The 10-day intensive program will run August 7���16. Students will learn foundational knowledge and skills to deal with medical and traumatic emergencies in remote settings. They also will gain introductory knowledge in outdoor and adventure activities while completing two college courses: KPE 207 Wilderness First Aid and KPE 265 Outdoor and Adventure Activities.��

Students will build skills in four different activity categories: canoeing, climbing, hiking and orienteering, and backcountry trip leading. The canoeing portion of the course will include instruction in paddling techniques, expedition skills and safety considerations. The climbing portion of the course emphasizes the fundamental skills and safety knowledge needed for indoor top-rope climbing, including risk management and belay certification. During the orienteering portion, students will learn and practice essential map and compass skills. In the backcountry tripping portion, students will learn about trip planning, menu planning, backcountry cooking, packing, environmental concerns, trip-leading skills and risk management. These skills will be used on a two-night, three-day canoeing trip.

The courses are tuition free for Maine public school and homeschool students, who are eligible to earn up to 12 credits per year tuition free. Students paying tuition to attend any school in the state of Maine and high school students from out-of-state (non-Maine residents) are eligible to take courses at a reduced Early College rate of $138.25/credit hour. There is a residence fee of $850 per student for the�� program.

More information about the outdoor leadership program is on the UMaine Early College website. High school students interested in applying are encouraged to contact Kari Suderley, director of Early College Programs, at 207.581.8024 or um.earlycollege@maine.edu.

Mechanical engineering major Lara Chern of Bow, New Hampshire is the 2023 做厙腦瞳app valedictorian. UMaine���s two 2023 salutatorians are Mikayla Reynolds of Winslow, Maine, a double major in business management and marketing, and biomedical engineering major Zoe Vittum of Brewer, Maine. The three will graduate May 6 at UMaine���s 221st commencement ceremonies. 

���We are incredibly proud of the outstanding contributions that Lara, Mikayla and Zoe have made to UMaine and the state as members of our university community,��� says Joan Ferrini-Mundy, president of the 做厙腦瞳app. ���Their leadership and success in and out of the classroom are inspirational.

���Lara���s multidisciplinary work included project management in our internationally recognized, state-of-the-art Advanced Structures and Composites Center and exceptional achievement in the Honors College. Mikayla has demonstrated outstanding leadership in community engagement on and off campus, including multifaceted peer education and multiple community service initiatives to meet needs. Zoe started her experiential learning in our Advanced Manufacturing Center as an Early College student and discovered her passion for biomedical engineering that has the potential to make a difference in peoples��� lives. 

���We are excited to see just how far the talents of these three will take them.���

Chern is an Honors College student with minors in engineering leadership and management, and mathematics. She graduated from high school two years ahead of her class and enrolled at UMaine when she was 16. As a UMaine junior, she defended her honors thesis, ���An Automated Process to Produce Rebar Reinforced Concrete Parts Using Additive Manufacturing.��� Her many scholarships and awards include the 2022 Servant Heart Award and the Ouellette Honors Thesis Fellowship.

In her first year at UMaine, Chern was a special projects assistant at the Franco American Center. During her sophomore year, she collaborated in the laboratory of UMaine professor Yingchao Yang on nanomaterials research and on research with professor Bashir Koda on biobased gels for human organ growth and timed drug-release capsules. With professor Richard Kimball, Chern collaborated on research in large-scale additive manufacturing for use in wave energy converters. 

Since 2020, Chern has worked in the Advanced Structures and Composites Center���s Project Management Office. In summer 2021, she was a project management intern with Weyerhaeuser Lumber Mill in Cottage Grove, Oregon and, in 2019���20, served as a mathematics instructor/tutor with Mathnasium in Manchester, New Hampshire.

Chern has served as president of the UMaine chapters of Pi Tau Sigma and Engineers Without Borders, and vice president of the UMaine chapter of Circle K International. In the community, her volunteer work has included the Bangor Humane Society, Telstar Regional High School Think Tank Project and Hirundo Wildlife Refuge. 

In June, Chern will begin a job as a project manager at Procter & Gamble in Iowa City, Iowa. She plans to pursue an MBA and take a Law Certificate program.

Reynolds is a first-generation Honors College student. Her numerous honors include a 2022 Outstanding Student Leader award from the Division of Student Life, a Thomas E. Lynch ���38 Honors Thesis Fellowship, and a Center for Undergraduate Research Fellowship. In 2021, she was named the UMaine, state, and regional Student Employee of the Year. 

