HOULTON — Michael E. Sonntag was the featured speaker at the Oct. 21 meeting of the Houlton Rotary Club. Sonntag spoke about the upcoming referendum questions on the November ballot.
Referendum elections are held to provide Maine’s citizens an opportunity to vote on bond issues, people’s vetoes, direct initiatives of legislation or other questions proposed by the Legislature and Constitutional Amendments.
Contributed photo/Michael Clark
ROTARY GUEST — The Houlton Rotary Club welcomed Michael E. Sonntag, middle, of the University of Maine at Presque Isle. With Sonntag are Rotary president Lori Weston and Rotarian Fred Grant.
Referendum elections are an important part of the heritage of public participation in Maine, he said.
Sonntag grew up in a small farming and ranching community on the Gulf Coast Plains of Texas, west of Houston. He was a first-generation college student and received his degree in psychology from Baylor University in 1989.
He met his wife, Jennifer, while attending Baylor, and after they were married they moved to Fayetteville, Ark. where he attended graduate school. At the University of Arkansas, he obtained an masters in clinical psychology and a Ph.D. in experimental psychology in 1997.
He currently serves as provost/vice president for academic affairs at the University of Maine at Presque Isle. He also had the pleasure to serve as president of the South Carolina Psychological Association from 2005-2006. His research has examined young children’s understanding of life and death concepts, the cognitive underpinnings of metaphor and irony comprehension in young children, the development of paranormal beliefs, terror management theory, and the scholarship of assessment and teaching.
His wife is a certified public accountant and is currently chief financial officer of Maine Potato Growers (MPG) in Presque Isle. They have two children, a son, Greyson, and a daughter, Sarah.
