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Kim Dao selected for the Maine Track Early Assurance program of Tufts University School of Medicine

Kimberly Dao is diligent about sleeping eight or nine hours of each night.

The University of Maine junior biology major knows sufficient shut-eye is important for memory, health, mood and energy level.

It’s also a time to dream.

And Dao, who was accepted at the end of her sophomore year into the Maine Track Early Assurance program of Tufts University School of Medicine, has a long list of goals to accomplish when she’s awake.

Dao, who is from Saco, Maine, is the 11th UMaine scholar accepted into the Maine Track program. She’ll enter Tufts Medical School in fall 2014, several months after she becomes part of the first generation of college graduates in her family.

Dao, who is the UMaine student body president and Class of 2014 president, earned a 3.97 grade-point average in the fall 2012 semester. Earning a 4.0 semester GPA is still on her bucket list.

So too is carving out more time to paint, attend concerts and improvisation shows, and become a better ukulele player. Dao’s days are packed and that’s the way she likes them.

In addition to pre-med classes that start at 8 a.m., labs, government meetings and office hours, she routinely works out at New Balance Recreation Center, plays on a club field hockey team, bicycles, cooks and participates in the Black Bear Mentors Program at Old Town Recreation.

The multitasker often studies while she eats. And she beams when she talks in rapid-fire fashion about the fun she is having, and her goals and plans for the future.

In a January meeting with her adviser, Farahad Dastoor, Dao, who speaks English and Vietnamese, says she wants to learn a third language, possibly French or Spanish.

Dastoor, a lecturer in the School of Biology and Ecology, describes Dao as a modest, genuine, focused, purposeful leader. And organized. “She has amazing time-management skills,” he says.

While achieving excellence appears effortless for the self-described eccentric, Dao says academics weren’t always easy. She says things started to click in school after she fell off a roof as a youngster and had staples put in her head.

“Looking back, that’s when my grades improved,” she laughs.

In 2010, Dao was a top 10 graduate at Thornton Academy, where she also excelled in a slew of sports, clubs and activities.

Dao plans to eventually practice family medicine in Maine, where her parents chose to settle after living in California, Virginia and New Hampshire.

Family medicine, Dao says, combines her love of healing and helping with the ability to have long-term physician-patient relationships.

At an early age, Dao was captivated by medical procedures. She says she was engrossed watching surgeries on medical shows while her peers were mostly just grossed out.

Bonding with others is also important to Dao. In middle school, she volunteered with Special Olympics and at a local nursing home.

She says she knew her interest in medicine was a calling when she got a taste of clinical experience in the emergency room at Southern Maine Medical Center in Biddeford and when she aided a UMaine friend having a diabetic seizure.

“His roommate pounded on my door,” she recalls.

Dao, who had already become a Certified Nursing Assistant at Biddeford Regional Center of Technology while she was in high school, took charge and injected her friend with glucagon.

She says she felt a surge of excitement and purpose handling the situation and thought, “This is what I’m meant to do.”

Dao will be able to fulfill her calling through the Maine Track curriculum.

Maine Medical Center in Portland partners with Tufts University Medical School to offer the unique program.

Maine Track Early Assurance annually reserves a limited number of seats for sophomores from University of Maine System institutions, Bowdoin, Bates and Colby. The program was established in 2008 — students were first admitted in 2009 — with the hope that a significant number of graduates would go on to practice medicine in Maine.

Dao will attend the bulk of her first two years of instruction at TUSM in Boston. For her third-year clerkship and some of her fourth-year rotations, she’ll gain clinical experience in rural practice, as well as training at a major tertiary medical center in Maine.

Dao says she’s excited about practicing medicine in Maine, and is looking forward to a world of opportunities, including travel.

“I’m interested in a lot of things,” she says. “I appreciate the little things. If I’m ever sad, I give myself five minutes to complain, then I go do something fun.”

In her quest to experience as much as possible, Dao utilizes weekends and vacations to read and study.

