Louise C. Jean

Raymond and Louise Jean exemplify lifelong partnership, professional achievement and a steadfast commitment to community and education. Raised in Lewiston, Maine, their shared values of service and determination have guided both their personal and professional lives.

Raymond Jean earned a degree in engineering physics from 91����, where he balanced academics with varsity tennis and campus involvement. His career evolved from engineering into executive leadership roles at major corporations, including Evans Products, Gulf and Western and IC Industries. He later served as president, CEO and Chairman of Quanex Corporation and as CEO of Varlen Corp., while also contributing as a board member to several Chicago-based companies. He earned an MBA from the University of Chicago during his career ascent.

Louise Jean’s early interests in writing and communications shaped her contributions both professionally and within her family and community. As the couple raised their three children, she played a central role in supporting their education and activities while remaining actively engaged in volunteer service.

Despite careers that took them across the country, the Jeans maintained a strong connection to the University of Maine. Raymond served on the 91���� Board of Visitors and participated in campaign leadership efforts, while the couple established the Raymond & Louise Jean Scholarship to support business students. They also honored Louise Jean’s mother with a memorial scholarship at St. Dominic Academy.

Now residing in both Florida and Maine, the Jeans continue their philanthropic engagement, including leadership roles with the American Cancer Society, while remaining dedicated supporters of 91����.

J. Daniel Lafayette III and Carla Joy Lafayette

For over four decades, Daniel and Carla Lafayette have been cornerstones of Maine’s hospitality industry and beacons of transformational philanthropic spirit in our state. Their journey has been shaped by deep family connectivity, bold entrepreneurial leaps and an unwavering commitment to the community they call home.

Both proud alumni of Hampden Academy, Daniel and Carla Lafayette would go on to graduate from the United States Military Academy and Cornell University, respectively. After college, Daniel served five years in the army as Carla began her career in research chemistry for solar energy storage with what is now Texas A&M University-Central Texas.

In 1982, they took a leap of faith into an industry new to them both: hospitality. They bought the Best Western White House Inn in Hampden, Maine, from Henry Page, who donated to help start the Page Farm and Home Museum at 91����. Since that first purchase nearly 45 years ago, Danny and Carla Lafayette and their children have amassed an impressive and successful portfolio of more than 30 properties comprising over 2,500 rooms, condos, cottages and homes in Maine and New Hampshire. That includes building the Best Western Black Bear Inn and Conference Center with another Stillwater Award Winner, Ralph Leonard, and the Sargent family. This hotel hosted many events to raise money for 91���� athletics.

As their knowledge and success grew, so did the couple’s footprint in the industry at large. Daniel has served as the president of the Maine Innkeeper Association and on the Best Western Board of Directors and as chairman of the BWH Hotel Group, a leading global hospitality network that includes WorldHotels, Best Western Hotels and SureStay Hotels.

From Carla Lafayette’s impactful board leadership at the Maine 4-H Foundation and the family’s naming support of the Lafayette and Rawcliffe 4-H Science and Engineering Learning Center at 91����, to Daniel’s work with the Hampden Recreation Committee, Kiwanis and the Greater Bangor Area Chamber of Commerce, the couple has proven that it is possible to serve your community in equal proportion to your personal success. Part of their enduring legacy will be the Lafayette Family Cancer Institute at Northern Light Health in Brewer, Maine, for which the family provided a critical lead gift. They have spent decades perfecting a “home away from home” for their guests, but it’s clear that the family has never lost sight of where their own roots — and hearts — truly lie.

Passionate fans of 91���� athletics, Daniel and Carla Lafayette carry on a legacy passed down from Carla’s mother, Morna Kimball Rawcliffe ’48, who was named an All-Maine athlete in basketball and field hockey. The couple gathers as often as possible in their 91���� hockey and football boxes to watch games with their loved ones. Today, 91���� student-athletes and 91���� Athletics staff proudly walk alongside the family at Champion the Cure events, uniting the campus and the community in a shared mission of hope and service.

The Stillwater Society Dinner also celebrates members of the Stillwater Society, 91����’s giving society, which recognizes donors whose lifetime contributions reach $25,000 or more. The biennial event also celebrates donors who have reached new levels of giving since the previous gathering, and highlights the collective impact of philanthropy on the university. 

Contact: Monique Hashey, monique@maine.edu

Michael Brzezowski, a technology teacher and integrator at Pemetic Elementary School in Southwest Harbor, was named Hancock County Teacher of the Year. Brzezowski earned his master’s degree in secondary science education from the 91���� College of Education and Human Development.

Marcy Soucy was named Penobscot County Teacher of the Year. A fourth and fifth grade teacher at Fairmount Elementary School in Bangor, Soucy earned her bachelor’s degree in elementary education from 91����.

Allison Mundee, a pre-kindergarten teacher at Harold B. Emery Jr. Memorial School in Limington, was named York County Teacher of the Year. Mundee earned her early childhood education certification from 91����.

In all, nine of the 16 Maine County Teachers of the Year have degrees or earned their certification from Maine’s public universities.

County Teachers of the Year serve as ambassadors for schools, students and the teaching profession for the next year. They are nominated by members of their community and selected by a panel of other teachers, principals and business leaders based on their service in education and dedication to their students.

The field of 16 will be narrowed to a smaller group of semifinalists, who will put together a professional portfolio, part of the National Teacher of the Year selection process. Finalists will be chosen following a review of the portfolios and presentations to an expert panel, and the Maine Teacher of the Year will be named in the fall.

More information about the 2026 Maine County Teachers of the Year is on the and websites.

Tim’s unlikely journey from rural Readfield, Maine, to 91���� to Los Angeles provides a backdrop for his latest gig: speaker for the 2026 undergraduate commencement ceremonies at his alma mater.

In this episode of “The Maine Question” podcast, host Ron Lisnet and Allen Adams, communications specialist and marketing coordinator for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, speak with Tim about his journey, the business of show business, memories of his days in Orono and much more.

Listen to the podcast on , , , , or “The Maine Question” website. 

What topics would you like to learn more about? What questions do you have for 91���� experts? Email them to mainequestion@maine.edu.

These questions serve as the inspiration behind the latest book from Caroline Bicks, professor of English at the University of Maine, which delves into the creative methodology of 91����’s most famous literary alumnus, Stephen King, by leveraging unprecedented access to his archives.

“Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King” is an exploration of King’s process through an examination of five of his earliest works: “Carrie,” “Salem’s Lot,” “The Shining,” “Pet Sematary” and “Night Shift.” The public launch party for “Monsters in the Archives” will take place at 6:30 p.m. today  at Orono Brewing Company and will feature a conversation between Bicks and Justin Soderberg.

Through close readings of early drafts and comparisons to the final products, Bicks shows us how editorial choices and changes, whether large or small, can impact the flashlight-illuminated pages under the bedcovers that we ultimately experience.

But the book is also a story about Bicks’s own relationship with King’s work, from her discovery of the author’s work at a local library as a teenager through her 2017 appointment as the inaugural Stephen E. King Chair in Literature at 91���� and the writing of this book. The result is a blend of the personal and professional that is simultaneously scholarly and eminently readable.

Four years into her time at 91����, she received an unexpected phone call from King.

“I was pretty flabbergasted; it turned out he just thought it was time we meet,” said Bicks. “I invited him to come talk to the students on campus about ‘Lisey’s Story’ and ‘On Writing,’ and he said yes, and it was just this magical first meeting I had with him. Seeing how passionate he was about talking to the students, how much he wanted to come back, and how much pleasure he took from it. It was really just a lovely way to meet him.”

Bicks was a longtime fan of King’s work, having read it since discovering and falling in love with it in the Castine Public Library when she was 12 years old (coming to the author’s work perhaps a touch early, as so many of us do). And while the old adage might say “never meet your heroes,” Bicks had the opposite experience. In fact, his generosity and kindness were a big reason why, when her year-long sabbatical approached, she reached out about this project.

“I felt comfortable enough to ask him and Tabitha,” she said. “I knew that they had just collected his manuscripts, a lot of them for the first time, and put them in a climate-controlled space attached to their home in Bangor, but that they hadn’t opened it up yet to people. I thought, ‘Well, this is opportunity knocking.’ An amazing opportunity if they say yes.”

It’s worth noting that Bicks wasn’t certain what this book was going to be when she made the ask. In essence, she had an idea to write about the books that scared her the most as a teenager and to try and understand how he crafted them.

