Milestones

Kate Baldacci of Bangor recently attended the American Legion Auxiliary’s 55th session of Girls Nation in the last week of July in Chevy Chase, Md.

During the week, Baldacci’s accomplishments included being named Department of Treasury-director, Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Delegates also ran political campaigns, introduced and passed legislation and elected a Girls Nation president and vice president.

Baldacci is a senior at Bangor High School and was selected to attend Girls Nation after excelling in her Girls State program earlier this summer.

The program is a government education program for outstanding teen-age girls. Ninety-five girls from 48 states participated in the program, which included a reception with President Bush on July 27.

The CollegeBound Network selected Sarah Mead of Bangor as one of two winners of its national student of the year scholarship competition.

The recent Bangor High School graduate, and Samuel Cosby of Flower Mound, Texas, will receive a $1,000 scholarship, a personal computer, a Palm Pilot and a host of other corporate donations.

Scholarship applicants were asked, “You have just been named the 2015 Man/Woman of the Year. For what achievement are you being honored and how did your college education help you reach your goal?”

Students’ 300- to 500-word essay responses, combined with their academic record, served as the criteria for judging.

In her essay Mead predicted she would be honored for her work as a child advocacy lawyer. This fall she will pursue that goal at Dartmouth College, where she intends to major in child psychology.

Thomas Shandera, infection control coordinator for the Acadia Hospital in Bangor, has received widespread recognition in his field for an article he published in the August issue of the American Journal of Infection Control.

The article, “Descriptive Study of Nosocomial Infections in a Short-term Inpatient Behavioral Health Setting,” is the first article published on this subject.

Shandera said his research is important because “knowing which infections occur most often during psychiatric hospitalization is the first step toward designing a plan to prevent these infections.”

Due to the success of Shandera’s study, he has been asked to spearhead a task force to define health care associated infections in the behavioral health setting. Shandera will work on this project with other infection control practitioners across the country.