Student Profiles

• Jackie Flowers- Certificate Program in Advanced Assessment of the Older Adult
• Sharoo Wengland- Professional Communication Certificate Participant
• Angelica Caterino- Grant Writing Certificate Participant
• Joe Walsh- Supervision Certificate Participant
• Susan Bassi Brown- Human Resources Certificate Participant
• Chris Glancy-Project Management Certificate Participant
• Melissa Suey - Training & Development Certificate Participant
• Bob Marsh- Lean Six Sigma Certificate Participant

 

Student Profile: Jackie Flowers

Jackie Flowers says, “I’ve always ascribed to the notion that, if you find a job you love, you’ll never work another day in your life.”

She also believes that touch is the best therapy for someone in distress, and that education is a continual requirement. Those three convictions are the guideposts as Jackie’s career enters a transition from nursing to healthcare staff work.

Jackie, a massage therapist, will always continue in that work. She talks of working in hospice care as a home health professional, and seeing what happened when morphine had no effect on an end-of-life patient’s torment from severe pain: “Then someone touched them – massaged their feet – and they went to sleep. I saw it over and over and over. The magic of touch.”

Jackie, who also is a registered nurse, has worked at hospitals for much of her career. She received massage training some years ago, and worked in her own fulltime massage therapy practice. Then a recession-induced decline in income, coupled with a need for health insurance coverage, sent her back into the employment market.

She has been working as a weekend supervisor at the Veterans Administration Home in South Paris. “I fell into supervision,” she explains, relating that she filled in at a time in need, and a new competency was discovered.

Now, she will be moving into a fulltime position as admissions and education coordinator at the 61-bed Freeport Nursing Home – but she will continue a reduced massage therapy practice. Jackie takes a holistic approach to that work, blending in her nursing knowledge to work with people who are injured and/or in chronic pain.

She doesn’t want to let go of the massage work. “It’s a calling,” she says. The Freeport position became a possibility when the administration there agreed to schedule her responsibilities around the requirements of her massage therapy work.

Jackie’s extensive educational record includes two certificate programs at USM. She took a nursing refresher program some years ago, and last fall completed the Certificate Program in the Assessment of the Older Adult. One thing she has always known is that “nursing home patients are ‘touch-deprived.’ They have no one. Touch is the best therapy.”

The first stage of her professional career was a 13-year stint as a licensed practical nurse (LPN). Then she completed registered nurse education in 1988 at what is now Kennebec Valley Community College.

Jackie, who refers to herself as “a lifelong learner,” continues a years-long practice of earning CEUs from various organizations, so her skills will remain up to date. “Nursing always has been – always will be – dynamic,” she says. “If you never take another class, how will you know what’s going on?”  

Student Profile by Jim Milliken, President & Principal Consultant at Jim Milliken, Inc.

 

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Student Profile: Sharoo Wengland

You could say that taking turns driving an 18-wheeler day and night across North America was part of Sharoo Wengland’s pursuit of her lifelong dream. But it was a small part.

Sharoo’s big vision was to rise above the poverty she and her small family – Sharoo, her little sister and her mother – struggled with after her parents divorced when Sharoo was three years old. She considers Texas her home, but her mother moved them all over the country in search of work, ranging from secretarial to hotel-cleaning jobs that never provided a real living.

No one in Sharoo’s family had ever earned a college degree and she felt that lack of education was the root of her family’s predicament. She knew she had to ensure that she could be self-reliant when it came time to provide for her own future children – “my dream” – and prevent their ever undergoing the kind of life she had experienced. “I always had a passion for college,” she says. “I didn’t want to end up with the life my mother had, unable to support herself.”

Now she’s there, but she’s not done yet, by any means. Sharoo is a staff associate in the Office of the President of USM. She holds a USM bachelor’s degree in Social and Behavioral Sciences and is a graduate student aiming for an advanced degree in adult and higher education. She plans to go on to receive her doctorate when she is done at USM.

Sharoo has been taking classes since 1996, first in community college in Texas, then online with the University of Phoenix, and finally at USM. She also is in the USM’s Professional Development Program’s Professional Communication Certificate Program.