“How did he craft these moments that are so iconic, that have stuck in the heads of so many people?,” Bicks said. “Fifty years after the fact, I can still talk to people my age who vividly remember Danny Glick at the window in ‘Salem’s Lot.’ And not just because of the movie. They actually remember the phrases that he wrote.

The question surrounding how he wrote these memorable moments was the seed that would eventually grow into “Monsters in the Archives.” Bicks narrowed her focus to the five aforementioned King works, the ones that hit her hardest and scared her the most when she first read them as a teenager.

“As a scholar, you’re taught not to bring your personal feelings into your work,” she said. “And I see the value in that to a point. But at the same time, I study gender and Shakespeare because I care about issues of gender. I really felt liberated to go in and say, ‘I’m just going to look at these because they’re the ones that scared me the most.’ I’m going to go revisit these stories. I’m going to reread them. I’m going to look at them with the eyes of a literature scholar.

“I’m bringing that view that I have that I didn’t have when I was a teenager,” she continued. “But I’m not going to lose my childhood reactions to it. I don’t want to lose what makes these such compelling stories, which is that they connect to our deepest fears. And everyone reacts differently. Everyone has a different story that scared them the most. At the same time, certain ones have staying power because they connect to issues we all face and fears we all have.

When Bicks finally ventured into the archives, the materials, particularly those that had yet to be examined, were “beyond my wildest dreams,” she said. 

What followed was months of research, with Bicks making the trip to visit the archives for at least a couple of eight-hour days per week, focusing on one of the five works at a time. 

Among the many joys Bicks derived from the process was the discovery of just how many different versions of these stories existed. Just as one example, there were three complete versions of “Pet Sematary,” all of which she worked her way through. Bicks — a self-professed slow reader — took something like three weeks to work her way through those three versions of “Pet Sematary.” After that? Right back into it.

“My days were filled with close reading, just going through these different versions,” she said. “First off, I just have to read and take notes and see what’s what. You can’t take photographs, so a lot of notes.”

One such change in “Pet Sematary” really captured Bicks’s imagination, as a slight alteration turned a good line into an iconic one, among the most memorable in the book.

“‘Dead is better,’ which is almost the hallmark of that book,” said Bicks. “It started as ‘Death is better.’ ‘Death is better’ is so different from ‘Dead is better.’  It still gives me chills. It is so much better and it’s one little change, right?

“And you can see why it became ‘Dead is better.’ It echoes, right? I was so pleased to find out that he still considers that the line that is the one that sticks with him the most from that novel,” she said.

Not every deep dive played out in the same way, however. For some, like “Night Shift,” the process involved following the collection’s various short stories through their publication histories. King was a working writer, selling stories to whatever outlets would take them, including a number of men’s magazines, which were once quite prolific publishers of short fiction. For others, like “Carrie,” Bicks would see a first draft that was significantly different from the book as it would ultimately be published.

But while some aspects of the editorial process varied somewhat from book to book, Bicks would discover that the writing process itself stayed largely the same. That included some surprising discoveries about the physical act of writing and the logistical and financial realities of such, including learning that King made a conscious effort to use as much of each sheet of paper as possible.

“He’s fitting it in as few pieces of paper as he can, because he had to,” she said. “I don’t think people today fully understand that. Paper costs money; he had to consider the materials needed in the creation of a book. The act itself had financial issues tied to it. You couldn’t just store it on a computer or in the cloud.”

That physical necessity also meant that there would occasionally be issues. Pages could get misplaced or ruined. There are a couple of incidents recounted in the book that feel genuinely harrowing, particularly to a fan of King’s work, tales of one book’s ending or another entire draft lost due to circumstance. The analog nature of it all is easy to forget until we’re confronted with the idea that a beloved horror classic might have simply disappeared because a briefcase got left in a cab or on a plane.

This book couldn’t have happened without the approval of the Kings. Bicks considers herself fortunate to have been given the opportunity — she’s the first scholar to be granted this kind of long-term ongoing access to the archive, something that simply would not have been possible without trust and transparency.

“I think he and Tabitha understood what I was trying to do,” she said. “I said to them, ‘I’m not interested in exposing your family secrets or psychoanalyzing deep, dark things.’ I’m coming at this as a literary scholar and as a fan. I really just wanted to look at these five works. I was very clear about my parameters. I wasn’t going in there to just paw through boxes.”

The end result of this lengthy literary odyssey is a very special book. It’s a work of thoughtful and compelling scholarship that is also reflective of one person’s personal journey with a beloved author. It is bibliographic and biographical all in one. “I’d like to think I did him proud,” said Bicks. “I know he likes the book. He read it and he said it’s ‘like a breath of fresh air,’ so that makes me feel really good. Like I got it right.”

Contact: Allen Adams, allen.adams@maine.edu

Mark Bolduc ’84 and his daughter Natalie Bolduc Nicols ’17, ’22G have gone on many outdoor adventures together, but in the spring of 2025, they embarked on their longest and most challenging journey to date: a thru-hike of the famous Appalachian Trail (AT). 

A continuous footpath that measures about 2,200 miles long, the AT offers an arduous journey as it follows the Appalachian Mountain Range from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine. On average, the trek takes five to seven months to complete — for those who get that far. 

“With thru-hiking together, if you’re not compatible, it’s not going to work,” Mark Bolduc said. “If you aren’t the same speed, same attitude, same goals … So to be able to do it with my daughter is just tremendous, just a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

Of the hundreds of hikers who set out to hike the entire trail each spring, only about a quarter of them make it to the end. Illness and injury cause many to stop early, while other challenges such as lack of funding and plummeting morale take others off the trail. 

“It’s a really big commitment,” Natalie Nicols said. “But sometimes in life you just have to commit to things and not look back.”

The two had toyed with the idea of hiking the AT for years. In the winter of 2024, the stars aligned. Natalie Nicols, who earned her degree in nursing, was between jobs in healthcare, and Mark Bolduc, president of The Fitch Company engineering firm, could plan ahead to take time off of work. Perhaps most importantly, both were in good physical health for the long-distance trek.

“I was totally on board with it,” said Kim Archambault Bolduc ’84, wife of Mark Bolduc and mother of Natalie Nicols. “It’s something they’d been talking about for years. They’re both very determined, and they love the outdoors.”

“Life goes by,” Natalie Nicols said. “You can always talk about things, but sometimes you have to just send it.”

Going the distance

Mark and Kim Bolduc of Dixfield met at 91���� in 1983, and both graduated the following year. All three of their children are also 91���� graduates.

The family has always done outdoor activities together like camping, skiing and hiking, but when it comes to endurance outdoor sports, Mark Bolduc and Natalie Nicols take things to the next level. Together, they ran the 2014 Sugarloaf Marathon and did so well that they qualified for the prestigious Boston Marathon, which they ran in 2015. 

In more recent years, they both raced in the 2023 Big Brad 50K Ultra Trail Race at Bradbury Mountain State Park in Pownal. They also completed the 2024 Northwoods Gravel Grind, a 70-mile bike race on logging roads northwest of Rangeley. And they participated in the 2024 Uphill Will SkiMo event, a 24-hour uphill ski event during which the two hiked over 22,000 vertical feet together in a blizzard. (Natalie Nicols tied for first for the women, and they came in ninth place overall.)

“Basically they’re the same person,” said Céline Bolduc Weeks ’20, ’22G, who is Natalie Nicols’ sister and Mark Bolduc’s daughter. “Me and my brother call our sister ‘Mini Mark.’ They’re similar in so many ways. When one of them wants to do something, the other one has to do it.”

In February 2025, while preparing for their Appalachian Trail trek, the two participated in Last Skier Standing, an unusual endurance event held annually at Black Mountain of Maine in Rumford. Participants hike up the mountain on skis, then ski down, once per hour — until they decide to quit. The last skier standing wins. 

Mark Bolduc completed 18 laps, then tapped out to address an electrolyte imbalance. Natalie Nicols completed 38 laps, winning the women’s event.  

“I really enjoy having something to train for, and then just getting to the event and seeing how much we can push ourselves physically and mentally,” Natalie Nicols said. “It makes me feel so good. It’s like a drug, honestly.”

“I’ve created a monster,” Mark Bolduc said. 

Prepping for the long journey

After deciding to hike the Appalachian Trail, the duo had over a year to plan and prepare. 

“It was something to really look forward to and we felt really prepared going in — though a little anxious,” Natalie Nicols said. “[My dad] had never really backpacked before, and I’d only done a total of three one-night backpacking trips in Maine.”

