UMaine Alert

Posted: April 19, 2024 - 1:32 PM

At approximately 9:24 a.m. on Friday, April 19, a University of Maine graduate student was struck by a university vehicle on Long Road at the University of Maine campus in Orono. The student reports that they are at a local hospital with minor injuries.

Emergency services, including the Orono Fire Department, University Volunteer Ambulance Corps, University of Maine Police Department, Orono Police Department and Penobscot County Sheriff’s Office responded to the scene.

The university vehicle involved in the incident was a Chevrolet Express van. It was being operated by a university employee.

Counseling services and support are available for students, faculty or staff who may have been affected. The Counseling Center can be reached at 207-581-1392 and the Dean of Students Office can be reached at 207-581-1406.

The scene has been cleared and Long Road is now accessible. An investigation is being conducted by the University of Maine Police Department with assistance from the Penobscot County Sheriff’s Office Crash Reconstruction Unit. Any witnesses to the incident are encouraged to contact Lt. Noel Santiago at noel.santiago@maine.edu.

Jessica W Clark

Jessica earned an Associate degree in liberal arts and science – math/science from SUNY Tompkins-Cortland Community College (TC3) in 2007, and a Bachelor of Science degree in physics from Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in 2010. She has been a member of the Physics Education Research Laboratory since Fall 2010.

Jessica has been involved in two areas of research. The first during an REU at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where she worked with Dr. Peter Persans to find steady state photoconductivity and temperature dependence of “black silicon”. She has also worked with Dr. Scott V. Franklin at RIT and Eleanor C. Sayre at Wabash College to reproduce a study at RIT that had originally been carried out at Ohio State University. The study involved the time fluctuation/evolution of student knowledge on a specific set of physics concepts.

Jessica’s teaching experience began as a peer tutor at TC3. There, she tutored most introductory sciences and writing. At RIT, she was an undergraduate teaching assistant for classroom activities in the introductory calculus based physics sequence. At the University of Maine, she is teaches recitations/workshops and labs for the calculus-based introductory physics sequence (PHY 121/122).

Jessica’s current research centers around the interface between mathematics and physics for the thermodynamic energies in upper level thermodynamic and statistical mechanics courses