Getting here has been quite a trip. Sharoo had to go to work at the age of 16, to pay for her own needs and help support the household. When she was in training to be an assistant manager at Pizza Hut, a new manager arrived. That was Steve, who would eventually become her husband.

Shortly afterward, the couple took to the road. They lived in the truck, in continuous motion because they were paid by the mile, hauling everything from expensive athletic shoes to potatoes through every state but two (the Dakotas) and into Canada. It was fun, Sharoo recalls, but it allowed for just three days a month back home in Weatherford, Tex. It became time to stay put for a while.

Sharoo managed a mobile home park in Weatherford while Steve continued to drive locally. Then, after an accident, he had no luck in a job search – even after sending out nearly a hundred resumes. He did much better when he tried his native Maine. His first contact landed him a spot at Friendly’s, and the family relocated to Gorham. Now Steve is a USM alumnus as well and employed at Unum, working at home and doubling as a househusband. Their kids are Rayne, age 10, and Ebbin, age 5.

Sharoo’s reverence for education remains undiminished, and her dream has been expanded: “Getting a bachelor’s degree changes who you are as a person. Whether you actually use it or not, you’re a better person. Now, instead of being in poverty, I’m in the middle class.”

“I want to change other people’s lives, as mine was changed.”

Student Profile by Jim Milliken, President & Principal Consultant at Jim Milliken, Inc.

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Student Profile: Angelica Caterino 

Angelica Caterino is a go-getter. She went from Montpelier (Vermont) to Portland for a week’s training in grant writing, Returned home and immediately got a  job as development director for a nonprofit housed in a historic old house.

Angelica also is a person of enthusiasm and a wide range of interests. She is currently working on a graduate degree in Colonial American History in an interdisciplinary Humanities Program through California State University. She reinterprets traditional folk songs as a hobby and art, plays the guitar and mandolin, collects old books, and dabbles in genealogy for fun.

History has always been a passion for Angelica, and in her mid-twenties she decided to pursue a degree, entering Johnson State College in Vermont, graduating Magna Cum Laude with a degree in history at the age of 32 (and picking up a certificate in business management along the way).

Angelica seems to find her interests wherever she goes. She became a work-study student in the development office, then worked there as an employee. One bonus of the job was the opportunity to work in the alumni archives, and she did a lot of research there. Her thesis was on the early history of the Normal Schools – or teachers’ colleges, many of which became the state colleges and universities of today, using Johnson State as a case study.

“I knew nothing about the field of development, but had an incredible mentor, Sally Laughlin,” she reports. “I always delve into the history of everything I touch, and I soon realized that it is actually a great field for a historical researcher – There is so much having to do with history in terms of personal legacy, institutional history, and a sense of place and memory to draw upon.”

After graduation, she went looking for a professional development course in grant writing to strengthen her fundraising credentials and found exactly what she was looking for in the program at USM Professional Development Programs.

After returning to Montpelier from her “working vacation” in Portland for the grant writing course, she heard about a development job with a nonprofit, Food Works at Two Rivers Center. The job, the organization, and the center itself fit perfectly with her varied interests.

The position had the added benefit of some flexibility, allowing Angelica to spend more time with her son Rowan, 8 (“the light of my life”).

Food Works has a variety of programs in cooking and nutrition for all ages, focusing on underserved populations, and offers low-cost food distribution to support local farmers and institutions.

The 25 year old organization bought a historic 1830s farmhouse that was once home to one of Montpelier’s original settlers, and is gradually preserving and restoring it. Eventually, it will be a multifunction education center for food and sustainable agriculture.

“I am the development coordinator – the sole fundraising staff – and in this job I get to be involved with so many of the things I love: food, people, the local economy, preservation, and the history of the place I live. It’s wonderful!”

Student Profile by Jim Milliken, President & Principal Consultant at Jim Milliken, Inc.

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Student Profile: Joe Walsh

Joe started his Green Clean Maine business with sweat equity and an old Volvo station wagon in 2007, after seven years of wandering geographically and careerwise. He now employs 20 people and the business is growing 50 percent a year.

