Awards 

The University of New England’s College of Pharmacy was selected for the Community Pharmacy Residency Expansion Project awarded by the National Association of Chain Drug Stores. The $50,000 educational grant will expand post-graduate community pharmacy residency opportunities for pharmacy school graduates. UNE’s College of Pharmacy will graduate its inaugural class in next spring. UNE’s practice site for the grant is Martin’s Point Health Care, a nonprofit organization based in Portland with Health Care Centers in Maine and New Hampshire. They also offer health plans throughout northern New England.

Designations

Drummond Woodsum is pleased to announce that 78 percent of their shareholders have been selected by their peers and clients for inclusion in the newly-released Best Lawyers in America. Best Lawyers, regarded as a guide to legal excellence, conducts a peer review survey in which more than 41,000 leading attorneys cast almost 3.9  million votes on the legal abilities of other lawyers in their practice areas. Drummond Woodsum attorneys honored by Best Lawyers 2013 are as follows: Dan Amory, David Backer, Jerry Crouter, Toby Dilworth, Rob Gips, Eric Herlan, Melissa Hewey, Michael High, John Kaminski, Jamie Kilbreth, Ben Marcus, Mona Movafaghi, Jeff Piampiano, Bill Plouffe, Aaron Pratt, Harry Pringle, Dan Rose, Greg Sample, David Sherman, Rick Shinay, Bruce Smith, Kaighn Smith, Dick Spencer, Bill Stockmeyer, Amy Tchao, Gary Vogel,  Ron Ward, and Jerry Zelin. 

Winxnet, a provider of professional IT services was ranked at 3347 on Inc. Magazine’s annual Inc. 5000 list, a ranking of the fastest-growing privately held companies in America. The list recognizes revenue and industry growth on local and national levels, including percentage revenue growth when comparing 2008 to 2011. To qualify, companies must have been founded and generating $100,000 by March 31, 2008 and at least $2 million in revenue in 2011. 

New Hires and Promotions

Bernstein Shur, one of New England’s largest law firms, recently hired Meredith C. Eilers to the firm’s litigation group. Eilers’s practice will focus on a variety of litigation matters for clients. She served as a judicial clerk for associate justice Jon D. Levy of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court. She earned her J.D. summa cum laude from Vermont Law School, where she served as editor of The Vermont Law Review and was named a dean’s fellow. Eilers earned her undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College, where she studied biology and anthropology. 

Mark Standen, an attorney with an office located in Yarmouth, has been appointed adjunct professor by the University of Maine School of Law. Standen is teaching the Federal Estate & Gift Tax course this semester. His law practice, focusing on wills, trusts, estates and business law, continues alongside his part-time teaching assignment.

The Miss Maine Scholarship Program recently announced that Rebecca Beck of Brunswick will be the director of the Miss Maine’s Outstanding Teen Program.  Beck, who held the title Miss Maine 1982, is owner of Studio 48 Performing Arts Center in Brunswick and Studio 48 Dance Studio in Topsham. She is also founder and president of New England Regional Theater Company, a nonprofit youth theater program in Brunswick. She received her undergraduate and graduate degrees from the New England Conservatory of Music and has studied privately at Juilliard. The Miss Maine’s Outstanding Teen pageant is a scholarship-based program offering accomplished teens the opportunity to be awarded funds for college. The program promotes scholastic achievement, creative accomplishment, healthy living and community involvement for Maine’s teens.

Eric Fernald recently joined Winxnet, a Portland-based IT solutions provider, as a network engineer. With a bachelor’s in computer information systems, Fernald brings to Winxnet more than six years of professional IT experience. Most recently, he worked as a network architect for systemarchitecture.net. 

CEI Capital Management LLC recently announced the promotion of Traci Vaine to chief compliance officer. Vaine first joined the company in 2008 as an accounting and loan service specialist, and advanced to senior compliance and asset manager prior to this most recent promotion. In her new position she is charged with assuring that the transactions made by CEI Capital Management are in full regulatory compliance. Previously, Vaine was a co-founder of Fantasy Stock Market Inc., an e-learning stock market program. Prior to that, she was a benefits advisor at the Arizona State Retirement System, and a financial consultant with Smith Barney. A resident of Bath, she holds a bachelor’s in finance from Arizona State University.

Good Deeds

Employees of Yarmouth-based tech firm, Fluid Imaging Technologies, spent a day last week spreading mulch, grooming trails, removing invasive species and hauling away metal debris at the Spear Farm Estuary Preserve in Yarmouth as part of their company’s volunteer work day. The 48-acre Spear Farm Estuary Preserve, located between Bayview Street and the Royal River in Yarmouth, is one of more than 40 conservation easements owned by the Royal River Conservation Trust, whose mission is to conserve the natural, recreational, scenic, agricultural and historic resources of the Royal River region for all residents and visitors. Volunteerism and donations from local businesses, organizations and individuals are the backbone of the trust.

Partnership

Sweetser‘s Edward Pontius recently partnered with the University of New England Physician Assistant Program to provide the psychiatric training module for physician assistant students. Pontius, a staff psychiatrist and clinical supervisor at Sweetser, has previously developed behavioral health clinical rotation opportunities for physician assistant students at a previous organization, and pursued this new partnership with UNE as it clearly aligns with Sweetser’s mission to bring high quality behavioral health services into primary care setting. As the director for the behavioral health module, Pontius not only organizes their didactic lecture curriculum but has also developed six-week clinical rotations for students who wish to further enhance their skill set in working with patients that struggle with behavioral health issues. Since concluding this year’s lectures in the spring, Sweetser has hosted three physician assistant students for six-week internships. An integrated team of Sweetser clinicians from medication management, crisis and intake worked together to provide the students with a very dynamic learning experience.