Backpacking involves carrying the gear you need to survive in the backcountry for multiple days and nights. Usually that includes a tent, cookstove, sleeping bag, water purifier, food, extra clothing and other necessities. For tips, they listened to podcasts about long-distance hiking, and they tested out their camping equipment by tenting in their backyard.

“We slept horribly,” Mark Bolduc said, chuckling. “The next week, Natalie ordered us zero degree, zipper quilts, and we got sleeping bag liners.”

When the father-daughter team arrived in Georgia to start their hike on February 28, 2025, they visited the visitor center at Amicalola Falls State Park to register as thru-hikers. They also took a lesson on how to safely hang their food in a tree so it wouldn’t be eaten by bears at night. 

“We were complete novices,” Mark Bolduc said. “We went from zero backpacking experience and within two weeks, we had it pretty much figured out.”

Snow, snakes, and aches

Though the father-daughter team was physically fit and well prepared, the AT tested them from the beginning. 91���� a week into their trek, they ran into a blizzard at about 5,000 feet above sea level and had to hunker down for the night.

“I’m like, ‘OK, this is real,’” Natalie Nicols said. “We were very happy to have our zero-degree sleeping bags … Setting up the tent, my hands were very cold and I was almost in a state of shock.”

Inside their tent, they shared a warm meal (thanks to their tiny backpacking stove) and tried to sleep as snow accumulated outside. In the morning, they laced up frozen boots and continued onward. 

“The sun came up, and it was gorgeous,” Natalie Nicols said. “When the sun hit our faces, it felt like a little heater. We finally felt warm.” 

The two quickly adapted to life on the trail. While they didn’t run into any trouble with bears, they constantly kept an eye out for venomous snakes and disease-carrying ticks.

Though they experienced the typical aches and pains that come with hiking every day, they were lucky to avoid any major injuries or illness. Natalie Nicols, with her education in healthcare, constantly monitored their health, and the two prioritized good nutrition and hygiene. Every few days, they’d leave the trail and travel into town to do laundry, eat fresh food, shower and sleep in a real bed.

“We definitely depended on each other,” Mark Bolduc said. “We both had a ‘no quit’ mentality. Quitting wasn’t an option.”

They also depended on their family back home. Each night, they’d video chat with various family members, telling stories from the trail and getting updates about the “real world.” Natalie Nicols wrote in a blog daily, and Mark Bolduc planned the days ahead.

Crossing state lines

The AT travels through 14 states as it traces the spine of the Appalachians. Some highlights along the way include the Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina and Tennessee, Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, and the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

“We loved the whole trail, but obviously we had our favorite sections,” Mark Bolduc said. “We absolutely loved Georgia. Every mountain had these beautiful campsites.”

The two moved fast, hiking about 20 miles a day. By starting early in the season, they aimed to stay ahead of “the bubble,” a large cluster of hikers that naturally forms on the AT each season. While this group offers companionship and camaraderie, it also means crowded campsites and hiker hostels. 

In 2025, more than 3,600 hikers registered to thru-hike the AT. The father-daughter team managed to stay ahead of most of them.

“We were so far ahead of the bubble that it was quiet on the trail,” Mark Bolduc said. “We went full days sometimes without seeing any hikers. We didn’t mind.”

Of the hikers they did meet, they quickly formed friendships. They also connected with “trail angels,” locals who help thru-hikers by offering food, rides into town and places to sleep. 

“We met so many people that we’re still in touch with,” Mark Bolduc said. “There are people who’ve already stayed with us in Rangeley since [finishing the trail].”

Long-distance hikers usually adopt trail names. On the AT, Natalie Nicols became “Glam Girl,” a name bestowed on her by a Georgia local in response to her well-manicured nails. Mark Bolduc became “Hunger Pains,” a nod to his greatest challenge on the trail: consuming enough calories. Due to his fast metabolism and their constant hiking, he sometimes had to eat up to 6,000 calories a day.

The two stuck together, never hiking separately. This gave them ample opportunities to chat and laugh — and on rare occasions, argue.

“We’d go off on some really funny conversations,” Natalie Nicols said. “It’d just be us, talking in the middle of the woods.”

If they needed a break from each other, they’d simply pop in headphones and listen to music or podcasts. Doing this would help them break up the monotony of hiking day in and day out.

“The trail taught me to be a little more resilient and roll with the punches,” Natalie Nicols said. “I’m a very type A kind of person, so if something doesn’t go my way, I get antsy. The AT taught me to simmer down a little and everything will be OK.”

“It also teaches you that the human body is incredible,” Mark Bolduc said. “Every night when we were done hiking, we were sore … Then we’d get up the next day, put on our packs, and hike 20 miles, and it was fine.”

Walking home 

Once the two reached Maine, they were back in familiar territory. But they had one last major challenge: Maine’s 100-Mile Wilderness, the longest span of the AT that doesn’t cross any paved roads or pass through any towns. In mid-June, it was brutally hot and buggy.

“I was the most miserable I’d been on the whole trail,” Natalie Nicols said. “Mosquitoes, blackflies and horseflies — I was just covered.” 

They were joined by Natalie’s husband, Ryan Nicols ’18, who had provided off-trail support throughout their journey.

“When the going gets tough, (Natalie) has always been one to bear down and just keep chugging along and get it done, and I think that mentality carried her through on the Appalachian Trail hike,” said Ryan Nicols. “Mark’s the same way. They’re both very strong-willed.”

Joined by a small group of family and friends, the father-daughter team finished the AT atop Katahdin, Maine’s tallest mountain, on June 26. It took them 119 days — or about four months. 

“It was just one of the most special moments of my life,” Natalie Nicols said. “We started and finished together, side by side. I wouldn’t have been able to do that alone, and I’m OK with admitting it. I wouldn’t want to. I just always felt safe with my dad there.”

The AT taught them to cherish the small things in life — things like shelter, good food and the company of family and friends. And while the journey was certainly a physical challenge, it was their grit and optimism that carried them to the end.

“I’d say it’s 80 percent mental,” Natalie Nicols said. “We really did have positive vibes, and we were so motivated to get it done, to walk home.”

By Aislinn Sarnacki ’10

Contact: Marcus Wolf, 207.581.3721; marcus.wolf@maine.edu

Ron Lisnet and Julie Arnold Lisnet’s now 43-year love affair with each other, and the University of Maine, did not begin with a thunderbolt from heaven back in 1982, when they met inside the Cyrus Pavilion Theatre. In fact, it started with a snide comment. 

“I was sitting there with a friend, being a snotty senior,” Julie said, remembering the day she first laid eyes on her future husband, “and Ron walks in, and I said, ‘Who is that geek?’” 

They were both there auditioning for a play. Ron was also in the middle of a fraternity beard-growing contest. It wasn’t going well. 

“Yeah, I was not winning,” Ron ’83 said. 

“There was a little patch here and a little patch there,” Julie ’82, ’85G, said. 

But Julie’s original assessment changed after Ron shaved and applied his stage makeup for the show, in which he played a fishnet shirt-wearing brothel owner. 

“I thought he had beautiful eyes,” Julie said, “I thought, ‘he’s actually a very handsome guy.’” 

A few months and dates later, they were inseparable. The two married July 14, 1984. 

“I think we’re the only Bear Pair to have met inside the Cyrus Pavilion Theatre,” Julie said. Bear Pairs are what 91���� calls alumni couples, many of whom met as students on campus. 

And Ron and Julie are more than just a Bear Pair. Ron started working at the university 33 years ago, in 1993. Julie began teaching in the School for Performing Arts in 2002. Their daughter, Natalie Lisnet ’21, also works at 91���� at the Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning. 

“Between us and our daughter, we have four [91����] degrees and a teaching certificate,” Julie said. “I don’t think we could get much more involved.” 

The whole family reunited inside the Cyrus Pavilion Theatre in January when Natalie directed both her parents in a production of “Pride and Prejudice” produced by the Ten Bucks Theatre Company, which Julie co-founded 25 years ago. 

Originally constructed in 1908, the Pavilion Theatre used to be a livestock judging arena. Julie said she remembers it housing sheep when she first lived on campus. At the end of the 1970s, it was converted into a theater. 

“When the theater department acquired it, I spent some time ripping out sheep mangers and shoveling lots of sheep poop,” Julie said. Now, both she and Ron are getting involved in the fundraising effort for another refurbishment. 

Growing up in Milbridge, Maine, Julie always knew she wanted to study theater. She applied to both the University of Maine and the University of Southern Maine and chose the one closest to home. After earning her bachelor’s degree in Orono in 1982, she continued on and earned a Master of Arts in Theatre in 1985. She now teaches in the same department. 

