Issues of today – national security, health, education, the economy – are increasingly complex and irrelated. They seem to have aspects that are local, national and global in nature.

For example, the Sept. 11 tragedy is not only impacting the structure of our national defense and global alliances, but also is impacting where our youth go to college, the movement of people and goods into Maine from Canada and where our families go on vacation. Health care consumes over 20 percent of our state’s economy. It is also a major employer and has an extraordinary impact on individual well being and business viability alike, especially given our weak economy, high tax burden, low family incomes, and aging population in Maine.

We pride ourselves in K-12 education achievements yet despair over our low college completion rates by national standards, our shortage of trained health professionals and our limited academic research. After Enron, we are sensitized to the balancing act that is needed between free enterprise and business accountability. Many of the issues simply don’t lend themselves to such traditional solutions as federal or local, conservative or liberal, public or private, rather, they more often require a wedding of strategies. In such a world we have an excellent civil servant in our United States Sen. Susan Collins.

Each issue before us in Maine and at the national level is like a unique facet of a larger stone. Sen. Collins approaches her work not based on some ideology but, rather, as a student of complex issues. To be an effective student, one must have experience and Sen. Collins is experienced. From an economy perspective, she grew up in a family business, but also was the state’s chief business regulator and chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations where she confronted major corporations. Her experience in state finance, coupled with her advocacy for entrepreneurship at Husson College and work on consumer protection and labor issues with the state of Maine has given her an ability to look at a single issue from diverse perspectives. Her leadership role in finding a fair solution to Maine’s worker’s comp crisis of the 1980s came to benefit the economy for employees and employers alike in the 1990s. It also provided her with an early grasp of health care issues of today.

Her work with former Sen. William Cohen prepared her for her position in the Senate Armed Services Committee. Her work at Husson gave her a firsthand grasp of the role of federal financial assistance received by most Maine college students. She plays a leadership role in landmark federal financial aid reauthorization that benefits Maine’s neediest students. In an era of special issue candidates and crisis-of-the-moment legislation, Sen. Collins comes across as informed, as an indicator of reasoned solutions, and as a leader who is respected on both sides of the aisle.

As in other extended Maine families, my family includes a newborn infant and folks in their late 80s. We are teachers and students, union workers and entrepreneurs. We cut wood and cherish the environment. We work in manufacturing, the service sector and the military. Our table conversations bounce from the local economy, to the health care crisis, to corporate fraud and Sept. 11.

We need a senator in Washington who is genuinely interested and experienced in these family concerns and I believe Sen. Collins has demonstrated this interest and experience. I have also worked side by side Sen. Collins in the mid-1990s at Husson College. I have seen her talk about patriotism to Girls State and about how she was deeply moved by her visit to Afghanistan and our troops in the Persian Gulf. I have been with her when she has counseled family businesses one-on-one and seen her speak to a national audience. And, I have left work late, after a long hard day at Husson and seen the light still on in Sen. Collins’ office and heard her giving business advice over the phone.

It is for this complex world we live in, for this breadth of experience, for this respect already earned in Washington, for this lifelong, selfless dedication to the people of Maine, and my first hand knowledge that she is a hardworking, fair-minded, likable individual that I believe there is no better person to represent the people of Maine in the U.S. Senate then Sen. Susan Collins.

William H. Beardsley is the president of Husson College.