Page 9 - The BellTower - Spring 2016

Skyrocketing Through Her Education
Brooke Saucier, a June 2015 Fort Kent Community High School graduate completed her Associate of Arts in Criminal Justice at UMFK in December of the same year. Wait a minute; you’re asking - how is that possible? By combining credits she earned from Pleasant Street Academy, Rural
U Early College, and classes she took on her own, Brooke graduated high school with 46 college credit hours; a local record. She will continue her studies at UMFK until she earns a Bachelor’s degree in Rural Public Safety and then she wants to go on to earn a Master in Criminal Justice. Her long-term goal is to work for the FBI.
Brooke believes early college at UMFK was crucial in her preparation for higher education and she encourages other high school students to take advantage of the opportunity, to step outside their comfort zone, and to take college learning seriously.
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tion, programs such as the Pleasant Street Academy also help pave a more affordable pathway to college for many students. Students in the Pleasant St. Academy pay zero tuition, but do pay fees and books.
As Brittany explains, “I did not qualify for a lot of financial aid. The significant savings Pleasant Street Academy provided me dur- ing high school, combined with a number of part-time and sometimes full-time jobs, kept my debt upon graduation very low.”
In reflecting on her experience in the Pleasant St. Academy and the nursing program at UMFK, Brittany considers herself lucky to be a part of two of UMFK’s signa- ture programs. Brittany is excited about being a nurse, and she feels the program
has prepared her well for the “real world”
of nursing. She gives a great deal of credit to her preceptorship instructor Katie Morin at Northern Maine Medical Center. “As great
as the Nursing program is at UMFK, there are just some things that cannot be taught unless you experience them for real in a hospital setting. Katie was helpful in guiding me and in helping me get rid of any sense that I was not good enough to accomplish a certain task.” It seems Brittany has found her passion, and she has also found employment as the local hospital has already offered her a full-time job as a nurse at NMMC.
Looking back, Brittany said she is happy to have been in the “guinea pig” cohort of the program because, as she said, “At the
same time administrators were figuring out the program, we were also figuring out what it meant to succeed in college- level classes. The teachers, professors, and administrators provided us with support, and we provided them with feed- back and our ideas. We were all in it together.” Since that first cohort, the Pleasant Street Academy has graduated three other cohorts and is still in full operation.
The program was the springboard upon which UMFK continued in its trajectory of growth in early college and dual enrollment opportunities to over 500 students (fall 2015) in 90 high schools throughout Maine.
The Pleasant Street Academy is now one of the
numerous programs the University offers under UMFK’s Rural U Early College and Dual Enrollment Program. Rural U is poised to become the first such program to be accred- ited by the National Alliance for Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships (NACEP); the only accrediting body in the country that focuses on dual enrollment.
“By ensuring that we meet the standards of quality, assessment, and program design expected of NACEP, we build from our rock- solid Pleasant Street Academy foundation to provide all of early college and dual enroll-
ment programs in a manner that best serves our students, our school partners, and the State of Maine,” said Voisine.
Since 2011, UMFK’s nursing program
has also seen continued growth in its tradi- tional Bachelor of Science Degree in Nursing Program. The nursing program includes the online RN-BSN program which now includes cohorts of students from a number of Pacific Islands, the Accelerated Nursing Program and the expansion of the UMFK Nursing Program to the campus of the University
of Maine at Augusta. UMFK’s new strategic plan identifies UMFK’s nursing program as
a center of excellence from which more programs and opportunities for student will develop.
As Brittany prepares to exchange her cap and gown for her nursing scrubs, she has words of encouragement for other students contemplating early college. “I have younger cousins, and I always tell them, when the time comes, to take early college classes.
It really helps you prepare for college.” Clearly, those words of advice,
wherever they came from, were not lost on Brittany. She is more than an advocate for the Pleasant Street Academy and the UMFK Nursing Program. She is an example of what hard work, persistence, and a posi- tive attitude can do in helping individuals accomplish their goals. Of course, being an advocate and example did not get her off the hook when it came to just one more cover photo.