Melissa Ladenheim named 2025 Outstanding Professional Employee

Melissa Ladenheim, associate dean of the Honors College, has been named the 2025 Outstanding Professional Employee by the University of Maine Employees Advisory Council. 

The award is based on a professional employee’s demonstrated dedication to serving others, maintaining the highest level of professional services, creating a better campus environment and engaging in public service in their field and community. Award recipients are recognized for their accomplishments with a $1,000 stipend. 

Ladenheim has been a member of the UMaine community since 2005 when she began teaching in the Honors College as a part-time faculty member. She became the coordinator of advancement for the college in 2013 and its first associate dean in 2015. 

As the coordinator of advancement in the college, she was a key figure in developing advancement efforts, working with recent graduates to build the next cohort of supporters and managing the connections made with external advocates and donors. Since 2014, she has successfully nominated eight honors graduates and supporters for Alumni Achievement Awards. 

As the inaugural associate dean of the Honors College, she has expanded student support services and, as a result, contributed to enrollment and retention. She works closely with students as they develop their honors theses and has served on over 150 thesis committees.  

Ladenheim is the coordinator of the Maine Day Meal Packout, through which 725,000 meals have been donated to food pantries across the state over the past decade. As a result of her leadership of the packout, Ladenheim was named a Paul Harris Fellow by the Old Town Rotary Club. In 2020, Ladenheim created the It’s Personal Campaign, a campus-wide effort to collect personal care items for the Black Bear Exchange. Recently, she helped establish the Fiber Arts Club, which brings students, staff and faculty together to knit, crochet and sew.

Ladenheim received the Maine Campus Compact’s Donald Harward Faculty Award for Service-Learning Excellence in 2012. At the time, she was the first part-time faculty member at UMaine to be recognized for her contributions to service learning. She has also received the Steve Gould Award and multiple All Maine Women Mentor Awards.

Ladenheim’s service has also expanded beyond UMaine’s campus. She is the co-founder of the Servant Heart Research Collaborative and was vital in creating two international projects: the Attachment Theory Workshop and the National Exam Test Tool. The Attachment Theory Workshop is a six-module training program created in partnership with UMaine students to support foster parents in Sierra Leone who are caring for trauma-affected children. It has since expanded to five other countries. The National Exam Test Tool helps prepare students for high-stakes national exams and has been instrumental in the educational journey of thousands of students in Sierra Leone. 

In her multiple letters of nomination for the award, Ladenheim has been referred to as someone who dedicates herself fully to the UMaine community, 

“Not only was Melissa personally one of my most important mentors throughout college, she provides unwavering support to all the programs and students of the Honors College. I know of no one else who is as dedicated to her role and the larger mission of which she is an invaluable part than Melissa Ladenheim,” a former student was quoted saying in her nomination. “Dozens of students credit Melissa’s encouragement with their successes and opportunities, and the Honors College would not be where it is today without her passion and hard work.”