A friend’s wedding brought Joe from Rhode Island to Maine, with the prospect of enjoying a leisurely summer here before heading to California for grad school in urban planning.

To pay the rent in Portland, Joe got a job selling advertising for a environment-oriented coupon book, The Sunrise Guide.

Working with small businesses, Joe was attracted to that way of life. He also fell in love with Portland – the people, the walkability, the lively activities, the easy access to natural beauty and the sensitivity to the environment.

He wanted to work in a “green” business, and expected to do that in California, where the newly-subsidized solar power industry was booming.

Joe’s “eureka moment” came after he and his colleagues at The Sunrise Guide realized that there were no green cleaning services among their clients. Checking into why, he got a surprise.

The two active green cleaning services in Portland told him they couldn’t advertise because they were too busy already. They were turning away homeowners and business operators who inquired.

By this time, Joe also realized he wanted to work for himself. His informational interviews about urban planning had cooled his interest in that profession.

Another thing: The Sunrise Guide had opened his eyes to a kind of business he had not known existed. “I thought of myself as too idealistic to go into business,” he explained. “I didn’t think of it as a virtuous pursuit.”

Now he knows better. He makes the products used by Green Clean Maine, with ingredients such as baking soda, vinegar, plant-based detergents and essential oils.

As his business prospered and his company grew, Joe learned what every entrepreneur does: There’s more to it than the product or service, and more than the numbers.

“I went from zero to 16 people in four years,” he noted. “I needed to learn how to manage people. I had an assistant manager who would ask me, ‘What do I do?’ I realized that our management challenges had become more complex and I needed help getting answers.”

His college courses in leadership had given him a basic understanding of management, but he needed to bridge the gap between theory and the day-to-day. So he went looking for training.

“I had a background in leadership, so I was a picky consumer.” He settled on the Certificate Program in Supervision presented by USM Professional and Continuing Education, and hasn’t been disappointed. “It absolutely worked,” for Joe and Green Clean Maine’s assistant manager, both of whom completed the series.

Joe Walsh has tended bar in Ireland and led citizens’ protests in Rhode Island. Now he provides clean homes and offices for the environmentally conscious in Portland, and his search for a virtuous occupation has ended.

Student Profile by Jim Milliken, President & Principal Consultant at Jim Milliken, Inc

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Student Profile: Susan Bassi Brown

When Susan Bassi Brown graduated from Colby College, she and a friend started a small business. Her friend handled sales and Susan was the “everything else” person. They formed a corporation because people told them they should. When she consulted a tax accountant and was asked for the books and records, Susan had no idea what he was talking about. She took an accounting course at Thomas College and found herself enjoying it.

“Something about the logic in it clicked with me,” she says. She liked the way accounting solved problems. “You can take something apart to see how it works, then make it work better.”

She worked on an MBA at Thomas College, but stopped the study in the midst of a busy life. Twenty years later, she picked it up again at USM, and earned her master’s in 2007. Along the way, she also earned insurance and investment licenses.

Today she is the chief financial officer of Garrand, a Portland ad agency.

Susan has repeated this process several times in her career, continuing her education whenever a new situation called for new skills. The process will result shortly in Susan’s earning a USM Certificate in Human Resource Management. Susan had thought of HR as a narrow and not particularly comfortable business necessity. She decided to go for the certificate anyway. HR comes under her supervision, and she had no particular background in it.

It’s been an eye-opener. “I’m enjoying it. It’s not at all what I thought. It’s tremendously valuable to me,” she says. “I have new respect for HR.” Now she finds herself advising fellow managers in a variety of ways that used to be handled through guesswork.

Human resources, she notes, is the largest cost item in a people-centered business, “a huge expense,” and her new understanding of its breadth has helped her help the Garrand organization: “We have integrated it into all the business planning we do, all the business modeling we do.” 

She has found a comfortable fit as the financial officer in marketing organizations, where the creative culture is quite suited to a person of her nontraditional approach. She held that position for 18 years at CD&M in Portland, and has been at Garrand for six years.

