Alumni Profiles

Current Name:

Andy Whitman

Graduation Year and years at MSSM:

After 4 long winters, I graduated in 2015

Hometown/Sending School:

Holden, Maine

Where did you go after MSSM?

Where didn’t I go it seems, I could never make up my mind! Immediately after MSSM I did my freshman year at Penn State studying mechanical engineering. Pretty quickly I realized that wasn’t the spot for me, so I transferred to Boston University where I finished out my degree. After college I didn’t really want to find a place to live, so I took a job designing research submarines - I got to live on a research ship for weeks at a time, popping in to port every so often! I had a blast sailing up and down the pacific.

What are you doing now?

I started a company a few years ago, Seaport Systems, so that I could democratize access to oceanographic data. I design and fabricate small sensing buoys that monitor water quality and can help people like oyster farmers, researchers and search and rescue teams. I live in Boston, so when I’m not working it’s usually pretty easy to get into trouble! I love watching the Red Sox at Fenway, riding The T, and jaywalking.

What is your favorite (or one of your favorite) memory from MSSM?

During the winter of my freshman year, the Kickstarter for Cards Against Humanity came out, and they sent a PDF of all the cards you could print. Soooo, some friends and I all went to Staples on mall trip and had the store clerk print off the 50 or so pages, filled with some of the most terribly hilarious and complete heinous things we’d ever read. We sat there for the better part of 2 hours, cutting the cards out, reading them for the first time and laughing hysterically while the cashier grew increasingly worried about us. That’s not even the funniest thing to have happened or been purchased on mall trip, but was really a formative memory of mine.

What class/teacher most sticks out in your mind?

The Mike Lambert/Jen Brophy engineering duo remains truly undefeated. I took Intro. to Engineering with them both in my junior year before taking Mechanics with Mike Lambert my senior year. I’ve got so many memories of those two teaching… Intro Engineering was true chaos and they were just completely out of pocket in the best way. To the untrained eye, it might have looked like a disaster at times, but it was the most realistic preparation for engineering I received at any level of education. To this day, the lessons I learned from them have been some of the most impactful and important in my career, and I had an absolute blast the whole time.

If you could go back in time, what would you tell your past self as you prepare for MSSM?

Let me preface this by saying: I have no regrets about my life, or the (mis)-adventures that got me to where I am today.

I’d probably tell myself to look past college and figure out what was truly important to me in life. I always felt that college was the only path forward, when it’s actually just a means to an end: a prosperous, fruitful,  and happy existence. I’d known pretty much my whole life that building things was what truly made me happy. An engineering degree is a fine way to pursue that, but so is an apprenticeship at a machine shop, or certificate from a trade school!

What role did MSSM play in who or where you are now?

The independence MSSM afforded has had unbounded effects on who I am. My parents dropped me off on High Street when I was 13 and I spent all of high school and nearly every summer in The County, either playing baseball or working at Summer Camp. Pretty much every ounce of growth and growing up I’ve done was within Limestone city limits. The responsibility and accountability the school taught me has made me a better business owner; and the incredible community of students, staff and alumni taught me how to be unapologetically myself.

What is the best book/movie/TV show you can recommend to your fellow alumni?

Book: Build: An Unorthodox Guide To Making Things Worth Making by Tony Fadell; Movie: Smokey and the Bandit; TV Show: Clarkson’s Farm

 

Current Name:

Rebecca (Barter) Crane

Graduation Year and years at MSSM:

2005 after 3 years at MSSM

Hometown/Sending School:

Gray New Gloucester High School

Where did you go after MSSM?:

After MSSM, I moved to California to get a Bachelors in Engineering and Applied Science with a focus in Computational Neural Systems at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). I spent time working at various software companies then entered into the medical device field and have worked at companies that design and manufacture cochlear implants, vagus nerve stimulators, and insulin pumps.

What are you doing now?:

I'm the Head of Quality at iota Biosciences, a medical device company pioneering Class III implantable bioelectronic solutions across a range of medical therapies and diagnostics.

