Ten years after Flagship Match began, its impact can be seen in the graduates who chose to stay, work and build their lives in Maine.
This story was published in the Fall 2026 edition of MAINE Alumni Magazine.
By Dave Nordman
When Grace Bradley arrived at the University of Maine in 2019, she expected four years of college.
She found a career. A community. And a place she now calls home.
The Connecticut native chose UMaine in search of independence. She wanted enough distance to create her own path while staying close enough to family. When she visited campus, she immediately connected with both the university and the town that surrounds it.
“I loved how much nature was on and around campus, and Orono immediately struck me as a true tight-knit college town,” Bradley says.
She arrived knowing no one.
That changed quickly.
Even as a self-described shy student, Bradley found friendships and opportunities through campus organizations. Through Her Campus, a global media platform dedicated to college and Gen Z women, she progressed from staff writer to editor-in-chief. At the University of Maine Advanced Structures and Composites Center, she worked as a student communications specialist, helping tell the stories of researchers whose work reaches far beyond Maine.
Those experiences eventually led her to WABI-TV in Bangor.
While still a student, Bradley accepted a part-time reporting position at the station, turning a classroom interest into a career.
“When I was offered a full-time reporter position after graduating, there was no world where I wouldn’t have jumped on it,” she says.
Today, Bradley is a multimedia journalist covering communities across eastern and central Maine. Her reporting spans town halls, public safety, community festivals and local traditions, giving her a front-row seat to the people and places that make Maine unique.
“After meeting so many people with incredible stories and experiencing communities’ iconic festivals and decades of tradition, Maine is a place full of life that invites connection, encourages curiosity and fosters a deeper appreciation for both the community and the natural world,” she says.
Bradley came for college. She stayed for life. She’s not alone.
Over the past decade, thousands of students have come to the University of Maine through Flagship Match. Many arrived expecting four years in Orono.
Many never left.
University data show that 34% of out-of-state students who attend UMaine ultimately remain in Maine to live and work after graduation.
Ten years after Flagship Match began, those graduates are leading schools, reporting the news, studying Maine’s natural resources, launching businesses and strengthening communities throughout the state.
More than a scholarship
Launched for the 2016-17 academic year, Flagship Match allows eligible students from New England and beyond to attend UMaine at a cost comparable to their home state’s flagship public university. The initiative was created as Maine faced an aging population, shrinking numbers of high school graduates and growing concerns about future workforce shortages.
Ten years later, the program has become much more than a scholarship. For many graduates, it became the first step toward building a life in Maine.
Maine’s 10-year economic development strategy identifies attracting and retaining educated workers from neighboring states as a critical component of the state’s future workforce. One of its goals is connecting students from across New England with opportunities to build careers in Maine after graduation.
Today, more than 3,800 students from outside Maine are enrolled at UMaine.
The numbers tell part of the story.
The people tell the rest.
A full-circle return
When Jim Winslow left Pittsford, Vermont, to visit the University of Maine, he wasn’t looking for a career, a community or a place to raise a family.
He was looking for a college.
UMaine offered the size and opportunities he wanted, but when he stepped onto campus, he found something harder to define.
“It was almost one of those stories you hear about,” Winslow recalls. “When you actually go to the campus, you just know it’s the right thing.”
Through Flagship Match, Winslow was able to attend UMaine at a lower cost than he would have paid to attend the University of Vermont.
Nearly a decade later, he’s returning to the community where it all began.
This fall, the 2017 graduate will become principal of Orono Middle School, bringing his career full circle in the town where he first arrived as an out-of-state student.
For Winslow, the scholarship opened the door. What convinced him to stay had little to do with finances.
After graduating, he taught physical education, moved into school leadership and spent five years as assistant principal at Noble Middle School and Noble High School in North Berwick. Along the way, he and his wife built a life in Maine.
Now, as he prepares to begin his first principalship, his career has come full circle. Just down the road is the university that first brought him to Maine.
“Being close to a university like UMaine that has a pretty well-established education program was a huge perk,” Winslow says. “Having the university there to provide staffing and teachers for educational facilities is a comforting feeling.”
Building careers across Maine
While Winslow built a career in education, Rebecca Weeks found both a profession and a community.
Growing up in Lynnfield, Massachusetts, Weeks knew she wanted to attend college outside her home state. Like many students, she also needed the numbers to work.
When UMaine presented its financial aid package, the decision became easy.
What surprised her most was how quickly she stopped feeling like an out-of-state student.
“Honestly, I often forgot that I was an out-of-state student,” Weeks says. “What mattered was that we were all Black Bears.”
Weeks earned her bachelor’s degree in 2020 and remained in Orono to pursue a master’s degree in special education. While completing graduate school, she worked as a graduate assistant in UMaine’s Advising Center, helping students navigate their own college journeys.
