Comments from Prof. Nory Jones of the UMaine business faculty are included in a Thursday Bangor Daily News story reporting on issues relative to FairPoint
business Internet service in Maine.

Sunday’s Lewiston Sun Journal included a commentary by Mike Hastings, director of UMaine’s Office of Research and Sponsored Programs and Dean John Mahon of UMaine’s College of Business, Public Policy and Health. The column looks at the nature of public debate in contemporary U.S. society.

Maine Business School faculty member Scott Anchors has been selected as the 2009 recipient of a prestigious international educational achievement award in recognition of his work and research with the Myers Briggs Type Indicator.

Anchors, a lecturer in management at UMaine who has an academic background in both education and psychology, will receive the Gordon Lawrence Educational Achievement Award from the Association of Psychological Type International in Dallas, Texas in August. The association recognizes an individual every two years to acknowledge “outstanding contributions to promoting the constructive use of psychological type,” a theory developed by psychology pioneer Carl Jung, and the basis for the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). The MBTI provides information about an individual’s approach to processing information and decision-making. Read the whole news release with more.

The UMaine Business School groups visiting Japan and Russia returned over the weekend. Blogs and photos chronicling their experiences are online.

Bangor Daily News includes an op-ed column, “Reconnect Link Between Performance and Award,” by Dean John Mahon

Dean John Mahon was interviewed this week by WOXO radio in Norway, Me. for a story about a new business school scholarship program. People who graduated from UMaine in May 2006 or later are eligible for a scholarship amounting to a 25 percent tuition discount if they are accepted into a business graduate program and agree to 10 hours per week of community or college service.

Channel 2 (WLBZ) and Channel 6 (WCSH) broadcast a news report about UMaine’s new business graduate program scholarship initiative. Students who graduated from UMaine in May 2006 or later may qualify for 25 percent tuition scholarships in return for 10 hours per week of community service. The initiative applies to two graduate programs in the UMaine Business School.

Channel 2 (WLBZ) broadcast a news report about the Maine Business School’s Student Portfolio Investment Fund (SPIFFY). In existence since 1993, the group provides opportunities for UMaine students to manage a University of Maine Foundation investment fund. SPIFFY now also includes an outreach component, as the UMaine students travel to middle schools to teach youngsters about money and investing.

Master of Business Administration student Brenton Murray of Orono has won the 2009 Active Citizenship Award in Community Service from the Bodwell Center for Service and Volunteerism for his work organizing a UMaine chapter of Habitat for Humanity and other charitable work.

The Active Citizenship Award is given to a student, student group or campus organization that has dedicated many hours to volunteering, community service projects, or service to the University of Maine.

An individual recipient must: be enrolled full-time at UMaine; involved in community service as a volunteer in a variety of community service projects and events; demonstrate evidence of leadership and ongoing commitment to service; demonstrate dependable and enthusiastic qualities, and be of good moral character.

Murray was nominated by Nory Jones, business professor and director of the graduate business program in the College of Business, Public Policy and Health.

In her nomination letter, she cites Murray’s founding of a UMaine chapter of Habitat for Humanity and his leadership in organizing several campus fundraising events, including the “There’s Snow Place Like Home” sleep-out and a community rock concert to benefit Habitat, in addition to the April 25 Care A-Fair, organized to recognize UMaine student volunteers and the organizations they support.

“In these events, he worked with the UMaine community as well as many people in the greater Bangor community,” Jones writes. “In addition, he works well with everyone regardless of age, gender, socioeconomic background. He has the ability to bring people together to work collaboratively and achieve great results.”

Jones adds that Murray “selflessly uses his superb creative, technical and artistic talents to help all of these causes. He consistently demonstrates qualities of dedication, leadership, teamwork and a commitment to helping society.”

Murray also has been involved with working for the homeless in his home town of Tempe, Ariz. He received the Bodwell Center award at the Community Engagement Gala, held April 2.

Comments from Prof. Harold Daniel, director of the Center on Tourism Research and Outreach, are included in a Portland Press Herald story about the potential impact of swine flu on tourism in Maine.