What is your favorite (or one of your favorite) memory from MSSM?:

One of my favorite memories is exploring the nearby fields and town of Limestone with friends, often stopping to get a Jones Soda from the store in town.

What class/teacher most sticks out in your mind?:

I'd have to say both Pete Pedersen and Deborah McGann. I remember their classes as infused with a natural, unapologetic joy for math and science. They provided an advanced glimpse into their respective fields, fostering my drive to learn even more.

If you could go back in time, what would you tell your past self as you prepare for MSSM?:

While at MSSM, I embraced the opportunity as an important time in life to grow and to learn from colleagues and amazing staff. However, it was a big step at a difficult time for my family. For those reasons, I would tell myself to trust myself and my family that it was the right decision.

What role did MSSM play in who or where you are now?:

If I hadn't seen the MSSM informational pamphlet in my local library, I can confidently say I wouldn't be where I am today. MSSM played a critical role in opening the doors that got me to where I am now.

What is the best book/movie/tv show you can recommend to your fellow alumni?:

I'd recommend The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach by Christof Koch, which talks about the neuronal correlation to consciousness and understanding subjective experiences.

 

Current Name:  

Lynn Ward (she/her)

Name while at MSSM:

Lynn Laweryson

Graduation Year and years at MSSM?

Graduated in 2001, Fall of 99-Spring 01

Hometown/Sending School:

Valley High School in Bingham, Maine

Where did you go after MSSM?

I started college at University of Maine and a weird series of life events had me finish my social work degree at Florida Atlantic University. I worked my way through part time, and it took me about 7 years to make it through college. I then went to law school at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island. I started my career as a lawyer as a public defender in Fort Collins, Colorado in November of 2011 and practiced there for just over six years before moving home to Maine in  January of 2018.

What are you doing now?

I am an attorney for low income Mainers at Pine Tree Legal Assistance's Lewiston office. I mostly defend tenants in eviction cases, but do other housing stability work as well.

What is your favorite (or one of your favorite) memory from MSSM?

One of my most vivid memories was when we went out to look at the sky in astronomy class with Mr. Berz. I knew he thought I was the class underachiever when he asked me to find the moon when everyone else was given constellations.

What class/teacher most sticks out in your mind?

I loved taking political geography with Mr. Tasker. I became a lot more aware of current events (whoa expanded world view!) and learned to think more critically about the US's role in world politics.

If you could go back in time, what would you tell your past self as you prepare for MSSM?

Roll up your sleeves and do more homework. I had not built good study habits at my sending school and really was behind the 8 ball on work ethic in school. I was not fully prepared to be challenged, and I definitely was.

What role did MSSM play in who or where you are now?

I had a pretty highly structured home life before going to MSSM. MSSM was the first real opportunity for me to have to confront natural consequences for staying up too late or not working hard enough to prepare for a test. I learned a lot about the importance of really committing to something and seeing it through. I also developed better critical thinking skills which I use in my work every day.

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Current Name:

Eileen Haffner

Graduation Year:

2008 after 3 years at MSSM

Hometown/Sending School:

Unity, ME - Mt. View High School

Where did you go after MSSM?: 

Hartwick College, Oneonta NY (double majored in physics and mathematics)

What are you doing now?:

Fluid Path Engineer, Vertex Pharmaceuticals I'm working on an implantable device which would be a permanent treatment option for patients with Type 1 diabetes.

What is your favorite (or one of your favorite) memory from MSSM?:

Oh gosh, there's almost too many to think of just one. But I remember almost every night playing basketball in the gym. A lot of the time we'd have pick up games and if we didn't, I'd just shoot around by myself. I almost preferred that because it gave me time to be at peace. That gym was definitely my happy place.

What class/teacher most sticks out in your mind?:

Dr. Kirchner - physics - It was the first class I felt like I knew what was going on. He also would write all the students into the homework/test questions. Since sports were a big part of my life, I liked that he always incorporated me playing sports in the questions.

