Meet Dr. Julie
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Dr. Julie DellaMattera (she/her) is an Associate Professor of Early Childhood Education in the College of Education and Human Development at UMaine, as well as a preceptor in the Honors College.
She earned her Doctorate (EdD) in Educational Leadership from UMaine with a focus on early education policy.
At UMaine, Dr. Julie's work in the Honors College connects her with first-year, first-semester students from majors all across campus. She can often be found hosting an interdisciplinary group of students in her cozy office plying them with chocolates and tea, chatting about what they really want to do with their lives. She's saved more than one disillusioned engineering student from the post "I don't want to be an engineer" epiphany. Dr. Julie pushes students to figure out who they are and how best they can make a difference in the world.
Dr. Julie is an Extrovert, with a capital 'E'. She is a bit of a sci-fi geek who can hold her own in a substantive conversation about the relative merits of Star Wars and Star Trek. She loves live music and can't get enough of traveling to interesting and fun places.
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Meet Piet
Piet Lammert (he/him) is a veteran high school counselor with just shy of 30 years experience in public education. He earned his BA in Psychology from the University of Maine (the fourth generation of five in his family to earn a degree at UMaine) and his MA in Counseling Psychology from Boston College.
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Piet’s long term plan was always to start a private college consulting business upon retiring from public education. That timeline was hastened by his diagnosis with Parkinson’s Disease in 2018. One of the many lessons of Parkinson's is "do it now."
He established DiriGo! College Consulting in 2021 and serves as its principal consultant.
Throughout his career, Piet has been dedicated to helping every student develop a personally meaningful postsecondary plan. There's a lot of people who have stake in what kids do after high school; staying focused on what the student wants and needs sometimes gets overwhelmed by these other interests. Piet keeps his eye on the prize: what is right for the student--period. Not who they think they should be but who they actually are.
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Piet is a human "collector and connector," finding joy in connecting people to experiences and other humans that help them reach their highest potential. It is of little surprise, then, that he loves the possibilities of the college search and thoroughly enjoys the process of matching a student to an institution. The right fit can be life-changing.
Piet is a card-carrying Introvert-Advanced Level and a musician (drummer--no the two aren't mutually exclusive...) who thinks and frames his worldview in song lyrics. He is an 80's music savant who regularly breaks out into song in response to a word or phrase that triggers a musical synapse. It is unwise to oppose him at Music Trivia Night.
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