Students have vested interest
in MMG’s business program
By Scott Mitchell Johnson
Staff Writer
PRESQUE ISLE — MMG Insurance has given back to the local community for years, and now the company is investing in local students.
Staff photo/Scott Mitchell Johnson
PRESQUE ISLE HIGH SCHOOL business students attended last Wednesday’s InVEST Insurance Education Day at MMG where they participated in workshops and presentations with company representatives. Attending the event were, from left, front row: Bridgette Carrier and Lora Ireland. Second row: Emma Kinney, Brandon Mancos, Carter LaPointe and Shea Brown. Third row: Clarissa Buck, Carly Bell and Danielle Allen. Fourth row: Chris Carroll, Jaylee Farley and Rachel Maxwell. Fifth row: Kayli Malenfant, Alana Luong, instructor Amy White and Elizabeth Butterfield. Back row: Logan Caron, Karen Jones, Blake Winslow and Aaron Kofstad. 
Last Wednesday was InVEST Insurance Education Day at MMG, and 20 members of Presque Isle High School participated in workshops and presentations with company representatives. About 40 students enrolled in either Introduction to Business, Personal Finance, or Entrepreneurship participated in the program, though not all visited MMG.
“InVEST is a national program that encourages insurance education among high school students,” said Andy Churchill, personal lines lead underwriter at MMG and one of the local event organizers. “It was established in 1970 by the Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of America to foster insurance education at the high school and college level for a couple of specific reasons — to plant the seeds for their career, for basic insurance knowledge for their benefit, and also to foster talent in the insurance industry.
“This is the first time MMG has been involved in the program. It was presented to our chartered property and casualty underwriter (CPCU) advisory group that we formed here, and executive management has given us ownership of this InVEST project in implementing it in local schools,” said Churchill.
PIHS was designated the “flagship school” and MMG officials have been working with instructors Amy White and Alan Curtis since January.
“We partnered with both of these instructors to imbed it in their classroom curriculum,” said Churchill. “The information is all free and is provided by the InVEST organization. It comes with a textbook, supplements, and Power Point presentations … all the materials you’d need in a classroom.
“They’ve been working from the textbook — some independently and some per classroom curriculum — and we’ve had an opportunity to get into the classroom with experts in certain areas to present to them,” he said. “This is the first time they’ve been onsite, observing our facility and culture, and they’re able to get a good grasp of what we do. Not only do we want to do a walk-through of a lot of our different departments and what functions they serve, but we want them to see the environment we work in and recognize the fact that we’ve got a premier business employer right here in Presque Isle.”
Among the activities last Wednesday included taking the students through “the life of a basic auto policy.”
“From the marketing component, how they would initiate an application at the agency level, all the way through where it would be uploaded to us, touched by our customer service department, underwritten by our underwriting department, and up through to the claims in a claims scenario,” said Churchill. “They’ll see the whole spectrum of what may happen if they obtain an auto policy and if they’re in an accident.”
Senior Clarissa Buck and junior Brandon Mancos were among those visiting MMG.
“In January we were given a workbook that we were supposed to go through, and I finished that in a month,” said Buck, “and since we were able to come here today, they were able to explain everything and through the Power Point we were able to actually see them demonstrate everything and it expanded what we knew about it. MMG representatives were able to break everything down for us into different parts and it made it much easier to understand.
“I’m going to the University of Maine at Orono next year for business, and as of right now I have no idea what I want to do,” she said. “Since MMG has come to our school and talked about insurance, it’s opened me up to different opportunities thinking that insurance might be something I want to go into now.”
Mancos said his perception of the insurance industry has changed through his involvement in the InVEST program.
“I had a narrow mindset that an insurance agent just sits at a desk talking to people and writes down numbers and that’s not what it’s like at all,” he said. “I’ve realized that you need to be able to communicate with people and understand how people react. It’s not just crunching numbers.
“I was thinking about going into physical therapy, but I’m taking a look at insurance. It’s definitely a second option,” said Mancos. “Originally I wasn’t really excited about sitting down in a little cubicle doing my own work, but that’s not how it would be. An underwriter, for example, works with everyone else in giving them numbers and information about their client. I like the communication part of it … you work with different people to find out one person’s premium. I like the teamwork part of it.”
Amy White, who teaches the Intro to Business and Entrepreneurship courses, said the program was a good way to help open her students’ eyes to what employment opportunities exist in the area.
“I think it’s important to give students access to one of the top employers in our community,” she said. “It’s a partnership between our school and MMG that gives them the ability to see what kinds of career paths they could pursue in Aroostook County. These are the top business students who are in this program today so it’s important for them to see what kind of opportunities Aroostook County — and especially Presque Isle — hold for them.”
Churchill said he hopes the students benefited from the program.
“Hopefully the students will take away from this program that the insurance industry is a broad one. They could benefit from this basic insurance knowledge not only by potentially being considered here as future employees at MMG, but they can really find employment in the insurance industry anywhere in the country,” he said. “We’re always expanding — we’re in five states right now — so it doesn’t necessarily mean that they would be bound to this facility. There’s a lot of opportunity in the insurance industry.
“This is our way of reaching out and basically having them interview us as a potential employer instead of us interviewing them,” said Churchill.
Organizers hope to expand the InVEST program to other school districts in the future.
“This is not only an opportunity for the students who are involved in this, but it’s an opportunity for us,” Churchill said. “We are looking at the future potentially with the intent of hiring up to 250 people in the next 10 years, and with that time frame, these kids are perfectly positioned to move into some slots here if they show an interest and capability.
“We want to showcase that it’s not only about selling insurance. We do have the accounting department, we have an IT department in house that builds our own software, the claims department is always growing, and our customer service department is expanding exponentially right now,” he said. “There are so many indirect avenues to support the insurance business.”
Buck and Mancos encourage other schools to get involved with the program.
“Insurance is something that everyone is going to need in their lives, so I feel like everyone should be opened up to it, especially if they’re taking business classes in their school,” said Buck.