Susan speaks highly of the open and supportive culture at Garrand. The organization has won national and state recognition for its quality as a place to work.

As a not-your-typical financial officer, it suits her just fine.

 

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Student Profile: Chris Glancy

“Your brain is kind of a muscle – the more you exercise it and stretch it, the stronger and more flexible it becomes.”

That’s a quote from Chris Glancy, explaining why he took Project Management training workshops at USM despite his decades of experience in the work. In fact, Chris had already studied project management 25 years ago and earned certification in it.

Now he’s done it all again. He completed the three Continuing Education courses in the USM Certificate in Project Management program this year. Then he took the CCE prep course for the Project Management Professional certificate, and earned the PMP designation from the Project Management Institute.

Chris is a Project Manager for IBM, employing his long experience in project management in the Global Technology Services group working on transition and transformation project for companies outsourcing IT to IBM.

It is completely in character for him to be on a constant search for new ideas and broader fields of knowledge. He likes to take some kind of course (project management, philosophy, psychology, etc.) every year or two, then dive deep into the literature of the field.

He is never at a loss for an opinion, but he is acutely conscious of the need to gather and examine other viewpoints. “You can’t learn it all on your own,” he says. “I read books all the time and have my own perspective on things. But going to Continuing Education exposes you to different perspectives. Maybe someone has tried that out and know why it doesn’t work. . . .

“You’ve had this idea in your head for a long time. Now you hear yourself saying it out loud and you’re getting feedback, professional feedback. One reason I like taking classes is to keep the gray matter engaged.”

That balance between academic learning and the real world experience goes back a long way with Chris. He took a year off after his junior year as a USM undergrad, and started a commercial diving business with a buddy on the Carolina coast.

“That was probably the best education I ever had,” he believes. “I was at best a ‘C’ student. I went out and took a few courses in the school of hard knocks, then came back and was a straight-A student from then on.”

He earned a BA in communication from USM 1983, then an MBA from the University of New Hampshire in 1991.

His professional career includes two years with Northern Utilities, then 15 years in various roles, including project management, for Unum. Since 2000, he has done and led similar work at IBM, at a much higher level on much more complex projects.

Coming back to the project management classroom after a quarter-century, “seeing how the discipline has changed,” is a professional activity as well as an intellectual one.

“One of the key things Continuing Education does, it gives you the ability to see how things are applied in different situations. Other people share the breadth and depth of knowledge from their experience. You can’t get that in your own organization.”

It’s an essential element in a life-long quest for new and better ways (“With project management, you’re only as good as your last project. You have to be creative – find and use things that have never been tried before.”)

And it’s a serious matter: “There is no safe job any more. You have to keep updating your skill set.”

 

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Student Profile: Melissa Suey “Learn While You Earn"

Keynote speaker Melissa Suey looked out over her audience and asked a question: How many people had tuition reimbursement available for training? About three-quarters raised their hands.

She asked a second question: How many were currently using the benefit? Three.

Melissa was making a point that represents a hallmark of her 19-year career: “Learn while you earn.” Take advantage of educational opportunities, formal or informal, on the job or in the classroom.

“Self-employed folks make it their business to gain up-to-date knowledge and skills.  Otherwise, they wouldn’t be in business!  In my opinion, we should all act like we are self-employed when it comes to our own development, especially in this tough job market.”  Melissa has done an impressive amount of training, and her high praise for USM’s Nancy Ansheles and Peggy Page carries significant value.

Melissa is training and development manager for Delhaize America, the parent organization of Maine’s Hannaford Brothers supermarket chain, and is based in Scarborough. She leads a team that trains the people conducting Delhaize supply chain operations - from product sourcing and category management through pricing and getting goods to the stores.

Melissa Suey has had a varied career. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science in journalism from Bowling Green State University in Ohio, then worked as a television reporter/anchor, marketing consultant, media relations and marketing trainer, and then honed her entrepreneurial skills consulting with small businesses.