“I teach fundamentals of acting,” Julie said. “Occasionally, I teach a survey of dramatic literature, which means we read a lot of plays and talk about them. This year, for the first time, I’m also teaching in the Honors College. I’ve basically taken my acting class and turned it into a class focused on acting for Shakespeare.” 

Over the years, in addition to working at 91����, Julie has put her acting and directing talents to work at the Penobscot Theatre, Maine Theatre, Theatre of the Enchanted Forest, The Assembled Players, Marsh Island Stage, Maine Shakespeare Festival, Northern Lights Theatre, The Grand in Ellsworth and True North Theatre. 

In fall 2023 Julie directed “Crimes of the Heart” for Penobscot Theatre’s 50th season opener. In 2025, she directed “Matinicus: A Lighthouse Play” for the same company. The play told the story of real-life Mainer Abigail Burgess’ heroic exploits keeping her father’s lighthouse burning on a desolate rock, miles out to sea. 

In 1995, Julie appeared in a two-part network television miniseries based on a Stephen King short story called “The Langoliers.” She played the part of Aunt Vicki, who gets erased by a mysterious force. 

“Only her fillings and her glasses were found on the airplane when everybody that fell asleep disappeared, I think.” Julie said, struggling to remember the details. “My mother was very excited about it. I had 17 speaking lines, though that was cut down to just two in the final edit. My mother was very upset.” 

Ron was also in the film, sort of. “They had me put on this airline captain’s hat and drive around in the background,” he said. “We get a residual check for it every once in a while, for DVD rentals in Thailand, or something.” 

After growing up in Connecticut, Ron arrived at 91���� to study forestry. He only auditioned for the play where he met Julie because a professor invited him. After graduating in 1983, Ron went to work for Bangor’s ABC television affiliate, WVII, where he eventually became sports director. After nine years, Ron brought his media production skills to the university. He’s now manager of visual media, overseeing all aspects of visual media for 91����, including photography and video production, as well as the university’s photo and video database and archives.

Ron has also been the play-by-play voice of 91���� Men’s Basketball broadcasts for more than 30 years. He hosts the university’s “The Maine Question” podcasts, which he created in 2019, as well. The podcast explores how 91���� students and researchers make sense of, and learn about, the world around them. Recent topics include “Can Zebrafish improve human health?” and “What is the future for manufacturing in Maine?” 

In 2025, the podcast won the Council for Advancement and Support of Education’s Circle of Excellence bronze level award, with judges saying, “With its punchy, distinctive title, this zero-budget podcast has impressive engagement metrics and demonstrates how thoughtful, location-based audio storytelling can translate complex academic work into accessible content that connects with local and national audiences alike.” 

In addition to all their work at 91����, Ron and Julie have always found time to perform in plays together. 

“We’ve probably played husband and wife 15 or 20 times,” Ron said. “I’ve lost count of how many times we’ve been in shows together.” 

Though they can’t remember the exact number, each agrees it’s in the dozens. For the past quarter century, the pair has appeared in an outdoor Shakespeare show put on by the Ten Bucks Theatre Company at Indian Trail Park in Brewer every summer. In 2010 Ten Bucks added Fort Knox in Prospect as a second regular Shakespeare venue. 

“Just about every anniversary we’ve had has usually been standing out in the field, getting bitten by bugs, rehearsing a show,” Ron said. 

One of their favorite shows they’ve performed together was the bickering couple in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.” They said it was fun because they’d never speak that way to each other in real life. 

“I got to say, ‘You make me puke,’” Julie said. 

“That was a good one,” Ron said. 

Now, more than 40 years have passed since the couple first met at the Cyrus Pavilion Theatre. Julie no longer thinks Ron is a geek and his now-gray beard has come in nicely — and they have no plans to leave the theater life behind. 

“It’s enervating,” she said. “Theater is energizing. It goes through a cycle. You get to the week before opening — we call it hell week — and you don’t think you’re going to get through it. Then you get to the play, and it’s just magic. It’s like getting high without drugs.” 

Ron sometimes thinks about it in sports terms. 

“The similarities are quite striking. There’s a team chemistry kind of thing in both endeavors,” he said. “There’s nothing quite as cool as when you’re telling a good story, and it’s being told well, and either the place bursts into laughter or you can hear a pin drop. It’s a very inviting, alluring, intoxicating kind of feeling.” 

Julie said she can’t even imagine her life without Ron or theater, both at 91���� and off campus. 

“I’ve never made a ton of money but it’s made me outrageously happy,” she said. 

Story by Troy R. Bennett 

Contact: Marcus Wolf, 207.581.3721; marcus.wolf@maine.edu

This story originally appeared in the, published twice yearly by the University of Maine Alumni Association.

In the early 1990s as a student at Belfast Area High School, Rusty Brown ’98, ’01G admits that he was “floundering” somewhat on his educational journey. At a particularly low moment, coming off a three-day out-of-school suspension, a guidance counselor suggested that he might be a good candidate for Upward Bound. 

Established by the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 and later the Higher Education Act of 1965, Upward Bound is part of a cluster of federally funded U.S. college readiness and outreach programs, known as TRIO programs, which are designed to identify and provide services for students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Upward Bound is aimed specifically at students who will be the first in their immediate family to attend college. 

Following the recommendation from his guidance counselor, Brown applied for and was accepted to the program, offered through the University of Maine, and participated in his first classic Upward Bound summer program in 1992. 

“After that first amazing summer experience, I went from floundering to being on the honor roll for the rest of high school,” Brown said. “I participated enthusiastically in every Upward Bound event and summer program until I graduated (high school) in 1994.” 

Brown, now the director of 91����’s Upward Bound programs, entered the university as a history major, eventually graduating with a bachelor’s degree in secondary education in 1998 and a master’s in counselor education in 2001. 

Without Upward Bound, he says he would have been “severely underprepared in every basic skill set imperative for all college students’ success.” He credits the program with teaching him prioritization and time management skills and helping him develop the confidence to approach instructors with questions during class and office hours.

“Upward Bound taught me financial literacy skills and how to navigate the complexities of applying for and receiving federal student aid, how to actively seek scholarships to help supplement my college costs and to reduce my overall college debt,” said Brown. “My college success is because of the blood, sweat, and tears I put into my time at the University of Maine, however Upward Bound prepared me to focus those energies and efforts to be successful.” 

In college, Brown worked as a summer staff member and later a graduate assistant with 91����’s Upward Bound program. From 2001-12, he was the Upward Bound program coordinator and returned as the academic coordinator from 2018-23. Since 2023, he has served as the director of Upward Bound and Upward Bound Math-Science at 91����. All told, he has worked for the program for 23 years. 

“My time as an Upward Bound student set the stage for my personal and professional success,” Brown said. “The lessons I learned then, and still carry with me today, have guided my work as a professional, and I can wholeheartedly say Upward Bound was, and continues to be, the inspiration that leads me to do good work in my part of the world. It has been my privilege and pleasure to call myself an Upward Bound alum and Upward Bound staff, and I am eternally grateful to have had these guiding experiences in my life.”

What was the most interesting, engaging or helpful part of your Upward Bound experience?

During my summer programs, we had three amazing history/civics teachers who held “mock trials” at the end of every week of instruction. The students would be divided into two different groups: the “prosecution” and “defense” counsel for historical figures that coincided with our learning material. I absolutely could not have enjoyed anything more than one week “defending” Robespierre and the next week “prosecuting” Sarah Good as we studied the Salem Witch trials. It was not just the thrill of debating (which I truly enjoyed) but the skill set required to suspend your own personal beliefs and values (I did not believe that what happened to Sarah Good was right and/or just, for example) in order to examine an issue from all perspectives to develop a broader understanding of any topic. These history classes sparked a previously unknown academic fervor in me.

Did you work closely with any mentors or Upward Bound staff members who made your experience in the program better? If so, who were they and how did they do that?

Becky Colannino ’89, ’92G, the retired Upward Bound director at 91����, was the Upward Bound counselor who would visit my school and with whom I would have the vast majority of my individual academic sessions. I remember Becky using the phrase “talented underachiever” in some of our meetings to describe the potential she saw in me as a scholar. These were the exact words I needed to hear. In a compassionate way, she let me know that I was creating the biggest barrier to my success and that if I was willing to walk a different path I could create more opportunities for myself. Becky also validated the tough times I was going through in high school being raised by a single mom who did the best she could with what she had but who struggled with both mental health and alcohol addiction. The validation of these experiences were always coupled with holding me accountable for my academic performance. She let me know that success was within my grasp if I was willing to work hard to overcome the challenges of “the life I was given” and lay the foundation for “the life I was willing to work for.” Becky helped me believe in myself and with every new learning experience Upward Bound put in front of me, I was more ready and willing to accept new challenges!

