Redington-Fairview physician’s assistant earns national recognition

Melissa Michaud is one of 220 certified physician assistants nationally to recently earn a Certificate of Added Qualifications from the National Commission on Certification of Physician Assistants.

Michaud, who works at Redington-Fairview General Hospital in Skowhegan, was awarded the certificate in emergency medicine. She earned it by meeting licensure, education and experience requirements and then passing an examination, according to a news release from the commission.

The certificates are offered in seven specialties: cardiovascular and thoracic surgery, emergency medicine, hospital medicine, orthopaedic surgery, nephrology, pediatrics and psychiatry. Michaud is one of 21 certified physician’s assistants in Maine to earn such a certificate since the program’s inception in 2011, the commission said.

Michaud has been a certified physician’s assistant at Redington-Fairview for six years. She is a member of the Maine Osteopathic Board of Medicine.

Women’s network to offer business, tax advice at lunch event

A business panel discussing commercial insurance lines, tax tips and advice for business owners will be featured at the March lunch meeting of the Androscoggin Chapter of the Maine Women’s Network.

The public is invited to the monthly meeting, which is scheduled for 11:30 a.m. Wednesday, March 9, at the Hilton Garden Inn in Auburn.

Each meeting provides networking opportunities for attendees to market themselves and their businesses. Participants may submit questions for the panel in advance to Carol Larkin, of First Light Home Care, at clarkin@firstlighthomecare.com.

The panelists are Lewiston native Lisa Laliberte, who has owned a State Farm Insurance office since 1994; and Brenda Grondin, owner of L.A. Professional Bookkeeping Services.

Laliberte, who has three licensed full-time employees, is a State Farm Golden Triangle Agent and a National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisers Quality Award Winner. Grondin is a registered tax preparer with the Internal Revenue Service. She has worked in private accounting for 20 years and has owned and operated her business since January 2004.

The cost of the lunch event, $17 for members and $21 for nonmembers, includes everything. Online pre-registration is required by March 7. Register online at www.mainewomensnetwork.com by clicking on the “Event Registration” link.

Thomas College to host career fair March 9

WATERVILLE — Thomas College is holding its annual Spring Career Fair from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. March 9 in the Thomas College Alfond Athletic Center. The event is open to the public.

Director of Alumni and Career Services Corey Pelletier said in a news release that more than 70 employers from around the state plan to attend, and they are “actively hiring for internships, full-time and part-time jobs.”

TRC Solutions in Augusta, one of the companies attending the fair, is looking for business and financial support staff members to complement the growth of its engineering groups offering energy, environmental, infrastructure and pipeline engineering services.

Some other participating employers include The Red Claws; athenahealth; Baker, Newman, Noyes; Bank of America; Bath Iron Works; Becket Services; Boston Financial; Camden National Bank; Cianbro; E.J. Prescott; Enterprise; Goodwill Industries; Hollywood Casino; Lewiston Police Department and schools; Maine Department of Health and Human Services; Maine State Police; Maine Warden Service; MAS Community Health; Molina Healthcare; New Balance; Pathways; Pine Tree Camp; Sherwin Williams; Spurwink; SunLife Financial; The Summer Camp; and the U.S. Border Patrol.

Any employer who is interested in participating can still sign up. For more information, contact Diane Anderson, assistant director of career services, at 859-1464 or andersond@thomas.edu.

Chambers to host business resources event in Jay

The Jay, Livermore and Livermore Falls and Franklin County chambers of commerce plan to hold a meet-and-greet event March 10 for local business owners, featuring a discussion of business resources that business owners might not be using.

Kim Turner, vice chairwoman of the JLLF Chamber of Commerce, and Penny Meservier, executive director of the Franklin County Chamber of Commerce, have been working with a committee consisting of three local town managers, the Greater Franklin Development Corp., the state Department of Economic and Community Development and they United Way to set up what they expect to be the first in a series of events tailored to business owners in the area.

“I don’t think it is an understatement to say that our communities have been affected by the recent layoffs at Verso (the paper mill in Jay), and both Chambers feel that this is a great opportunity to make sure business owners know who they can reach out to proactively,” Turner said in a news release.

The March 10 event is scheduled 5 p.m. at the St. Rose of Lima parish hall in Jay. For more information, consult Jay, Livermore, Livermore Falls Chamber Facebook page or contact Turner at kimt@otisfcu.coop.

2 Waterville area UPS drivers join accident-free elite

Seven United Parcel Service drivers from Maine, including two from the Waterville area, are among 1,613 newly inducted worldwide into the Circle of Honor, an organization for UPS drivers who have achieved 25 or more years of accident-free driving, according to a UPS news release.

The Waterville area drivers are William Benedict, of Winslow, and Gene Paquet, of Unity.

Maine has 42 active Circle of Honor drivers with a combined 1,142 years of accident-free driving, the release said.

