Thomas College allocates $1.5 million from Alfond grant to Jobs for Maine’s Graduates program
The JMG program launched at Thomas in 2014 as a way to help high school students transition into the college environment.
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WATERVILLE Thomas College has announced it will allocate a portion of the $13.5 million grant it received in October to its Jobs for Maine’s Graduates College Success program.
The grant was awarded to the college on West River Road in Waterville as part of the Harold Alfond Foundation’s $500 million investment aimed at boosting the Maine economy.
Jobs for Maine’s Graduates, known as JMG, is a nonprofit organization aimed at improving the state’s workforce and economy by partnering with secondary and post-secondary schools to provide students with opportunities and guidance to advance their careers.
Scientists in lab coats and Silicon Valley coders that’s what usually comes to mind when thinking about science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM.
But STEM is more than the stereotype. It includes diverse disciplines feeding ever-changing industries, and Maine is fertile ground for STEM development, says Walter Rawle, chairman of the Maine chapter of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
He cites innovations in traditional industries like forestry, agriculture and fishing; and new developments in fields as disparate as bioscience, health care, artificial intelligence, machine learning, autonomous vehicles, military applications and a concept in the works to develop a Maine spaceport complex.
Designing and constructing a building in the middle of a pandemic requires a flexible mind.
That’s what Dan Fishbein learned as developers worked on plans for the new building that his company, Sun Life Financial, will move into in two years.
A rendering of Sun Life Financial’s planned office building on the Portland waterfront.
Courtesy of Sun Life Financial
Ground was broken this week – an event that was attended virtually, of course – on a building that will house the growing benefits company and, its developer hopes, extend the Old Port eastward. It is one of the area’s first major commercial buildings to break ground since the pandemic struck.