And summers. From June to August, Dao will take part in Semester at Sea, a study-abroad program sponsored by the University of Virginia. She’ll board the MV Explorer, a 24-000-ton “floating university” in London, England and learn about comparative civilizations while traveling to Morocco, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Malta, France, Spain and Portugal before returning to London.

She credits her parents’ work ethic and sacrifice with inspiring her to dream big and make the most of experiences.

Dao appreciates that her parents, Kevin and Mai, toiled six days a week at their small business to support her and her siblings. “My parents worked so hard,” she says. “I recognize I have a great opportunity.”

The George Mitchell Scholar also is grateful that others have financially supported her academic efforts, including her scholarship’s namesake, former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell.

“He’s my role model,” Dao says of the Waterville, Maine native and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient. “He is the epitome of the American dream. His support and support of others like him, is why I am here. And I love this place (UMaine). I’m excited to be here.”

One of her goals as student body president is to bring to students’ attention the incredible and varied resources, organizations and opportunities that exist on campus.

And she looks forward in the near future to being able to give a financial boost to other aspiring students.

“I’ll be able to help someone else and help their dreams comes true,” she says. “That’s a big deal to me.”

U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, in a column published in the Seacoast Online newspaper, cited deepwater, offshore wind energy research and development being conducted at the University of Maine as among the noteworthy accomplishments of 2012 and priorities for 2013. She said federal funding to support offshore wind energy is a boost for the Maine economy.

The Bangor Daily News and the Portland Press Herald reported on the Jan. 24 decision by the Maine Public Utilities Commission to allow Norway’s Statoil North America company, with which the University of Maine’s Advanced Structures and Composites Center is collaborating with materials testing, to proceed with plans to build a $120 million deepwater wind turbine demonstration project in the Gulf of Maine.

Dana Morse, a Marine Extension associate with the University of Maine Darling Marine Center and Maine Sea Grant, was a guest Jan. 24 on the Maine Public Broadcasting Network program “Maine Calling,” discussing the future of the Maine seafood industry with Sam Grimley of the Gulf of Maine Research Institute’s Sustainable Seafood Program and Annie Tselikis, education coordinator with the Maine Lobstermen’s Association.

The Sun Journal carried a Bangor Daily News article about the recent downgrade of Maine’s credit rating, which included comments from Jim McConnon, University of Maine Cooperative Extension business and economics specialist and professor of economics.

Posted January 25, 2013

On January 13, 2013, UMaine IPhD student Ana Cecilia Mauricio was an invited participant on a National Geographic Society Live Chat to celebrate the Society’s 125th anniversary. The event featured seven explorers from seven continents; in addition to Mauricio, who connected from her field site in Peru, among the others were primatologist Jane Goodall and underwater explorer and discoverer of the Titanic Robert Ballard.

Mauricio came to UMaine in 2009 from Peru on a Fulbright fellowship to do an MS in Quaternary and Climate Studies with Dan Sandweiss (Professor of Anthropology and Climate Studies and Dean and Associate Provost for Graduate Studies). She defended her master's thesis in 2012 and received the master's last August. At the same time, Mauricio began an interdisciplinary PhD in Quarternary Archaeology. She is currently excavating the early mound site of Los Morteros on the Peruvian coast, initially supported by the National Science Foundation and the Climate Change Institute’s Churchill Exploration Fund. Recently, Mauricio was awarded a National Geographic Society Waitt Foundation grant and a Beca Andina (Andean Fellowship) from the French Institute for Andean Studies.

Presque Isle’s Channel 8 (WAGM) covered the culmination of the 4-H/Tractor Supply Company’s paper clover fundraising campaign to benefit the University of Maine Cooperative Extension 4-H youth-development program. Del’s Farm Store presented a group of 4-H members a check for $833 to support local 4-H programs and activities.

Jim McConnon, University of Maine Cooperative Extension business and economics specialist and professor of economics, provided perspective for a Bangor Daily News report on the recent downgrade of Maine’s credit rating by Fitch Ratings.