If you could go back in time, what would you tell your past self as you prepare for MSSM?:

Pack your snow boots, just kidding... kind of. I'd probably tell myself that it's going to be a lot of work, and you're going to encounter a lot of new situations (from failing your first test to figuring out how to live independently). However, all of this is going to be worth it in the end. It'll teach you a lot about yourself and what you're capable of, which will come in handy later in life.

What role did MSSM play in who or where you are now?:

From an academic standpoint, MSSM allowed me to skip almost an entire year of college and prepared me to handle any work load that came at me. On a personal note, MSSM did cause me to grow up quite a bit. I think I would have had a much harder time with that if it wasn't for my amazing friends that were right there in the trenches with me. Those friends are still major people in my life and their love and support has helped mold the person I am today.

What is the best book/movie/tv show you can recommend to your fellow alumni? 

This is a tough one. I know my friends and I watched a LOT of Degrassi, the Next Generation my final year at MSSM. Got us through a lot of stressful times when we could unplug and escape into a melodramatic Canadian high school.

 

Current Name:

Alex (Powell) Altair

Graduation Year and years at MSSM:

2004 after 3 years at MSSM  

Hometown/Sending School:

Thomaston

Where did you go after MSSM?:

I spent some time at both Worcester Polytechnic Institute and UMaine Orono, but didn't graduate from either. Instead I found my way to Berkeley, California, and joined a growing community called the "rationalists". I spent several years as a software engineer.

What are you doing now?:

In 2022, I finally went full-time as an independent researcher in a new field called agent foundations. (You can read more about my research here.) I'm essentially trying to put myself through grad school (which I think is going quite well) while seeing if I can usefully contribute along the way. So after many years of not doing math, I'm back in the full swing of it.

What is your favorite (or one of your favorite) memory from MSSM?:

One night, someone came into our room around 3am and said, guys, you have to look outside! We opened the shades, and there was the aurora borealis! We were awestruck. I called my girlfriend on the phone (the landlines that each room had) and said, hey I'm sorry to wake you, but you have to look outside! The guys in my wing decided that we had to go out onto the fields to see the whole sky. I was a pretty rule-following kid, but I knew we wouldn't be blamed for this. So we snuck out the window and watched the streaks in the sky for a while.

What class/teacher most sticks out in your mind?:

Mr. Sid. His linear algebra class was my first exposure to rigorous mathematics, and you could see that he loved every minute of teaching it. After we learned about Boolean algebra in Intro to programming, I came to Mr Sid and said, this feels kind of like a vector space. How is it related? He led me through the axioms, and we could see that it was *not* a vector space. We looked it up and found that it was a "distributive lattice". It had its own axioms, some of which overlapped with vector spaces, and some which didn't. This was when I started getting a sense of what it was like to explore mathematics, and not just be taught it.

If you could go back in time, what would you tell your past self as you prepare for MSSM?:

I'm not sure what would have been helpful here. It went quite well overall. I had more or less One Big Problem, which is something about attention control. And I've built some functional systems accommodating for that, but it would take a while to usefully convey it to my younger self, and it also seems to be pretty idiosyncratic.

Otherwise, I'd tell myself to pay more attention to people.

What role did MSSM play in who or where you are now?:

All the conversations with my peers helped me work out a lot of my worldview; things like how the universe works, where values come from, how society should be organized, what the future might look like, and what we should do about it. I think I would have ended up in a similar place without MSSM, but MSSM enabled me to work through it much earlier and with more people. MSSM also showed me that there were other people "like me", and gave me my first sense of a community.

What is the best book/movie/tv show you can recommend to your fellow alumni?:

One book I enjoyed reading recently was The Anthropocene Reviewed. It's entertaining, it's full of nerdy tidbits of information, and it infuses everything around you with a sense of meaning and wonder, without imposing on the reader what that meaning is exactly. It prompts the reader to reflect and then to use those reflections moving forward.