What’s the most memorable moment from your Upward Bound experience?

There are many, many great memories from my time in Upward Bound, but if I was to choose one that stands out it would be a group trip to Boston during the summer between graduating high school and starting at 91����. That summer is called the “Bridge” summer for students who choose to participate. I had never been further than Conway, New Hampshire where my great aunt lived, and I remember so vividly driving over the Tobin Bridge and seeing Boston for the first time. It was magical seeing this city of possibilities in front of me and the hope it inspired (and a little anxiety too) was thrilling. We toured Newbury College, ate at a German restaurant, went on the Freedom Trail and saw the science museum and the aquarium. My family could never afford a trip like that, and I felt like that one weekend in July of 1994 I saw more of the world than any time in my previous 17 years. I keep a picture from that weekend handy and am still in touch with the other Upward Bound students in that picture. What a pleasure it has been to follow their stories and to see their success!

As a former Upward Bound participant yourself, what fulfillment do you get from working with Upward Bound students today?

It is a privilege to work with these talented students who are willing and wanting to go out of their way to make a difference in their own lives! Our program is voluntary, so every one of our participants has made the choice to seek additional support to be successful in preparing for, applying to, and enrolling in a college educational path of their choosing.

How do you approach mentoring young people who participate in Upward Bound?

I’ve heard it said that “patience is a virtue,” and this is the foundation of the approach I employ when working with high school students. Just about all of the academic and pre-college skill building that Upward Bound engages in with our students is very new to them, and so it is important to show them patience as you help them start to “help themselves.” We are introducing them to the possibility that they can go to college if they choose, which is often a foreign world to them and their families. There can be a lot of anxiety about being the first in your family to go to college, so patiently helping students prepare for the differences they will encounter when they go to college is important as well. Collegiate success happens both in the classroom and outside of it. We do our best to make sure they are as prepared as possible to do well with their academic work but also have as much skill in knowing how to advocate for themselves with vital college departments, such as financial aid, the business office, and more. 

Is there anything else you think people should know about Upward Bound?

We have the privilege of working with some of our students for the entirety of their high school career, so that gives us a lot of time to develop trust-based relationships. Upward Bound programs also assist our partner schools by providing individualized, pre-college guidance to our participants — increasing their capacity to help all of their students by lessening their workload. 

By Casey Kelly ’19G, ’25 CGS

Contact: Casey Kelly, casey.kelly@maine.edu

“I was very all over the place and scattered,” said Ernst, who’s from Marblehead, Massachusetts.

Her family worked with teachers and school personnel to secure an Individualized Education Program (IEP), a legal document that outlines specialized instruction, supports and services for public school students who need special education. 

“Just having that extra support helped set me up for success in the future,” she said. “It really helped with notetaking and making sure I knew what I was supposed to do for homework. By the time I was in high school, I didn’t need the IEP anymore. Looking back on it now I can see the progress that I made in such a short amount of time.”

In December, Ernst graduated from the University of Maine with a bachelor’s degree in elementary education and a concentration in special education.  

After receiving her degree, the College of Education and Human Development recommended to the Maine Department of Education that she be dual-certified in General Elementary (grades K-6) and as a Teacher of Students with Disabilities (grades K-8). Since graduating, she has been working at Asa Adams Elementary School in Orono as an educational technician and is planning to apply for full-time teaching positions in the area starting this fall.

Previously, the only option to become a certified special educator through 91���� was to complete a Master of Education (M.Ed.) in special education. 

“I’m so glad 91���� is opening up more opportunities for its students to work in special education,” Ernst said. “It’s a very special job, and working with these students is just awesome.” 

Providing more first-hand experiences for students

The College of Education and Human Development in partnership with three local school districts — Regional School Unit (RSU) 34 (Old Town, Alton and Bradley), RSU 26 (Orono) and the Hermon School Department — received a $20,000 grant last year allowing the university to pilot the four-year pathway to special education certification, which Ernst was the first student to complete. 

Funding for the pilot came from the at the University of Florida, which helps states and educator preparation programs enhance high-quality instruction for teachers and school leaders.  

A portion of the college’s share of the grant is helping pay for the work of staff and faculty to place students like Ernst in special education classrooms for their required field experiences. After completing the first half of her final semester as a student teacher in a general education kindergarten classroom at the Dedham School, Ernst spent the second half of her student teaching in a K-3 special education classroom at Asa Adams.

“In the general ed classroom, you’re lesson planning for a group of 20 students who are all mostly going to be doing the same thing,” said Ernst. “In special education, you have a wide range of students with different needs. I was in a life skills classroom, so we had students on the autism spectrum and students on the behavioral spectrum that needed very personalized instruction and one-on-one support.” 

Ernst was also able to attend IEP meetings, where parents or other caregivers meet with school personnel to discuss their students’ progress and ongoing needs.

“Having first-hand experiences in a variety of educational settings is a vital part of our teacher education programs, and it’s essential we offer placements that are relevant to and align with students’ career goals,” said Julie Ireland, field experience coordinator with the 91���� College of Education and Human Development.

Ireland, along with Director of Field Placements and Teacher Preparation Erin Staine, worked with the three partner districts to identify appropriate special education placements for 91���� student teachers.

Boosting the K-12 workforce

The college’s share of the CEEDAR Center grant also supported a series of asynchronous online professional development modules developed by faculty members in special education. The modules, which are being rolled out this spring, will be completed by undergraduate students in the special education concentration as part of their training as student teachers. They will also be offered to practicing teachers and other educators, initially in the three partner districts and eventually to personnel at other schools and districts.

Each online module takes about an hour-and-a-half to two hours to complete. Topics include “Explicit Instruction,” developed by associate professor Sara Flanagan; “Mathematics Language and Communication,” developed by assistant professor Joo Young Lee; “Creating Digital Accessible Educational Materials,” developed by lecturer of special education Krystle Merry; and “Supporting Multilingual Learners,” developed by assistant professor Melissa Cuba.

“We really wanted to use our portion of the funding to make sure our students enter the field as prepared as possible, but also to make professional learning more accessible to our district partners,” said 91���� professor of literacy education William Dee Nichols, who is co-principal investigator of the grant along with associate professor of special education Sarah Howorth. 

In addition to the online modules, the College of Education and Human Development arranged for students like Ernst to take undergraduate special education coursework virtually through other institutions within the University of Maine System, including 91����’s regional campus, the University of Maine at Machias; the University of Maine at Presque Isle and the University of Maine at Augusta. 

Nichols said the goal is to make the pilot program permanent so more students who want to become special educators can do so with a bachelor’s degree rather than continuing into a master’s program. Doing so is contingent on the continued availability of field placements in special education classrooms. Nichols added that any four-year pathway will not replace the master’s in special education, which is one of the largest master’s degree programs at 91����. 

“It’s really meant as a supplement to the master’s program, which will still offer a pathway for educators who are not certified special educators and want to become certified. The master’s degree can also be a way for those who are already certified to develop additional skills and leadership, or to earn their master’s on their way to doctorate or other terminal degree,” Nichols said.

Maine, like many other states, faces , including special education teachers. As a largely rural state with an aging population, many districts face additional challenges recruiting and retaining certified educators. 

Kimm Kenniston, director of special education for RSU 34, said anything that increases the pool of qualified special education teachers is a positive for the field.

“RSU 34 is thrilled to collaborate with the University of Maine to bring this pilot certification program to our district,” said Kenniston. “This partnership allows us to build a workforce of adaptable educators who are trained in the high-leverage practices necessary to support all students, ensuring that our schools remain places of equity, growth and excellence.” 

Staying in Maine to Teach

As an educational technician, Ernst has been providing one-on-one support to a student in the same special education classroom where she did her student teaching last fall. She says the people she’s met through 91���� and her field placements influenced her decision to plant roots in the state.

“I found my community in Maine and I really want to stay here,” she said.

For other students who are pursuing teaching careers, Ernst said she would encourage them to give special education a try.

“You hear a lot of, ‘Well, the kids you’re working with aren’t easy,’” she said. “But if you think about it, there’s always some aspect of learning that’s hard or difficult, even for kids without an IEP. And even in a general education classroom, you’re going to have special education students, because of how integrated they are. So knowing how to work with them is really important. I’d just say if you’re thinking about it, you should try it.”

