THE UMAINE Alumni Association Board of Directors has voted to rename one of its most prestigious awards after a longtime Association volunteer and leader who passed away on October 9, 2020. In December, the board voted unanimously to rename the “Pine Tree Emblem Alumni Service Award” as the “Suzanne Kay Hart ’68 Alumni Service Award.”…
GINA FERAZZI frantically loads her Ford Fusion for a 300-mile drive north from her home in Riverside, California, to Mammoth in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. She says good-bye to Charlie, her Goldendoodle, who sulks when she departs. It’s November 19, 2020, the end of a typical week in Ferazzi’s life as a staff photographer for…
FOLLOWING HIS UMAINE graduation, Erik Gundersen ’05 moved to Arizona to pursue a career as a golf pro. When that didn’t pan out, he moved back to Maine, where he has become a major player of a different kind. Gundersen, 37, directs Maine’s Office of Marijuana Policy (OMP), the arm of state government responsible for…
MAINE Alumni Magazine has won a 2021 Gold Excellence Award from District 1 of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) in recognition of the magazine’s summer 2020 edition. The honor pertains to the Alumni Association’s special expanded edition, which it produced in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The magazine featured its usual…
The Winter MAINE Alumni Magazine is now available online. Read about Erik Gundersen’s ’05 efforts to regulate Maine’s cannabis industry, Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Gina Ferazzi ’84, and Brendan Walsh’s ’00 shift from hockey star to Boston detective. Meet Rep. Genevieve McDonald ’18 and other Black Bears in the Maine Legislature, and explore other features and…
MAINE Alumni Magazine has won a 2021 Gold Excellence Award from District 1 of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) in recognition of the magazine’s summer 2020 edition. The honor pertains to the Alumni Association’s special expanded edition, which it produced in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The magazine featured its usual…
Research assistant Nayereh Dadoo ’18 Ph.D. and PDC research manager Donna Johnson ’79, ’90 Ph.D. mix hand sanitizer at the Process Development Center. COVID-19 has brought into sharp focus the University of Maine’s unique statewide role as Maine’s land-grant university. < Back to Summer 2020 MAINE Alumni Magazine FACULTY, STAFF, AND STUDENTS have been mobilized…
Photo by Aaron Boothroyd ON THE ICE, Mitch Fossier ’20 is known as a creative playmaker. His 32 assists this past season placed the University of Maine men’s hockey senior in a tie for fourth place in the country in that category. The Black Bears captain is equally creative off the ice where he is…
Photo Thalassa Raasch/Maine Community Foundation IN THE HALF CENTURY since George Smith ’70 graduated from the University of Maine with a degree in business administration, his life and career have experienced more surprise turns than any of the state’s rivers and streams that have come to frame his legacy. Seemingly destined for a career at…
Civilians flee from Idlib toward the north to find safety inside Syria near the border with Turkey, Saturday, Feb. 15, 2020. Photo by quetions123 / Shutterstock.com JANINE DI GIOVANNI HAS RISKED her life to tell the stories of ordinary people who have seen their families, homes, and countries ripped apart by war. So, as people…
RICHARD J. POWELL, a member of the University of Maine’s political science faculty for nearly two decades, has been selected as the 2020 Distinguished Maine Professor, the university’s most prestigious faculty award. Powell was chosen from among six finalists by a review panel representing alumni, current and retired faculty, and the UMaine student body. He…
JENNIFER HIGGINS VASHON ’93 is an expert on black bears—the animal kind, not the ones who roam the hallways of UMaine. As a wildlife biologist for Maine’s Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, Vashon is a researcher, public educator, and advisor to policy makers. The University of Maine’s wildlife management program—and the connections she made…