Paul Mayewski, director of the University of Maine Climate Change Institute, joined Maine Public Broadcasting Network “Maine Calling” host Keith Shortall for a Jan. 23, on-air discussion with Damariscotta writer Jason Anthony, author of Hoosh: Roast Penguin, Scurvy Day, and Other Stories of Antarctic Cuisine, and Jeff Inglis, managing editor of the Portland Phoenix and former editor of the Antarctic Sun science newspaper published at McMurdo Station, about living in Antarctica.

The University of Maine Intermedia MFA program has announced the presenters for its Spring 2013 Visiting Artist Series, Jan. 17–April 30 in Lord Hall. They include artist, writer and teacher Iain Kerr; artist Ilana Boltvinik; photographer and videographer Miranda Clark; interdisciplinary artists Hasan Elahi and Erin Manning; co-authors Patsy Baudoin, John Bell and Nick Montfort; and Cabinet Magazine editor-in-chief Sina Najafi. They will discuss their diverse research and art practices, which include food works, performance, social activism, computer coding, publishing and curation. Complete information, including times and dates of presentations, are listed on the UMaine Intermedia MFA Visiting Artist Series website. For additional information or to request disability accommodations, contact Bethany Engstrom at bethany.engstrom@maine.edu.

Janet Waldron, senior vice president for administration and finance at the University of Maine, was interviewed for a Bangor Daily News article about Gov. Paul LePage’s budget proposal for state support of the University of Maine System. The proposal would require a $1.2 million budget cut for UMaine, the flagship campus.

University of Maine Professor of Civil Engineering Per Garder was interviewed for a Maine Public Broadcasting Network report about his research showing that highway roundabouts are safer than traditional four-way intersections.

University of Maine Professor of Political Science Amy Fried was interviewed for a Channel 7 (WVII) report Jan. 22 about a new political poll in Maine that indicates Republican Gov. Paul LePage could win a three-way election challenge next year, but would not do as well in a two-way race.

Channel 5 (WABI) aired a report on the new winter exhibit by Minnesota artist Michael Crouser at the University of Maine Museum of Art in Bangor.

The Bangor Daily News has reported on the new advanced composting facility at the University of Maine, which is expected to convert as much as a ton per day of dining hall food scraps to soil enhancers for university gardens and farms.

A Portland Daily Sun article about the growth of Bangor Waterfront Concerts included a reference to a recent study by University of Maine Professor of Economics Todd Gabe, who found that the outdoor performances have generated more than $30 million in local spending, in addition to other economic benefits over the last three years.

For the second year in a row, UMaine’s women’s basketball Coach Richard Barron has issued a challenge to the Black Bear community. If the “Play4Kay” cancer benefit reaches its $10,000 goal, he’ll shave his head following the women’s basketball team’s annual Play4Kay game at 1 p.m., Saturday, Feb. 9 at the Harold Alfond Sports Arena. The team will play Albany. Last year, fans and the UMaine community did reach the goal and Barron went ahead with a public shaving.

All donations to the Play4Kay campaign will go to the Kay Yow Foundation to support breast cancer research. To donate, visit the Black Bears’ Play4Kay website.

Yow was a North Carolina State University women’s basketball head coach who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1987 and died in 2009. She created the fund to further cancer research and provide cancer patients access to experimental drugs and clinical trials, according to the Play4Kay website. The Kay Yow Cancer Fund has raised more than $8 million in support of women’s cancer research since its inception in 2007, according the organization.

Coach Barron knew Yow from his early coaching days at NC State and has been committed to the cause ever since. “I have been involved with the Kay Yow Fund and Coaches vs. Cancer for close to 20 years and I am very excited about having Maine participate in this cause,” Barron says in a news release.

The Portland Press Herald interviewed George Kinghorn, University of Maine Museum of Art director and curator, and Steven Evans, UMaine associate professor of English and coordinator of the university’s New Writing Series, for an article about Kinghorn’s friend Richard Blanco, the inaugural poet from Bethel, Maine.