Ashland News
by Susan Feeney-Hopkins
Portage Lake native and 1990 graduate of Ashland Community High School, Rebecca Condon McElrath, will be completing her studies at the University of Southern Maine in May summa cum laude with a degree in social work.
McElrath is the president of USM’s chapter of Phi Alpha, an honor society for social work majors. Her academic membership also includes Phi Chi, an honor society for psychology majors; Golden Key, an international interdisciplinary honor society; and Phi Kappa Phi, a national interdisciplinary honor society.
McElrath
In addition, McElrath has been involved in many volunteer activities such as working with adults and children living with cognitive and/or physical disabilities at a therapeutic horse riding center, has been a secretary, committee member and merit badge counselor for local Boy Scout Troop 349, and she spent a semester facilitating group sessions with incarcerated youth at Long Creek Youth Development Center, with her experience there being published in the academic journal “Group Work.”
She is currently interning at a free clinic as the only social worker on site to gain valuable experience while completing the required 480 hours of practicum hours for graduation, and is a service leader for AmeriCorp providing 300 hours of volunteer work recruiting students and faculty for travel to Belize to work in local orphanages and to provide outreach for a domestic violence shelter. She is planning a trip over the winter school break.
McElrath will continue her studies at USM to complete the masters of social work in the advanced standing program. Her desire is to obtain state credentials for individual and group counseling. She would like to “make a difference” in her community by “helping women feel empowered, specialize in intimate partner and family violence prevention and decreasing recidivism rates for offenders.”
McElrath was raised in Portage Lake and is the daughter of Brian and Bonnie (Batchelder) Condon, and the granddaughter of William “Bounce” and Glena (Clark) Condon of Portage Lake and Donald and Ramona (Rockwell) White of Smyrna Mills. She is a very busy married mother of one son.
The Portage Lake Centennial Committee has announced they will be selling the Centennial sweatshirts at reduced pricing! Adult size XXL are $18 each, adult small to X large are now $14 and all kids sizes X small through large are only $10! Sweatshirts can be purchased at the Town Office. For more information, call the Town Office at 435-4361.
Susan Feeney-Hopkins is the correspondent for Ashland, Portage Lake, Oxbow, Masardis, Garfield, Nashville Plantation and surrounding townships. She can be reached at 435-8232 or feenhop@aol.com.