Contact: Casey Kelly, casey.kelly@maine.edu

“It’s not exactly what we learned,” Patrick Breeding said. “It’s that we learned how to learn — how to go out and seek new information, take it in and understand it.”

For Amber Boutiette, that growth continues long after graduation.

“You have no idea where you’re going to go or how much you’re going to grow,” she said. “It’s such a beautiful, scary and exciting part of life.”

Boutiette and Breeding both earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biomedical engineering from the University of Maine in 2017 and 2019.

They went on to found Marin Skincare, a company born from research they conducted as students while at 91���� with Lobster Institute faculty members on Marine Glycoproteins, a natural byproduct of lobster processing used in skincare to help repair the skin barrier.

Since launching its first product in 2020, Marin has grown into a national brand, expanding its product line and forming retail partnerships with companies including L.L.Bean and Sea Bags.

Boutiette and Breeding will share their story as speakers at the 91���� Graduate School commencement ceremony on May 8. The ceremony will begin at 4 p.m. in Alfond Arena and will recognize students who earned doctoral, master’s and education specialist degrees, as well as certificates of advanced study.

“Amber and Patrick exemplify the creative and entrepreneurial spirit that define the University of Maine,” President Joan Ferrini-Mundy said. “Their journey from graduate research to building a nationally recognized company is a powerful example of what our amazing students can achieve.”

Marin’s roots trace back to their time at 91����, where they developed the skills that continue to shape how they approach problems and opportunities.

“Through our program, we learned how to think first with principles,” Breeding said. “We learned to see everything from the bottom up, not the top down, and understand how all the parts work together.”

Boutiette echoed that perspective, saying their 91���� education taught them to break down complex challenges and apply knowledge across disciplines.

“It really shapes how we approach problems in the real world,” she said. “We’re both very grateful for that.”

Their path to entrepreneurship was not linear. As students, they explored multiple ventures and immersed themselves in 91����’s startup ecosystem, supported by mentors and programs that encouraged innovation and experimentation.

That mindset continues to guide how they define success and what they hope to share with graduates.

“Curiosity is the most important thing,” Breeding said. “There’s value in stepping back and asking, ‘Who do I want to be? What do I want to do?’”

Boutiette encourages graduates to trust both their training and themselves.

“Use the skills you’ve learned, but also follow your heart,” she said. “Start sharpening your intuition and use it to make decisions.”

As they return to campus as commencement speakers, both said the moment is still difficult to fully process.

“We never would have thought this would happen,” Breeding said. “It’s crazy to go back, see where it all began and recognize who we’ve become.”

“It’s always a gift to go back to where it all started,” Boutiette said, “and reflect on how far you’ve come.”

Complete details about 91����’s 2026 commencement ceremonies are available on the 91���� Commencement website.

Contact: David Nordman, david.nordman@maine.edu

University of Maine student Maeve Littlefield has always been creative, and developed a passion for the scientific process late in high school. A sophomore majoring in biology, she found a class at 91���� that combined her passion for science with her sense of creativity.

During the fall 2025 semester, she enrolled in a Research Learning Experience (RLE) that immersed her in the creative side of science communication and encouraged her to take risks by experimenting with new ways to understand and communicate research and science.

RLEs allow students to participate in real-world research, problem-solving and other hands-on learning early in their college careers, reflecting 91����’s commitment as a learner-centered R1 university and laying a stronger educational foundation and pathway to a meaningful career. 91���� is a leader among the nation’s flagship institutions in offering these high-impact opportunities to all incoming students. 

They are funded as part of the University of Maine System’s Student Success and Retention initiative, which is made possible by a $320 million investment from the Harold Alfond Foundation and matching contributions known as UMS TRANSFORMS. 

Students in the fall course, “Creative Expression of Science” showcased prints, paintings, drawings, creative writing, digital storytelling and other pieces designed to improve how people engage with scientific concepts. Their projects encouraged each of them to use experimentation as a method of creativity and communication. 

Littlefield’s final portfolio included several artworks that used a block printing technique to represent the positive impressions humans leave on the environment.

“Sometimes we get caught up in seeing statistics about the environment and human impact,” Littlefield said. “But we also forget that adaptation and evolution make really resilient communities and populations, and that it’s not hopeless. It makes you want to fight more for these things that are important — that if we do lose them, they aren’t coming back.” 

Learning from local artists

The course featured guest lectures from local artists who showcased their creative processes and demonstrated how forms of communication can connect science and research with audiences on a personal level. Having built successful careers at the intersection of art and science, the speakers offered insight into their professional journeys and provided guidance to help students envision and pursue their own pathways to careers.

The first guest speaker, , did a block printing workshop during her visit and spoke about how to create environmentally conscious art. One of the co-instructors of the course, Holly White, said most students ended up doing at least one block print for their own projects.

“Her approach to making art that is place-based through an environmental lens really resonated with students,” said White, who is also a Ph.D. student at 91����. She co-instructed the course with Bridie McGreavy, associate professor of environmental communication. 

Other guest speakers included a children’s book author who narrates scientific themes digestible for youth; an ecologist and writer who encouraged students to reimagine scientific representations and consider the context beyond the data; and an interdisciplinary Ph.D. student at 91���� who creates digital media to honor Wabanaki knowledge and cultures.

“I hope students left with the idea that science communication can be fun, creative and accessible and that you don’t need to be a professional artist to turn scientific ideas into art,” White said. “A goal of the class was to help students take risks, try new modes of expression and treat experimentation as a valuable part of the process.”

Littlefield said all the guest speakers spoke toward the power of perspective, which in turn informed her own work. “I was able to connect that with science and how we talk about how important diversity is,” Littlefield said. “Each species, each part of this ecosystem, is important and has its own role.”

Her piece titled “Underneath and All Around” shows a scuba diver engulfed in darkness except for an illuminated line of sight filled with different aquatic animals. The idea started from an experience one of the guest speakers shared. 

Drawing on success stories

’25G, a photographer and videographer who works with underwater drones, talked to the class about how to use visual communication in research and storytelling. As a former graduate research assistant for the Maine-eDNA project, she shaped, traced and explored communication and collaborative opportunities for the initiative’s coastal ecosystem monitoring research using underwater drones and virtual reality. 

She collaborated with other 91���� graduate students to study how these technologies benefited the outreach for Maine-eDNA by engaging with researchers and K-12 students. Their work suggested that providing a new perspective can help people connect with and understand the environment in a new way.

By working directly with professionals like Smith-Mayo, students in “Creative Expression of Science” saw firsthand how exploring new forms of expression and applying creative thinking can address challenges facing Maine’s communities and beyond, such as the need to better understand and communicate changes in the Gulf of Maine.

Guest speaker ’15, ’18G combines data, landscapes and ecosystems to communicate the ways in which the Earth is changing. Her work integrates data into artistic backdrops, such as a line chart overlain on a mountain, and was even featured on the cover of Time Magazine’s July 2020 special issue “One Last Chance.”

Pelto, an Honors College graduate, studied studio art and Earth and climate sciences at 91���� as an undergraduate, then stayed for the master’s program in Earth and climate sciences.

Her journey from an interdisciplinary student to a full time artist and small business owner followed a niche path and stands as a testament to the vastness of science communication. While the students’ own journeys would likely look different from hers, Pelto talked to them about the tangible aspects, like income and networking.

“What makes me love what I do is that it gets to be a little bit more broad,” Pelto said. “I love painting and creating the art, but I also love that I get to share it with people, like through class visits.”

Pelto accompanied a group of 91���� students to Iceland in the summer of 2025 as part of the Sea-to-Sky Experience, which she’ll be joining again in 2026. She led them in art classes and created her own work inspired by the journey as students participated in research and learning across the Nordic country. 

Her personal connections to her work bonds her to it, and she strives to represent a variety of places in a way that will emotionally resonate with others like they have with her. 

Contact: Ashley Yates; ashley.depew@maine.edu

This story originally appeared in the , published twice yearly by the University of Maine Alumni Association.

The distance to Orono from Ewa Kleczyk’s native Poland is just under 4,000 miles, but her journey is perhaps more properly measured in experiences, accolades and giving back to her many communities.

Kleczyk, who first arrived in Maine in the late 1990s as an exchange student at Belfast Area High School, enrolled at the University of Maine, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in economics in 2001 and a master’s in resource economics and policy in 2003. She continued her education at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, where she earned another master’s in 2005, followed by a Ph.D. She has since parlayed these degrees and her experiences into becoming a healthcare analytics executive and author.

