Mayo Bulloch

President

Mayo Metcalf Bulloch retired from Case Western Reserve University after a 33-year career where she oversaw various programs including academic support, disability services, teaching assistant training, student community service, and student orientation and parent programs.   She and her husband Steve bought land in Searsport in 2004 and moved to Maine permanently in 2016. 

She has served on the Carver Memorial Library Board, Friends of Sears Island Advisory Board, Searsport Historic Preservation Committee, and Waldo County Literacy Volunteers Advisory Board.  She has co-taught in two Senior College courses and enjoyed many more.  Her main interests are literature, film, and travel.

Martha Laitin

Vice President

Martha Laitin,  born and raised in Belfast, earned an MEd in Guidance from Elmira College in New York. She taught Head Start in Belfast and was a Guidance Counselor in the Belfast school district. Martha also has been an Admissions Counselor and Acting Director of Admissions at Unity College.  Following a year as chairperson of the Board of Directors of the rural community health center in Brooks she became the patient educator and first on-site administrator of the facility which included a family practice medical office, a dental office and an ambulance service.  Since 1989 she continues to serve as a Senior Specialist in her real estate career as a broker serving the Belfast area. 

Martha has been an active member of the Belfast Garden Club, Maine Realtors Association, and serves on the board of the Deborah Lincoln House, a home for elderly ladies in Belfast.  Martha has been a student and an instructor at Belfast Senior College and currently serves as Chairperson of Special Events Committee and Vice President of the Board of Trustees.

 Sam Causon

Treasurer

Samantha (Sam) Causon worked as a management accountant for various manufacturing companies before emigrating from the UK with her husband in 2004. While living in NC she volunteered at county animal shelters and gained a certificate in botanical art and illustration from UNC botanical gardens. In 2019 she relocated to Belfast with her husband and their pets and now enjoys spending time working on her home and garden, painting and drawing in her attic studio, reading or listening audio books. 

Sam started taking zoom classes with Senior College during the pandemic as a way of meeting people and this led to making real life friends and to her joining the Board of Trustees in 2022 where she served as Secretary until being elected Treasurer in September 2023.

Van Bankston

The Rev. Van A. Bankston was born and grew up in Greenwood, in the Mississippi Delta.  Van was ordained in the Episcopal church in 2012.  He recently retired from serving in the Diocese of Bethlehem, PA.  

Prior to ordination he worked as an artist, following a design career in NYC for many years. 

Van now calls Belfast ME home, where lives with his husband and cat.   

Doug Chamberlin 

Douglas Chamberlin is a technical generalist and technology advocate. He has volunteered for a variety of non-profits in Belfast. His principal interest is in seeing technology used appropriately.

He has over 40 years experience writing and supporting software and providing technical support services to a variety of businesses and schools. He was Director of Computing at Phillips Academy in Andover and has worked for Franklin Pierce University, MIT, Harvard, and Boston University.

Karen Gleeson has been a member of Belfast Senior College since a few years after moving to Northport in 2007.  She has been an active student in many classes, has taught some, and served on the Special Events Committee (and chaired it for a few years) then moved to the Curriculum Committee, which she has chaired for almost two years.

She is an avid amateur historian and “just mostly I like to read a lot” and looks forward to many more years of helping Belfast Senior College grow. 

Ron Jarvella

Ron Jarvella had a career as a history and psychology teacher at an inner-city school in Bridgeport, Ct.  After 30 years of teaching, he and his wife retired and moved to Maine where he operated a used and out of print book store for 25 years. 

Ron served on the boards of the Camden Conference, Mid Coast Forum and Bay Chamber Concerts and is a past president of the Belfast Arts Council. He also served on the MBNA education grants committee for over 8 years. He was a charter member of Belfast Senior College and taught many classes over the past 20 years.  He loves reading and sailing. 

Trudy Miller

With a BS in Mathematics and an MS in Computer Science, Trudy Miller spent most of her career working on the development of software for devices which form the infrastructure of the internet. During an occasional work hiatus, she completed a two year pre-professional course in Interior Design. 

Shortly after retiring in 2006 Trudy and her husband, Bob Fargey, started spending part of the year in Maine. By 2016 they had built a house in Northport and were living here full time.  Locally Trudy formed and led an activist group (Indivisible Waldo, later Engage Waldo) and did political organizing for Democratic causes and candidates through several election cycles. In 2019 Trudy and Bob purchased a small office building in Belfast to create the community space known as Social Capital. 

Trudy joined the board of Belfast Senior College in 2023. When not working with them or managing the business of Social Capital, Trudy indulges her passion for Mah Jongg and an avocation for interior design and architecture.

Monica Morris

Monica Morris worked as a chemical engineer at Exxon’s refinery in Linden, N.J, a consultant for Coopers and Lybrand in New York City, and a business analyst for Gillette in Boston.  She then shifted her career into education and was a Montessori elementary and middle school teacher for over 20 years.  She also taught Montessori teachers-in-training in the US and Europe.  She has a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering and a masters degree in business administration.  Monica was raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina and lived in New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts before coming to Belfast 3 years ago.   

Denise Pendelton

Denise Pendleton holds an MFA in Writing and a MA in Literacy Education and is a published poet. She has devoted most of her career to promoting reading, writing and the arts in the nonprofit organizations including  Maine Arts and the Portland Public Library. As program officer at the Maine Humanities Council, she developed the statewide Born to Read program.

She presently serves as coordinator of Literacy Volunteers of Waldo County and is on the Searsmont Town Library board.  Denise is a Belfast native, returning with her husband after a thirty-year hiatus to raise her two children here.  Her passions include being with family as well as reading, writing, and getting into the great outdoors.

Nancy Perkins

Following a 25 year career in fundraising and nonprofit management Nancy LaValle Perkins and husband, Stephen Underwood, relocated to Belfast from Alexandria, Virginia in 2015 to be close to grown children. That fall she enrolled in courses at Belfast Senior College and has been an active member ever since. A lifelong lover of mysteries Nancy taught her first course on the British mystery in 2016 and has repeated it several times. She has also taught courses on American and Scandinavian mysteries, Greek Mythology, The Origin of Fairy Tales, and The History of Tea. A graduate of the University of Richmond she received a BA in History and English Literature.

She has served as Chair of the Publicity Committee, the Curriculum Committee, as well as three terms as President of Senior College. She is a member of the Belfast Garden Club and a Board Member of Waterfall Arts.

Mike Ray

Mike is 67, having moved to Midcoast Maine from Ohio in 1989. For the last 22 years he's lived in Lincolnville, working a variety of jobs in the area: rigging work at a boatyard, counseling developmentally disabled adults, guiding kayak camping trips, restaurant work, public transportation, and building the house his wife Barbara and he live in. Right now he's pretty much retired – which means he seems to get paid less for working more hours. 

He's served on some Lincolnville Town boards and committees: formerly the Planning Board, Land Use Committee, and  Broadband Committee; currently the Select Board, the Conservation Commission, and the newly-formed Heart and Soul initiative. He's also on the Legislative Policy Committee of the Maine Municipal Association, and for the last few years has been splitting and schlepping firewood for the Waldo County Woodshed.