Reynolds has participated in the Maine NEW (National Education for Women) Leadership program and the Olympia Snowe Women’s Leadership Institute (OSWLI). She now serves as operations chair for OSWLI���s Alumni Council. 

Her honors thesis is: ���Exploring the Influence of Work From Home and On-Site Benefits on Perceptions of Organizational Attractiveness.��� She was recently named the 2023 Business Research Category award winner for her UMaine Student Symposium research poster. 

Reynolds is a certified peer educator. Since 2020, she has been the lead peer coach in TRIO Student Support Services. Reynolds recently co-presented at the 2023 New England Educational Opportunity Association Conference, where she discussed the power of peer relationships. In addition, she has been a student ambassador and a teaching assistant in the Maine Business School, and a program leader in the Center for Student Involvement. She has been the Student Success Initiatives Intern with the Maine Business School, and this semester, she is a student consultant with the Black Bear Consulting Corps in the Foster Center for Innovation.

Reynolds is president of All Maine Women, co-president of the UMaine chapter of Beta Gamma Sigma, and vice president of the 2023 Senior Class Council. She also is a founding officer and vice president of the UMaine chapter of Sigma Alpha Lambda. She was inducted into the Dirigo Leadership Society and is a mentor in the Emerging Leaders Program of the Center for Student Involvement. Reynolds also was appointed to the Maine Day Task Force. Reynolds served as the food bank liaison on the 2022 Maine Day Meal Packout Committee. 

She has been a core organizer of the Black Bear Mutual Aid Fund and is the food bank liaison for the 2023 Maine Days Food Drive Committee. She has served as the director of programs and outreach for Sunrise Creative Youth Theatre in Waterville since 2018. She founded the Vassalboro Mill Clothing Exchange Closet in 2016. In 2019, she was awarded the Hardy Girls Healthy Women Community Organizer award for her commitment to community service and creating change. 

Reynolds has been selected to be a Graduate School of Business Alfond Ambassador and will pursue a MaineMBA in the fall, concentrating her studies in sustainability, and public and nonprofit management. 

Vittum, who minors in bioinstrumentation and neuroscience, is a UMaine Presidential Scholar, and a 2022���23 Helen Louise Stinchfield ���18 Memorial Scholar and Tau Beta Pi Scholar. Her numerous academic and research awards include two National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REUs) ��� Sensor Science and Engineering at UMaine and Functional Genomics at The Jackson Laboratory. She ���also ���received a UMaine Center for Undergraduate Research Fellowship and the Overall Best Poster Award at the Onshape Research Symposium.

As an Early College student, Vittum was a student research assistant in the Advanced Manufacturing Center, where she collaborated with UMaine experts and industry clients on solution manufacturing and implementation. In addition to her REU at The Jackson Laboratory as a student research fellow, developing computational methods and workflows to analyze genetic architecture and translate large-scale data into genetic models, Vittum was a clinical engineering intern with Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center. Most recently, in her REU in the laboratory of professor Karissa Tilbury, she collaborated to develop and implement a polarization control module within a two-photon microscope and conducted cell culture assays to investigate collagen remodeling. 

On campus, Vittum has had leadership roles in the UMaine chapters of the Society of Women Engineers, Tau Beta Pi and the Biomedical Engineering Society, UMaine Black Bear Robotics and UMaine���s NASA Lunabotics Mining Challenge Team, which competed at the Kennedy Space Center in 2022. Her volunteer efforts have included work at Challenger Learning Center, VEX Robotics and FIRST Robotics, and as a UMaine Cooperative Extension 4-H STEM Ambassador.

Vittum plans to pursue a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering, concentrated in women���s health, at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Contact: Margaret Nagle, nagle@maine.edu

Zoe Vittum of Brewer, Maine is a 做厙腦瞳app 2023 salutatorian. Vittum, who minors in bioinstrumentation and neuroscience, is a UMaine Presidential Scholar, and a 2022���23 Helen Louise Stinchfield ���18 Memorial Scholar and Tau Beta Pi Scholar. Her numerous academic and research awards include two National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REUs) ��� Sensor Science and Engineering at UMaine and Functional Genomics at The Jackson Laboratory. She ���also ���received a UMaine Center for Undergraduate Research Fellowship and the Overall Best Poster Award at the Onshape Research Symposium.

