Introducing New Staff
Kimberley (Kim) Mentus is our new Administrative Specialist in the office. She previously worked in the Front Office of the Advanced Structures and Composites Center, juggling any number of tasks for a staff of over 300 people and clients from all around the world, from February of 2013 to mid-December 2022. Kim is now assisting OIRA staff members with their projects, scanning exams and handling a range of office tasks. She’s enjoying learning about UMaine from a different perspective, and learning to use new programs. Kim has a BA and an AA from Keene State College, and will one day soon be taking classes again. Kim is familiar with French, and spent a semester in the north of France during college. She took a week’s vacation in England in 1991 and looks forward to going back when travel is less scary. On a personal level she enjoys a number of things including traveling, meeting new people, reading (mysteries are the favorites) and mineral collecting.
Laura Millay is our new assessment and institutional research analyst. She has a Master’s in Science Teaching from the University of Maine and a Bachelor’s degree in international development studies from Brown University. Her Master’s thesis focused on how teachers’ professional knowledge supports alignment in goals and methods for classroom assessment; her Bachelor’s thesis focused on the role of global advocacy in supporting worker rights in Thai manufacturing plants. Laura’s prior work includes coordinating STEM education research and evaluation projects for the Maine Center for Research in STEM Education, co-founding two non-profit organizations, managing an organic farm, and leading hiking trail construction and maintenance crews along the Appalachian Trail from Maine to the Smoky Mountains. She is originally from Surry, Maine and went to high school at George Stevens Academy in Blue Hill. As a high school junior, and again as a college junior, she studied in rural Thailand for a total of two years and learned to speak fluent Thai. Laura currently lives in Bangor with her two teenage sons. In addition to her various work-related passions (data analysis, research, data management, database design, using data and research to inform ongoing individual and systemic growth) she loves to hike, cross-country ski, run, garden, write, read poetry, listen to music, bake, and converse with friends and (particularly since the pandemic) not-yet-friends, aka, strangers including Uber drivers and the people behind her in the grocery store line.