Schools

Bangor High School

BANGOR – Bangor High School Music Boosters will present Pops Night at 6:30 p.m. Friday, May 2, at the high school.

Performances will be offered by the Bangor High Jazz Choir, Bangor High Jazz Band, Bangor High Orchestra, Bangor High Fiddlers, and Cohen Jazz Band.

Tickets are $4 per person, or $10 per family. All proceeds benefit the Bangor High music department.

Clothing drive

BANGOR – Bangor High School students will hold a clothing drive from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, May 3, at the “old Rite-Aid” parking lot on the corner of Broadway and State Street. The clothing will be shipped to communities in Maine and Central America. The goal for the drive is 30,000 articles of clothing. For more information, call David Kelly at 942-0897, or e-mail frosted@aol.com. Call 632-5390 on the day of the clothing drive if you would like to have someone pick up donated clothing.

Fairmount School

BANGOR – Starship 2040, a traveling space transportation exhibit designed to convey NASA’a vision of commercial space flight as it might exist 40 years from now, “touched down” at Fairmount Elementary School April 28-30.

Visitors boarded the “starship,” which was housed in a 48-foot-long tractor-trailer rig, and moved through full-sized control, passenger and engineering compartments. Audio effects added to the realistic ambience of the experience.

The visit was part of a weeklong visit to the Bangor area.

John Bapst Memorial High School

BANGOR – John Bapst Memorial High School will hold a spring auction on Saturday, May 10, at the school located at 100 Broadway. The silent auction will run from 8:30 to 8:30 p.m., with the live auction taking place from 8:30 to 9 p.m. The event is for adults only.

Auction items include a trip to Nova Scotia, a granite garden bench, a weekend ski package to Sugarloaf, autographed collectibles, handcrafted items and gift certificates from local businesses.

Hors d’oeuvres and a cash bar will be available. Tickets are $12.50. The auction benefits the school’s annual fund, which provides scholarship assistance and programs for student and teacher enrichment. For more information, call 947-0313.

Phillips Exeter Academy

EXETER, N.H. – Nathan E. Testa of Orrington, a 12th-grader at Phillips Exeter Academy, has earned highest honors for the winter term. He is the son of Mr. and Mrs. James F. Testa.

Old Town schools

OLD TOWN – The administrator of SAD 4 in Guilford is leaving his post for a similar position in Old Town.

Matthew Oliver of Hermon, who has been superintendent in Guilford for two years, will leave June 30. Old Town officials have awarded him a two-year contract and a salary of $80,000, starting July 1.

In SAD 4, Oliver had been given contract extensions to 2006 and had received a salary of $72,000 this year. His resignation will be presented to SAD 4 directors on May 13.

The location of the job had much to do with Oliver’s decision, he said. He now commutes to Guilford from his home in Hermon.

Colleges

Champlain College

BURLINGTON, Vt. – John Jones of Glenburn received the Vermont Association of Broadcasters Scholarship at an honors ceremony at Champlain College in April. The award is presented to students who show promise in the field of broadcasting and maintain a grade point average of 3.0 or higher. Four $3,900 scholarships are awarded by the Vermont Association of Broadcasters.

Jones is enrolled in public relations and media communications at Champlain. He is a graduate of John Bapst Memorial High School and the son of Diane and Thomas Jones of Glenburn.

NESCom

BANGOR – State Sen. W. Tom Sawyer Jr. will be the guest speaker at the 21st annual graduation of the New England School of Communications, an affiliate of Husson College, at 7 p.m. Saturday, May 10. Tom Preble of Bradley, a 1987 NESCom graduate, will receive the Alumni Award. Preble is director of sales for five area radio stations in the Cumulus Broadcasting chain.

University of Maine

ORONO – The University of Maine’s Onward Program opens its doors to people interested in knowing more about the program and meeting the staff and current students.

An open house will be held from 1 to 3 p.m. and 5 to 7 p.m. Thursday, May 22, at the Onward Building on Flagstaff Road, between Murray Hall and Jenness Hall. Brief presentations will be made at 1:30 p.m. and 5:30 p.m., leaving time for light refreshments and questions.

Prospective students and others interested are welcome to attend the session. The Onward Program at UMaine has enabled thousands of students to receive a four-year college degree. At the heart of the program is the development of a small, supportive learning environment. Developmental college courses; academic, personal, vocational and peer support; and peer tutoring provide a comfortable community that has a reputation for academic success. For more information, call 581.2319 or visit www.umaine.edu/onward.

Grad research exposition

ORONO – University of Maine graduate students won awards April 22 for presentations made at the fifth annual Graduate Research Exposition on the UMaine campus. More than 80 students presented posters and gave talks on subjects ranging from engineering and environmental sciences to psychology and nursing.