Today, she teaches fourth grade in Portland Public Schools while pursuing an additional certification in multilingual education.
By her junior year, Weeks realized the future she envisioned increasingly looked like Maine.
“It’s where I built my career, found my community and created the life I love,” she says.
Rooted in Maine’s landscapes
Jordan Ramos already loved Maine before she became a student here.
Raised in Bristol, Rhode Island, Ramos had spent years visiting the state with her family before enrolling at UMaine in 2022 to study ecology and environmental sciences.
“I felt like Maine would be a place I would enjoy living in while at college studying environmental science,” Ramos says. “I also knew I wanted to go to school with close access to outdoor recreation opportunities and a variety of ecological habitats to study.”
Like many out-of-state students, Ramos arrived in Orono knowing few people. Through her classes, student organizations and research experiences, she quickly found a community.
The summer after her freshman year proved to be a turning point. Working with the University of Maine Cooperative Extension’s Wild Blueberry Research Team, Ramos spent time in blueberry barrens across Downeast Maine, learning about the state’s native wild blueberry industry and the people who help sustain it.
What began as a research opportunity evolved into something more personal. Through conversations with growers, fieldwork in agricultural landscapes and research for her Honors College thesis, Ramos developed a deep connection to Maine’s environmental heritage and rural communities.
“That experience immersing myself into the ecology of Maine’s unique wild blueberry fields and also meeting with farmers grew my love for this native agricultural crop,” she says.
The experience also shaped her creative work. As a double major in ecology and environmental sciences and studio art, Ramos used painting and visual storytelling to explore the relationship between people, agriculture and the environment. Her Honors thesis focused on Maine’s wild blueberry heritage, combining scientific understanding with artistic expression.
After graduating in May, Ramos chose to remain in Maine. She recently moved to a Downeast community, where she works as a farm apprentice, harvests wild blueberries and continues creating artwork inspired by Maine’s landscapes and agricultural traditions.
“My image of Maine is illustrated with all the experiences I have had through outdoor explorations with family and friends, scientific field research and local communities holding up the heritage practices of Maine’s environment,” she says.
Staying because of the people
For Sam Lenson, it started on the football field.
The Natick, Massachusetts, native arrived at UMaine as a punter and kicker, with Flagship Match and athletic scholarship support helping make attendance possible. What began as a four-year college experience stretched into seven as he completed undergraduate and graduate degrees.
He immersed himself in campus life, serving as a campus tour guide while participating in Senior Skulls alongside his football career.
“I was very much invested in campus and the people that played a role in my life,” he says.
After graduating during the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic, Lenson searched throughout New England for teaching positions. The opportunity that emerged happened to be in southern Maine.
Today, after six years teaching physical education in South Portland, he is preparing to begin a new role at Gorham High School. Outside the classroom, he mentors young athletes through his kicking and punting training business.
“It was the best seven years of my life,” he says. “It’s the people that make it.”
More than a college destination
Football also brought Chris Ferguson to Maine.
Everything else convinced him to stay.
Originally from the Philadelphia suburbs, Ferguson came to UMaine to study business. Along the way, he took advantage of opportunities through the Maine Business School, from entrepreneurship courses to consulting projects.
“I had some really good professors and real-world business projects,” Ferguson says. “Those are experiences and lessons I still think of within what I do.”
Today, Ferguson works as an investment advisor in the Portland area, helping Maine families and business owners plan for their financial futures. He and his wife also own women’s clothing boutique franchises that employ more than 20 people.
For him, Maine gradually became more than a college destination.
It became the place where he built a career, started businesses and began raising a family.
“Coming back to Portland was always our happy place,” Ferguson says. “I loved going downtown. I loved going to Portland Head Light. It always made me happy to be up here.”
Now raising a young son, he sees Maine as the place where his family’s future will unfold.
“I always felt like this was a place I could come back to,” he says.
No one knows where life might have taken these alumni had they chosen another college.
What they do know is that the University of Maine opened doors that shaped the course of their lives.
For many, Flagship Match made that journey possible, bringing students to Maine who might otherwise have chosen a different path.
Some now lead schools.
Some teach children.
Some report the news.
Some study Maine’s landscapes.
Some strengthen its agricultural traditions.
Some mentor young athletes.
They came because of a scholarship.
They stayed because they found opportunity, purpose and community.
Ten years after Flagship Match began, its success isn’t measured only by enrollment numbers or tuition savings.
It’s measured by the graduates who decided Maine wasn’t just where they went to college.
It became home.
As Weeks puts it: “Although Maine wasn’t my home for the first 18 years of my life, it is unquestionably my home now.”