Farris Law, of Gardiner, announces personnel changes

Tammy Ham-Thompson has left the firm of Farris Law in Gardiner to join the Maine Judicial Branch as a family division magistrate, according to a news release from the firm.

Jill Randall will be rejoining the firm effective Monday. Randall practiced with Farris Law from 2002 to 2005, and her primary focus will again be on family law cases.

Farris Law opened its offices on Water Street in Gardiner in 1973. In 2014, the firm moved from Water Street to its new office building at 6 Central Maine Crossing in Gardiner. The firm’s attorneys, Gregory Farris, J. Scott Ladd, Michelle Allott and Jill Randall, handle a variety of legal problems, including family law, personal injury, real estate, estate planning, probate of estates, corporate and tax, and financial planning.

Maine’s Anderson installers achieve program certification

NEWPORT — Renewal by Andersen, the replacement window division of Andersen Corp., has announced that its installers in Maine have earned the designation of Certified Master Installer.

To be eligible for training through the Certified Master Installer program, according to the company, an installer must be achieving consistently high customer satisfaction ratings on surveys administered by a third party, and the installer must meet the required number of Renewal by Andersen window installation projects. Installers then complete the training modules, which are validated by field audits.

Peter Ostrand, field service and customer support manager at Renewal by Andersen, said that by training installers in the program, “we elevate their skills to the next level so they will be able to answer homeowner questions, and focus on the customer in a way that they have come to expect at every touch point.”

Boys & Girls Club among top six in national contest

The Boys & Girls Club of Greater Waterville was selected as one of the top six entries to compete in the online voting campaign of the national organization’s annual Blue Door Decorating Contest.

Boys & Girls Clubs of America has partnered with Lowe’s to host the contest in preparation for National Boys & Girls Club week, March 7-12.

This year, more than 540 Boys & Girls clubs nationwide submitted decorated door entries featuring the theme “Why America’s great future starts in our club.”

Being among the top six entries entitles the Greater Waterville to compete for a chance to win a $5,000 gift card from Lowe’s to make improvements to the club’s facilities.

In a news release, the club described its door, titled “Believe in Your Dreams,” depicting a local girl receiving the support necessary “to help her live Eleanor Roosevelt’s assertion that the future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”

The team of After School Mentors, including art teacher Tricia Alden and her predecessor and mentor Karla Stratton, coordinated the decorating.

The public can see the design and vote for a favorite door once every minute via Facebook, Instagram or Twitter until March 9 at the website www.BGCA.org/BGCWeek.

Thomas, schools group to host education conference in Waterville

WATERVILLE — The Maine Cohort for Customized Learning and Thomas College’s Center for Innovation in Education are hosting an educational conference titled Replacing Grading with Learning Feedback.

The conference is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. March 30 in the Summit Room at Thomas College.

The discussion will focus on how to connect the vision for proficiency-based, customized learning with best practices for providing effective feedback to learners. Maine educators are invited to attend to talk about strategies and ideas about building a school culture that supports a focus on learning rather than grades or points, and about taking action to support changes in their systems.

“The goal of replacing grading with learner feedback is to change the focus of our conversations with learners from grades, scores and marks, to the important skills they must develop to be successful and productive citizens,” Maine Cohort for Customized Learning Executive Director Linda Laughlin said in a news release. “This summit will help our schools use the research on motivation to design feedback systems that encourage our learners to work hard at developing important skills like problem solving, decision making and invention reasoning.”

The conference is part of Thomas College’s new Center for Innovation in Education that opened in the fall of 2015 to help future teachers embed up-to-date practices in their classrooms, such as proficiency-based learning, and to promote discussions with Maine’s educators on implementing these new practices.

The Maine Cohort for Customized Learning is a statewide coalition of school systems, organizations and individuals committed to supporting proficiency-based education in Maine school systems.

Registration for the conference is free for cohort members and costs $25 per person for nonmembers. Participants can register online.

For additional information, contact Laughlin at lindaflaughlin@gmail.com or 356-9330, or MacKenzie Riley, of Thomas College, at rileym@thomas.edu or 859-1313.

Report tracks highs, lows of Maine’s lodging income

AUGUSTA — Slightly more than half of Maine’s total annual lodging income is generated consistently in June, July and August, according to a new report from nonprofit, nonpartisan The Maine Development Foundation and the University of Maine’s School of Economics.

The report, titled “The High Seasonality of Tourism in Maine,” was compiled from data on taxable lodging sales to examine the seasonal distribution of Maine’s tourist activity, a vital component of the state’s economy.

The report found, according to the foundation, that 26 percent to 28 percent of lodging sales consistently occur in the “shoulder season” months of May, September, and October. The report also examines the relative contribution of Maine’s regions to total tourist activity in the state.

The document is the seventh in a series of reports by the foundation and the School of Economics that explores such topics. Past reports addressed worker productivity, per capita income, the fiscal benefits of higher education, land conservation, energy and water quality.

The full report on lodging income can be found on the foundation’s website at www.mdf.org.

Compiled from contributed releases