Along the way, her talents and interests led her into advising her clients beyond marketing – in relevant business issues and other areas in their lives. She realized that in order to really help her clients see where they were stuck and move forward, she needed to coach the whole person.  It was then that she invested 120 hours in professional coach training from the highly acclaimed Coaches Training Institute and subsequently founded Red Sky Leadership, a coaching and training company.

As she continued to coach and facilitate groups, she felt she needed more. “Most of my education around training was informal, so I felt it was important to get that formal training,” she explained. “That’s why I so appreciated Nancy and Peggy. They are experts and are DOING it in their current work– practicing what they teach. 

“Besides the new knowledge, the courses reinforced what I was doing. That gives you confidence.

“The added value was getting to know my fellow participants.  I can’t emphasize enough the value of building relationships with your peers in the industry.  There were professionals from all over Maine, large and small organizations. We still share best practices and lean on each other for feedback.

“And I send my employees to USM.  It is part of their job to come back and share what they’ve learned.”

She now is the mother of two children and, besides her fulltime position with Delhaize, coaches several clients and delivers occasional keynote speeches through Red Sky Leadership.  It comes as no surprise to hear she is currently enrolled in a training program to prepare her for the rigorous credentialing process with the International Coach Federation.

With her current responsibilities, as well as her broad career background and extensive training experience, Melissa knows exactly why the USM training is so important.

“There is no such thing as job security,” Melissa says. “WE are our job security – it’s all in here (indicating herself).   It’s all about your knowledge, skills, experience, talents, work ethic, reputation...  Whether you are working for an organization or self-employed, you take those with you wherever you go.”

USM Professional Development Programs - Student Profile
October, 2012
Learn More about our Fall 2012 Professional Development Programming

 

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Student Profile: Bob Marsh

His company is OMNIA Technologies Inc., but Robert P. Marsh is as much a business-process problem-solver as he is an international telecommunications expert.

That’s why he appreciates the Professional & Continuing Education courses he takes at USM. His everyday work life at this level directly engages knowledge from the courses he has taken.

Bob founded the Portland-based company in 1998. Today, he designs and implements telecommunication systems, locally and across the United States, Mexico, and Canada.

“People want to buy technology,” he says, “but they also need to improve their business process. It could be any one, sales, order management etc.

“Often the customer will ask, ‘What do our processes have to do with telecommunications?’ My reply is, ‘When we improve business processes, then match those to the needed technology, we’ll have greater success.’”

Marsh has taken numerous courses through the Professional & Continuing Education Program at USM, beginning nearly 20 years ago with Project Management, and more currently with Business Coaching courses. Just this year he completed Lean Six Sigma Training, to the Black Belt level.

Bob has added an internationally accredited Professional Certification in Corporate Coaching.

He is a voracious researcher and reader, and it’s a good thing. His profession is “changing by the day. It was changing by the month five years ago and by the week three years ago,” he says. “I’m astounded by the rate at which it evolves, but we are intending to stay ahead of the curve. We are constantly on the lookout for advancing technologies, culling out the not-so-good, vetting the others and ultimately choosing to work with the best.”

“I want to be prepared to walk into a business and have that business say, ‘Yeah, you’re the company who can help us.’

“Initially we spend time with the customer helping define their technological challenge and contrast how that might map to a fractured or flawed business process. Then, with a new process, we design and implement a new telecommunication system”.

He credits the USM courses with adding value to his professional skill set.

“Just this morning I met with a customer wrestling with a business problem who was convinced technology would eliminate the problem. After a few hours of assessment, we concluded that the problem was in fact process- and technology-related. . . .”

“Education? I love it!” During a previous 13-year career at Digital Equipment Corporation, Bob estimates he took “two hundred weeks” of training. USM, he says, has been a worthy extension of that professional learning continuum.

In addition to the noncredit training, Bob took a heavy load of courses for two years to earn his BS in Industrial Technology at USM.

With focus and determination, Bob Marsh leads a team to design and implement state-of-the-art technology across the continent. He enthusiastically credits the USM programs for providing vital support for that work.

As a problem-solver, he knows how and where to stock his toolkit.

 

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