Student Spotlight
Kaylei Coombs, doing it her way
Lots of students earn their associate degrees at SMCC and go on to earn bachelor’s degrees. Kaylei Coombs is doing it the other way around ― she already has a bachelor’s and is now completing her associate degree at SMCC.
Kaylei enrolled at the University of Southern Maine after high school in 2014 and earned an environmental science degree last spring. While at USM, she decided to also enroll in SMCC’s Architectural & Engineering Design (AED) program to learn design skills. She’ll earn her degree this fall.
Kaylei has applied the skills she’s learned in her AED classes to both school and work. For a class project at USM, she used her design skills to develop a device that measures beer clarity. She also uses her computer-assisted design skills in her job as coordinator for the Maine Clean Communities program.
Someday, she’d like to start her own business designing green buildings, ones that are energy self-sufficient. That way, she would combine her learning in design from SMCC with her learning in environmental science from USM.
“I’ve learned that the skills I’ve acquired in the Architectural & Engineering Design program can be used in a number of fields. It’s so applicable to so many things.”
Alumni Spotlight
Mack Stinson, HVAC business owner
Mack Stinson decided to give SMCC’s HVAC program a shot almost by accident. Not only did he like it, he has taken the skills he learned at SMCC and parlayed them into a growing HVAC business of his own.
When Mack came to SMCC in 2010, two years out of high school, he didn’t know what he wanted to study. But while figuring out which direction to take, he decided to enroll in the HVAC program, almost on a whim.
It was the right fit, and after graduating with honors in 2013 he worked for commercial HVAC companies for five years. But when he wasn’t working his day job, he installed heating and cooling systems in people’s homes on the side.
He built a client base until, in August 2018, he and his wife decided to launch Mack Air Pro, servicing and installing HVAC systems for residential and commercial customers. A year later, his Scarborough-based company now has five employees and business continues to grow.
SMCC, he says, served as a springboard to owning his own successful business. When he came to SMCC, he knew nothing about the HVAC field.
“Everything started clicking when I enrolled in the HVAC program. Being able to build stuff, work on stuff and fix stuff, that was pretty cool. Everything really stuck.”