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V O L . X X V N O. I I I F E B R UA R Y 4 , 2 0 1 9 8 B U S I N E S S M A I N E B U S I N E S S M A I N E B U S I N E S S N E W S F RO M A RO U N D T H E S TAT E director, and Lee Moehlenkamp, as managing director. New England Cancer Specialists in Scarborough joined the Dana-Farber Cancer Care Collaborative. Blue Mermaid Island Grill opened at 10 Shapleigh Road in Kittery. The restaurant previously operated for 23 years in Portsmouth, N.H. Kennebunk Savings' customer care center will be offering customers the opportunity to opt-in to voice ID. This technology enables the bank, who partnered with Nuance Communications to deploy the voice biometrics technology, to identify cus- tomers by the unique characteristics of their voice. $3.2M will fund student- retention initiatives e University of Maine at Farmington has been given $3.225 million by two anonymous donors that will be used to create a fund that will support a number of initiatives designed to keep students in school and stay on track to graduate. It's the second-largest donation the school has received, behind a $5 million gift in 2002 to build the Emery Arts Center, which opened in 2011. e latest donation will be used to create Catalyst Fund at UMF, which will implement and expand initiatives that bolster financial aid, stimulate student success, advance graduate education programs and more. e initiative, focused on student success, has been crafted to encourage students to finish in four years, which will help reduce their student debt. N O T E W O R T H Y C E N T R A L & W E S T E R N Bread of Life Ministries, a homeless shelter in Augusta, said it received a $25,000 grant from the Avangrid Foundation, in partnership with Central Maine Power, to help fund its $571,000 shelter expansion project. The Board of Directors of Androscoggin Bank's MainStreet Foundation awarded a $7,500 grant to Safe Families for Children in Whiting and a $5,000 grant to The Progress Center in Norway. Major expansion for COA College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor plans a 45,000-square-foot expansion that will include science laboratories, flexible lecture halls, faculty offices, art and design studios, teaching and propagation green- houses, experimental theater, art gal- lery and welcome center and entrance plaza. COA trustees unanimously approved construction of the $13 mil- lion first phase, a 29,000-square-foot building Center for Human Ecology, at their Jan. 26 winter meeting. E.L. Shea Inc. in Ellsworth will lead the first phase, expected to begin this spring, with completion expected by September 2020. e architects for the project are Susan T. Rodriguez, an architecture and design firm in New York City, and GO Logic of Belfast. Feds allot $5.4M for Acadia shuttle service Acadia National Park, coming off a year of strong growth in visi- tors arriving by bus, has received federal funding to upgrade the Island Explorer fleet of free shuttle buses. Ellsworth-based Downeast Transportation, which owns and operates the Island Explorer, expects to have the buses on the road by June, said General Manager Paul Murphy. e cost is $240,000 per bus, for a total of $5.4 mil- lion. Funding comes from the U.S. Department of Interior through Acadia National Park, and from the Federal Transit Administration through the Maine Department of Transportation, Murphy said. N O T E W O R T H Y M I D C O A S T & D O W N E A S T First National Bank in Damariscotta announced that its trust and invest- ment management division, previously known as First Advisors, changed its name to First National Wealth Management. In addition, the bank said it will be adding a new business Danielle Conway to leave Maine Law for new post in Pennsylvania B y R e n e e C o r d e s Danielle Conway will leave her post as dean of the University of Maine School of Law after four years to become dean of Penn State's Dickinson Law. "This was one of the more difficult decisions in life, but it was the right one," she told Mainebiz. Conway, 50, is scheduled to start her new job on July 1, four years after becom- ing Maine Law's first African American dean in 2015. Dickinson Law is in Carlisle, Pa., one of Penn State's two separately accredited law schools jointly known as the Dickinson Schools of Law. Conway has made her mark in Maine on many fronts, from promoting access to justice in rural areas through the Rural Lawyer Project to opening doors for underrepresented students through a summer immersion program known as PLUS, or PreLaw Undergraduate Scholars. She was honored as a Mainebiz Woman to Watch in August 2017. Now in its fourth year, PLUS will no longer rely on institutional funding from the Law School Admission Council but be funded from community donations. "I'm really proud of that," Conway said, adding that this summer's group will be capped at 15 students to give greater attention to participants. She was named Dickinson Law's new dean after a national search, and says she was attracted in part by the school's small size. "They have the same demographic in terms of community and it sits in a very small town surrounded by a rural area, so it gives me a legitimate base to do the kind of social justice work I've been doing with the programs here," she said. She also noted a No. 59 national ranking "is an amazing accomplishment for a very small school" and added that "they have the right kind of support and investment that a law school needs to be successful." Maine Law expects to name an interim dean to start in July as it launches a national search for Conway's successor. "Maine has been truly fortunate to have had Dean Conway leading our state's law school over the past four years, guiding an extraordinary faculty and launch- ing several innovative initiatives that will endure long after her departure," Glenn Cummings, president of the University of Southern Maine. Leaving a legacy in Maine In the greater Portland community, Conway has served as a trustee at the Portland Museum of Art and on the boards of the Boys and Girls Club of Southern Maine, the Portland Regional Chamber of Commerce and United Way of Greater Portland. She will be missed by many, both inside and outside legal circles. "Danielle brought a tremendous passion, energy and vision to her role and redefined the kind of leader a law school dean could be," Patrick Scully, CEO of Bernstein Shur, said in an email to Mainebiz. "She advocated tirelessly for the importance of Maine's only law school to our state and the need to support it financially. All those who care about Maine Law will miss her deeply." Quincy Hentzel, president and CEO of the Portland Regional Chamber of Commerce, said Conway has made an impact here. "Dean Conway has not only been an incredible asset to the law school but to the community at large," Hentzel said. "She has made her mark on our region, and her collaborative leadership style and passion for the community in which she lives and works will be dearly missed. She has a way of bringing people and ideas together for the betterment of all, which we do not see enough of in today's current environment." B R I E F P H O T O / C O U R T E S Y U N I V E R S I T Y O F M A I N E S C H O O L O F L AW Danielle Conway, dean of the University of Maine School of Law, will leave her post July 1 to lead Dickinson Law in Carlisle, Pa. M I D C O A S T & D O W N E A S T C E N T R A L & W E S T E R N

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