UMaine faculty members judged the posters and presentations. Deirdre Mageean, associate vice president for research and dean of the graduate school announced the winners:

Physical, natural and environmental sciences: first place, Katherine Sheehan, Ecology and Environmental Sciences Program, “Just How Big is that Piece of the Puzzle? Quantifying the Flux of Mercury in Forest Litter at Acadia National Park”; second-place tie, Simon Krughoff, Physics and Astronomy, “Independence of Regions Using Non-Linear Optimization through Simulated Annealing”; James Kenneally, Physics and Astronomy, “Fracture Mechanics in Glaciology.”

Engineering: first place, Rency S. Varghese, Electrical and Computer Engineering, “On Classification of Gene Expression Data”; second place tie, Wayne H. Slade, Electrical and Computer Engineering, “Ensemble Neural Network Methods for Satellite-Derived Estimation of Chlorophyll”; Keith Martin, Civil and Environmental Engineering, “Development of Disaster Resistant Structures Utilizing FRP Reinforced Sheathing Panels.”

Social Sciences: first place, Bethany Sallinen, Psychology, “Behavioral Inhibition and Family Environment Influences Development of Social Phobia in Adolesence”; second place, R. James Scoular, Psychology, “A Retrospective Study of the Predictive Validity of the J-SOAP Over 10-Plus Years: Implications for Risk Assessment”; third place, Allyson Gilles, Psychology, “Movement and Sleep State Organization in Neonates Prenatally Exposed to Alcohol.”

Biological Sciences: first-place tie, Anatoly Petrov, Biological Sciences, “Sperm Ultrastructure in Acoels (Acoela Platyhelminthes) and its Taxonomic Implications”; Erin Fisher, Marine Sciences, “Genetic Assessment of Sea Scallop, Placopecten Magellanicus (Gmelin, 1791), Stock Structure in Southern Gulf of Maine”; second, Jordan Perkins, Wildlife, “Chick Survival and Fledgling Residency for Least Terns in Maine.”

Winning awards for outstanding oral presentations were: Kerry F. Lough, “The Effects of Clearcut Age and Herbicide Application in Maine Clearcuts on Ant (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) Communities”; Stephanie Parker, “Effect of Physical Disturbance on Food-Web Structure in Two Arctic Streams, North Slope Alaska”; Adrian Jordaan, Marine Sciences, “The Effect of Temperature on the Vital Rates of Cod (Gadus morhua) during Early Life Histories”; Stephen M. Altmann, “Characterization of the Structure and Function of Zebrafish Interferon and the Mx Promoter”; Thomas D. Kenny, “Automated Search for High-Velocity, Low Attenuated Surface Acoustic Waves in Piezoelectric Solids”; Brandon Sackmann, “Ocean Color Observations of Surface Water Transport from the Juan de Fuca Eddy onto the Washington Shelf”; Aparna Waghe, “Dynamics and Wetting-Drying Transitions of Water in Carbon Nanotubes”; Leigh Stearns, “Velocities along Byrd Glacier, East Antarctica, Derived from Automatic Feature Tracking”; Sheri L. Johnson, “Sperm Longevity and Fertilization in the Colonial Ascidian, Botryllus schlosseri.”

Former prime minister

ORONO – Brian Mulroney, prime minister of Canada from 1984 to 1993, will be at the University of Maine at 11 a.m. Friday, May 9, to deliver UMaine’s fourth William S. Cohen Lecture at the Maine Center for the Arts.

Cohen, the Bangor native who represented Maine in the Congress for 24 years and served a secretary of defense in the Clinton administration, also will participate in the event, making introductory remarks before Mulroney’s lecture.

Maine Steiners

ORONO – The University of Maine’s all-male singing group, the Maine Steiners, took third place Saturday in the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella in New York City. Ben Feeney, a vocal percussionist for the group, won first place for a two-minute solo imitating drum sounds.

This is the first time Maine Steiners have made it as far as the international competition in their roughly 50-year existence. Members are: Adam Scarpone, Nate Bates, Nick Caler, David Janes, Josh Koelker, Ryan Gould, Ryan Newell, Dennis Boyd, Lee Pidacks, and Feeney.

The Maine Steiners, who have recorded four CDs, represented the New England and central Canada by winning competitions at the University of Vermont and Dartmouth College over the last two months.

The Steiners opened their act with “Insomniac,” as sung by Koelker. The group then segued into “Danny Boy,” sung by Janes. The group ended with a rock-style song called “Drive,” sung by Gould.

The group’s last performance of the year is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Friday, May 2, at the UMaine Center for the Arts.

Compiled by Ardeana Hamlin