As an Early College student, Vittum was a student research assistant in the Advanced Manufacturing Center, where she collaborated with UMaine experts and industry clients on solution manufacturing and implementation. In addition to her REU at The Jackson Laboratory as a student research fellow, developing computational methods and workflows to analyze genetic architecture and translate large-scale data into genetic models, Vittum was a clinical engineering intern with Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center. Most recently, in her REU in the laboratory of professor Karissa Tilbury, she collaborated to develop and implement a polarization control module within a two-photon microscope and conducted cell culture assays to investigate collagen remodeling. 

On campus, Vittum has had leadership roles in the UMaine chapters of the Society of Women Engineers, Tau Beta Pi and the Biomedical Engineering Society, UMaine Black Bear Robotics and UMaine���s NASA Lunabotics Mining Challenge Team, which competed at the Kennedy Space Center in 2022. Her volunteer efforts have included work at Challenger Learning Center, VEX Robotics and FIRST Robotics, and as a UMaine Cooperative Extension 4-H STEM Ambassador.

Vittum plans to pursue a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering, concentrated in women���s health, at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

What difference has UMaine made in your life and in helping you reach your goals?
UMaine has made resources and opportunities such as undergraduate research and leadership accessible to me throughout the entirety of my undergraduate career ��� opportunities I believe I may not have received if I attended a different university.

Have you had an experience at UMaine that has changed or shaped the way you see the world?
I think that for our graduating class, the majority of us were majorly impacted by the pandemic as we started in fall 2019, only one semester before everyone was sent off campus. After spending three semesters totally virtual, many of us returned to the hardest parts of our degree programs with much less peer academic support than is typically expected. For the majority of us, this, along with attending college during a global pandemic, changed our paths through college and altered our goals. However, these experiences and reflecting on them and where I am now has shown me how fluid life is and how changing a plan isn���t necessarily bad and can even result in a better result.

Why UMaine?
I began attending UMaine as a junior high school student as part of the Early College program. This program allowed me to complete many of the prerequisite and general education courses for most of the prospective engineering programs I was exploring applying to. While taking these courses at UMaine, I was able to get involved with on campus research and clubs that I really enjoyed. These experiences made the decision to stay at UMaine for my official undergraduate coursework easy, as I felt I was already part of a community and at a university where I would have a lot of opportunities as an undergraduate as I was already involved with research.

How would you define the opportunities for student success at UMaine? Is there any particular initiative, program or set of resources that helped you succeed?
The opportunities at UMaine are extensive and exactly what you make of them. If you get involved and stay involved with on-campus organization and resource centers and participate in the opportunities for academic, professional and personal growth every student can be extremely successful. Staying involved has been one of the key ways I have continued to grow and be successful as a student and also how where some of my best memories during undergrad have come from.

Have you worked closely with a professor or mentor who made your UMaine experience better?
Throughout my time at UMaine, I have had three primary mentors who all played critical roles in guiding me through undergraduate education and helped me determine my path after graduation. John Belding, director of the Advanced Manufacturing Center (AMC), was my first mentor at UMaine. John took a chance hiring me as a young high school student, and the opportunities, experience and mentorship I gained from my research at AMC was invaluable in helping me determine that I wanted to pursue research and biomedical engineering. My second key mentor was Anna Tyler of the Carter Laboratory at The Jackson Laboratory. Under hermentorship, I built my confidence in my own ability to be successful in a field of research that I have not specifically studied before. Her mentorship allowed me to be confident enough to pursue many influential opportunities. My final and current research mentor, Karissa Tilbury, has been instrumental in providing me the opportunities and means of attaining the skills and connections I���ve needed to set myself up for graduate school. All of my mentors together have played very individual yet essential roles in my undergraduate career.

What advice do you have for incoming students to help them get off to the best start academically? 
I think the best thing I did as an incoming student was get involved with many clubs and organizations. Pursuing a college degree is hard, regardless of your major and the classes you are taking, getting involved with clubs and organizations is a great way to learn from upperclassmen as well as from friend groups with similarly minded and motivated people which has proven to be invaluable as I have progressed through my undergraduate coursework. I also think it is important to join professional clubs for professional development that can���t be provided through classes that is vital for getting internships and jobs for after graduation.

Contact: Margaret Nagle, nagle@maine.edu

���It���s not going to be easy, but it���s going to be worth it.���

This is the best advice 17-year-old Brady Barker of Holden has ever received and he stands by it, especially as it applies to his experience in the 做厙腦瞳app���s Early College program. 

Barker started taking Early College classes as a first-year student at Brewer High School. Since then, he���s completed 64 college credits through UMaine and earned 17 AP/concurrent class credits. That���s 81 college credits ��� more than half the credits needed for a bachelor���s degree.  