Currently the founder of Kleczyk Con­sulting LLC and a strategic advisor in healthcare artificial intelligence (AI), analytics and platforms, she works to leverage real-world data and AI to improve patient outcomes, optimize research and advance digital transformation within the healthcare industry. Kleczyk is also a sought-after speaker and author of the 2025 book “Empowered Leadership: Breaking Barriers, Building Impact and Leaving Legacy.”

Among her many accolades are a 2023 Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award, the Pharmaceutical Marketing Sciences Association Lifetime Achievement Award and the 2016 91���� Alumni Association’s Spirit of Maine Achievement Award. She was also included in The Healthcare Technology Report as among the top 50 women in the industry in 2024.

For Kleczyk, this extraordinary arc of achi­evement and service can perhaps claim Orono as the academic origin and spark for what was to come, but the foundation resides in far more distant lands.

Raised in Poland during the Cold War, Kleczyk’s upbringing was forged not only by the monumental political events of the era, but by parents who “placed a strong emphasis on education, resilience and self-reliance — values that were essential rather than aspirational at the time,” she said. 

“My mother worked in the healthcare in­du­s­try, which exposed me early to the realities of patient care and the importance of functioning health systems,” Kleczyk said. Her father, a quality engineer with his own firm, taught her “precision, accountability, and the discipline of systems thinking.”

“Studying math was non-negotiable in our household,” she said. 

Early on, she was shaped by a fascination with how systems operate — scientific, social and institutional ones. Over time, this evolved into a focus on healthcare and data-driven decision making, she said. 

“Rather than a single ‘ah-ha’ moment, it was a series of realizations that rigorous data, when applied responsibly, can … improve human lives,” she said. 

Making Connections at 91���� and Beyond

While in Orono, Kleczyk fell into the academic embrace of mentors, including Mario Teisl ’90G, Gary Hunt, Adrienne Kearney and others, who shaped how she approached academic problems while also considering real-world implications. 

“Their mentorship reinforced the importance of interdisciplinary thinking and ethical leadership — principles that continue to guide my work today,” she said.

On campus, she embraced student life, skating at Alfond Arena, meeting friends at the Bear’s Den, attending the Oronoka International Dance Party and participating in Culturefest. 

“It was an incredible opportunity to connect with so many students and celebrate their diverse talents,” she said. “And it gave me a whole new appreciation for student life and leadership at 91����.”

Kleczyk’s experience at 91���� extended beyond the campus and was enriched when she was introduced to Stacey Smith Guerin ’81 and her family. Guerin was a homeschooling mother looking to expand her children’s understanding of different cultures. She contacted the International Student Association at 91����, and they connected her with Kleczyk. The Guerins “became my family in Maine,” Kleczyk said. 

“They provided not only warmth and stability, but a true sense of home,” she said. “To this day, Stacey calls me her ‘Polish daughter,’ a reflection of the lasting personal bonds.”

“In the many years that I have been friends with Ewa, we have grown and expanded our horizons with both of us embracing our passion for leadership and community service,” said Guerin, a state senator from Penobscot County since 2018. “Her grasp of analytics and incredible work ethic have propelled her into national leadership in her field,” Guerin noted. “Her leadership and community service have been noted by others, culminating in her earning more awards than I can count.”

These principles have been key in Kleczyk’s success.

A Commitment to Community Service

But if analytics are her profession, com­munity service is perhaps her passion. Kleczyk is deeply committed to mentoring new generations of women in STEM fields. She also remains tied to her personal causes in Maine.

Kleczyk and her husband, James “JR” Strout, serve on the Community Cancer Council for the Northern Light Health Network, and co-founded the Kleczyk-Strout Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to helping others by supporting healthcare, education, housing and other issues. Additionally, she serves as the chair of the College Advisory Board for 91����’s College of Earth, Life, and Health Sciences. If that weren’t enough, she also has been a guest lecturer at the School of Economics. 

“These lectures allow me to share my experience in data-driven decision-making, AI in healthcare, and strategic leadership with students preparing for careers in business and technology,” she said.

Sheree Tilson, Strout’s aunt who has known Kleczyk for some 16 years — glows with pride about her friend’s dedication to the community, healthcare causes, and dogged work ethic.

“Ewa has a very strong work ethic,” Tillson said. “She is driven, committed, and loyal to the organization she works for.”

“Her career journey has not been easy,” she added. “Polish was her first language, so she had to learn English in addition to a very different life in the states.”

“Her education and career journey has required her to be resilient, committed to her goal, very driven to succeed, willing to be open to feedback, and able to overcome setbacks,” she said.

As much as any other experience, Kleczyk’s tenure in Orono helped to complete the path from young immigrant to student to worldwide healthcare research and analytics leader.

“My 91���� experience laid the foundation for how I lead today: with curiosity, accountability, and respect for interdisciplinary collaboration,” she said. “It was a place where independent thinking was encouraged …. Curiosity was welcomed, and ambition could coexist naturally with humility.”

Story by By John Ripley ’90

Contact: Marcus Wolf, 207.581.3721; marcus.wolf@maine.edu 

Simons, a 2001 University of Maine graduate and native of Readfield, Maine, will return to Orono on May 9 as the university’s 2026 undergraduate commencement speaker.

“We’re excited to welcome Timothy back to campus,” said 91���� President Joan Ferrini-Mundy. “His story is a wonderful reminder of how discovering a passion at 91���� can shape a lifetime. Our graduates will see in his journey how curiosity, creativity and community can open pathways to meaningful careers.”

For Simons, the invitation carries personal meaning.

“91���� is where I found theater,” he said. “I wasn’t an actor in high school.”

As a student in Orono, Simons discovered both the Division of Theatre & Dance and a creative community that helped shape his career. He said working with the late theater professor Sandra Hardy played a pivotal role in his development as an actor.

“That’s where my love of theater and acting first started,” Simons said. “I can kind of connect every dot of where I am now to being at 91���� and stumbling across the theater department there.”

Simons studied theater at 91���� before building a career in television and film. He is best known for his role as Jonah Ryan on HBO’s political satire “Veep,” which ran for seven seasons and won multiple Emmy Awards.

More recently, Simons received a Critics Choice Award nomination for best supporting actor in a comedy series for his role as Sasha in the Netflix series “Nobody Wants This.”

Simons has remained connected to the university and helped establish the Sandra E. Hardy Theatre Scholarship Fund, which honors his former professor and supports theater students.

“Everyone has a certain special connection with their first acting teacher,” Simons said of Hardy.

Simons’ return to campus also highlights the impact of 91����’s arts programs, which have helped launch many graduates into careers in theater, television and film.

“91���� has a long tradition of students discovering their voice here and going on to succeed creatively and professionally,” said Philip Edelman, director of the 91���� School of Performing Arts. “Mr. Simons is a shining example of that tradition and it’s especially meaningful to see him return to Orono to speak to our graduates at commencement.”

Looking back on his time in Orono, Simons said he appreciated the mix of a large public university and a close-knit campus community.

“I liked that it was a state school — a big flagship school — that also still felt pretty small,” he said. “By the time I left there, I felt like I knew most of the people on campus.”

Being surrounded by students with a wide range of interests also shaped his perspective.

“They always say that as actors you have to know a little about a lot of stuff,” Simons said. “Having access to people whose interests were completely opposite of mine was always really fun.”

Some of his strongest memories of campus life have little to do with theater.

“It was always that first day when it would get up to about 45 degrees and everybody was walking around in shorts — the first day of spring,” he said. “Everybody was in a good mood. People would skip class and hang out on the mall because finally we were out from under the boot of winter.”

91���� will hold two undergraduate commencement ceremonies inside Alfond Arena on Saturday, May 9. A morning ceremony at 9:30 a.m. will include graduates from the College of Earth, Life and Health Sciences, the Maine Business School and the Division of Lifelong Learning.

An afternoon ceremony at 2:30 p.m. will celebrate graduates from the College of Education and Human Development, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Maine College of Engineering and Computing.

The Graduate School commencement, recognizing master’s, education specialists and doctoral candidates, will be held at 4 p.m. on Friday, May 8, also at Alfond Arena. The speakers for that ceremony will be announced at a later date.

Complete details about 91����’s 2026 commencement ceremonies are available on the 91���� Commencement website.

Contact: David Nordman, david.nordman@maine.edu

Along the way, she rediscovered a part of herself that she had nearly forgotten.

“When I was a kid, I loved the ocean. I was always saying to everybody I was going to be a marine biologist when I grew up,” Fish said. “But you’re like five or seven or 10 at the time, and it goes on the back burner.”

At the University of Maine, Fish found a way back to the ocean and the chance to explore the kind of future she once imagined.

The 91���� campus is about an hour from the coast — an unlikely location for a marine sciences hub. But that distance and region-leading affordability is exactly what gives the program an edge.

As early as the spring semester of their sophomore year, students can live, study and conduct research at the Darling Marine Center in Walpole. Their learning grounds are far removed from busy tourist beaches and urban waterfronts. The center sits on a quiet stretch of the Damariscotta River, where students can see the ocean from their dorms and access research vessels, laboratories and field sites.

These experiences reflect 91����’s commitment to learner-centered R1, hands-on, real-world research learning opportunities, where undergraduate students work directly with faculty and industry partners to tackle challenges facing Maine communities.

Maine’s coast may not be the warmest, sandiest or most biodiverse, but it offers something equally valuable: a resilient working waterfront and seasoned blue economy. Students learn to conduct research in demanding conditions — from diving in icy waters to studying marine life adapted to one of the North Atlantic’s most dynamic environments.

That environment was both unfamiliar and transformative for Emily Stricklin. Growing up in the Midwest, Stricklin said her experiences with the ocean were limited to the occasional family vacation. But she embraced the opportunity to step outside her comfort zone.

Stricklin, like Fish, saw her future in a new light when the pandemic hit. She was living in Chicago at the time and pursuing musical theatre. The city’s dense population fueled strict restrictions and indoor isolation.

“I decided that I wanted to work outside for the rest of my life,” Stricklin said. “I wanted to be in nature, where I’m happy, where it’s peaceful, and I wanted to make a difference in working there, not just to be in it, but to help.”

Once she got to 91���� and started the marine sciences program, associate professor of chemical oceanography Margaret Estapa hired her to be a research assistant. Estapa’s lab is where Stricklin first began tackling microplastic pollution and where she decided to make the switch from marine biology to oceanography. 

Her proximity to the ocean during Semester by the Sea has helped her pursue her own active research in the field. She’s exploring whether spectrophotometry, a study that measures how light interacts with substances, is a reliable method of detecting microplastics in the ocean and whether temperature has an effect on their presence.

“It’s very hands-on and very immersive down here (at the Darling Marine Center), which I really like. You get a lot of experience and build a lot of skills very quickly,” Stricklin said.

Building a coastal community

In addition to research projects and courses, students can participate in group trips and activities planned and led by program coordinators. After spending two semesters in the program, Fish worked as its residential coordinator during the fall 2025 semester after she had graduated that May. She and the students went to an apple orchard, corn maze and botanical garden with holiday lights and spent a day on the open ocean in a sailboat.

But Fish said those activities aren’t what really bond the students together. It’s more about the day to day experiences.

“You’re such a small group, and the way that your day is structured: you eat every meal together; you have all the same classes together. You get really close, really fast,” Fish said.

That makes the outings, the research and the experience as a whole more impactful. 

Wge Ellis has been a part of the School of Marine Sciences for nearly 23 years. Now the associate director of the school, he has helped grow enrollment in Semester by the Sea from about 10 students to over 30 in the fall semesters. 91����’s College of Earth, Life, and Health Sciences established the undergraduate marine sciences program in 1996. Just two years later and with support from the college, the Darling Marine Center began building a dormitory and dining facility — Brooke Hall — as a way to bring students to the coast. Semester by the Sea started shortly after that.

“We don’t have the ocean in Orono, but because we don’t, we’ve created something pretty unique, pretty special, for a whole semester,” Ellis said. 

Faculty members don’t worry about what time of day high or low tide is. Class meets for a whole day, and students get unlimited access to a range of coastal ecosystems, from the three miles of hiking trails on campus to an entire river estuary. Coursework spans oceanography, ecology, aquaculture, scientific diving and data analysis, while ongoing research includes exploring fish diets, kelp forests, microplastics, life cycles of scallops and larval lobsters. 

“You will get more hands-on experience and time in the field in one semester than some of these institutions on the coast will give you in four years,” Ellis said.

The School of Marine Sciences offers scholarship funds to help students participate in the program.

Fueling Maine aquaculture

Some of the first 91���� graduates who studied at the Darling Marine Center as graduate students went on to launch oyster aquaculture businesses along the Damariscotta River in the 1970s. Today, the river produces roughly 80% of Maine’s oysters and supports a thriving aquaculture industry.

Through Semester by the Sea, students are able to work alongside many of these companies while completing their coursework. According to Ellis, the experience often convinces students — many of whom come from out of state — to stay and build careers in Maine’s aquaculture industry.

That was the case for Katie Conklin, a marine sciences student from Connecticut. An aquaculture systems course she took her junior year in Orono helped her land a summer internship with Mook Sea Farm, an oyster hatchery on the Damariscotta River. Conklin continued working with the company as a part-time hatchery assistant during her senior year while participating in Semester by the Sea. After graduating, she will remain with Mook as a full-time hatchery technician.

While living at the Darling Marine Center, her work and proximity to the river estuary has also informed her senior capstone project, which is exploring the impact of nearby oyster hatcheries on wild populations of oysters. She, like all students who take part in the spring semester of the program, will get to witness the coastal ecosystem — and young wild oysters — emerge from winter dormancy. 

Leadership is brainstorming options for summer programs that could integrate internships directly into coursework, strengthening connections between the classroom and the state’s aquaculture industry.

For students like Conklin, Fish and Stricklin, the program offers more than hands-on research experience. It opens pathways to careers along Maine’s coast and the chance for students to pursue their own blue horizons.

Contact: Ashley Yates; ashley.depew@maine.edu

Hospitals soon became a familiar part of their lives, giving the sisters early exposure to the medical world. Watching doctors and nurses track vitals, administer medicine and comfort patients gave the sisters early insight into patient care — experiences that sparked their own paths toward careers in medicine.

“I learned how to flush a PICC (peripherally inserted central catheter) line at the age of 8,” Albert said. 

Their brother survived his battle with leukemia and later became a biomedical engineer. The sisters share their brother’s interest, and decided to study biomedical engineering at the University of Maine. 

“It feels like I went into medicine because I’m interested in helping other families have that happy outcome,” Varney-Lewis said. 

For Albert, 91���� became a place to explore research and technical problem-solving, ultimately leading her to complete a master’s degree during the COVID-19 pandemic. She credits that experience with shaping her analytical approach to medicine.

“I was really shy in high school and I was not sure I could spend my days talking to people. So I decided biomedical engineering would be that space where I could still be in the medical industry without feeling overwhelmed,” Albert said. “I thought biomedical engineering would be the perfect middle ground.”

Varney-Lewis followed Albert to 91����, trusting her sister’s judgment and path. Engineering challenged her academically, but also taught her how to work under pressure and collaborate in teams, skills she later carried into emergency medicine.

“I’m spoiled in the sense that I am younger and Hannah did it first,” Varney-Lewis said. “She told me I should do it, and I figured if she liked it, I was sure I’d like it too.”

After 91����, their careers diverged. Albert transitioned from research into family medicine. She now works as a resident physician at Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor, balancing hospital and clinic care. Varney-Lewis pursued patient care, earning her emergency medical technician license and working in the emergency department at Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston before entering medical school at Tufts University.

“Hannah did the research and the academics, and that wasn’t necessarily my thing,” Varney-Lewis said. “I really like being with people and interacting with people. Engineering was so important for me because it’s a team-based sport, and especially for the emergency room, you work in a huge team.”

Though they’ve pursued their careers in places hours away from home, the sisters’ roots continue to shape how they work and care for others.

In Bangor, Albert says she often builds trust with patients through shared experiences of growing up in a small town. Surrounded by family farms, Albert and Varney-Lewis spent much of their childhood outside in Turner, learning how to rely on each other and solve problems without many outside resources.

“All of my patients can relate to something that I enjoy doing,” Albert said. “We can talk about hunting or fishing or hiking, and all of a sudden we have a connection. That connection is super valuable.”

The sisters remain deeply bonded. Varney-Lewis has long looked up to Albert, while Albert has felt a responsibility to lead by example, especially as they followed similar academic paths.

“She’s my mini-me, my copycat, the built-in best friend,” Albert said. “I just want the absolute best for her.”

Story by William Bickford, graduate student writer

Contact: Taylor Ward, taylor.ward@maine.edu