As Barker sees it, there were all kinds of benefits to participating in Early College, not just the credit hours. First, Early College courses allowed him to hone his interests. He completed two Early College pathways: economics and engineering. 

Early College career pathways are gateways to exploring career paths while earning college credits, giving students a jump start on some programs when they enroll in college. Up to 12 credits a year are free thanks to investment by the Maine Legislature and UMaine.

Barker started out with engineering in his first year, his mother driving him up to the UMaine campus in Orono every day, waiting for him until he was out of class, then driving him back to Holden.

He discovered his interest in computer engineering and found he really enjoys physics because it can be applied to anything you do in the world. He enjoys coding because he likes problem solving and finds it satisfying to see how coding can change things right in front of your eyes on a screen. His final project for his computer engineering class was coding a game of Blackjack using C++ , one of the world���s most popular programming languages.

Barker participated in online and in-person classes at UMaine. He says he appreciates the vigor and structure the Early College program offers, noting that it prevented him from getting bored and prepared him for college coursework. The due dates were real, helping him to learn about consequences, self-discipline and time management. In addition, the caliber of learning was high, and he appreciated having such a high bar to strive for.

 In high school, Barker played ice hockey and golf, and volunteered at a local food bank and at the Brewer ice rink, teaching kids to skate. He was also Brewer High School���s class of 2022 valedictorian.

 Participating in Early College gave Barker a feel for UMaine. With classmates he could depend on if he had questions and professors who were always very helpful, he says he always felt very comfortable.

Barker is enrolled at UMaine this fall majoring in engineering physics, with the intention of completing his bachelor���s degree in just three semesters. At UMaine, he hopes to try out for club hockey. He���d then like to go on to get a master���s degree. 

If all goes according to plan, Barker will be graduating from college at 19. Rather than heading straight into the workforce, he says he knows he���ll benefit from further exploration through a master���s program.

 Barker is inspired by his dad, who also graduated from UMaine with an engineering physics degree and worked at Baker Hughes, an energy technology company. While Barker is intrigued by the idea of working on power plants that need to be upgraded or that are out of service, he���d also like to experiment more before deciding what to do. 

To learn more about UMaine���s Early College program, visit umaine.edu/earlycollege.

Contact: Lindsey McMorrow, lindsey.h.mcmorrow@maine.edu 

Introduction to Integrated Science and Career Exploration (INT 188), a three-credit course that involves field- and laboratory-based data collection, data analysis and lectures in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines, will expand to include sections in Orono and Machias in addition to the Hutchinson Center in Belfast. 

The Cohen Institute High School Leadership Program will expand its capacity from 25 students to 75 students. The program immerses rising high school seniors from Maine in both the theory and practice of leadership.

New this summer is a 10-day Outdoor Leadership Intensive held at the 4-H site in Bryant Pond, Maine. Students will have the opportunity to earn four college credits that can apply to the UMaine Early College Outdoor Leadership Pathway.

For dates, program information and costs, visit the Early College webpage, email um.earlycollege@maine.edu or call 207.581.8024

Climate Change joins a portfolio of 30 pathways offered through UMaine and UMaine Machias Early College. Designed to introduce high school students to higher education and careers of interest, Early College Pathways allow students to make progress toward a UMaine degree through a chosen selection of courses.

Through a partnership with the 做厙腦瞳app System and the Maine Department of Education, with support from the Maine State Legislature, Early College courses are tuition-free for Maine public high school students.

Students and parents interested in UMaine���s Early College Climate Change Pathway should contact Kari Suderley, 581.8024, um.earlycollege@maine.edu or visit for more information.

Eva came all the way from California to take the course. Sadie organized her summer job(s) around it. Albert���s parents drove him to and from Bangor to Belfast every day to participate in it. For what? , also known as INT 188.

This summer, seven high school students from across the U.S. took part in a five-week Integrated Science and Career Exploration Early College Course at the UMaine Hutchinson Center in Belfast. They sampled the sand on nearby Sears Island, looking for microplastics. They handled crabs and zebrafish embryos and researched the effects of green crab predation on clams in Belfast harbor. They designed their own research methodologies and built their own quadrats and extractors. They learned how to turn a light on and off using  (an open-source electronic prototyping platform enabling users to create interactive electronic objects). They analyzed their data and confidently reported their findings, microphone in hand, standing in front of their posters at a small symposium in front of their families and community members, in polished shoes and freshly-ironed ensembles.

Read the full story on the Hutchinson Center’s .