LEWISTON — College for ME-Androscoggin, which began in 2005 to help adults get a higher education, has moved from Westminster Street to 150 East Ave., a short distance from Lewiston High School and Lewiston Adult Education.

The new offices are in the lower level of the Champoux Insurance building next to the YWCA. The location has ample free parking and an elevator to the lower floor. There is no outside sign yet on East Avenue.

College for ME-Androscoggin started as part of the University of Southern Maine’s Lewiston-Auburn College. It is now an independent nonprofit.

“We’re in a new era with all of the colleges,” Executive Director Jan Phillips said Tuesday. “This way, we’re standing alone.”

The new location will be beneficial for many who use Lewiston Adult Education, Director Eva Giles said Tuesday. “It will allow easier access, increase visibility and offer greater opportunity to think about, and learn about, college and training.”

Even though College for ME has always been about promoting post-high school education, not being located at Lewiston-Auburn College “makes it a little clearer,” Giles said.

Phillips described College for ME-Androscoggin as a college navigator. The organization helps individuals get into programs and stay in them. Help includes counseling on the kind of careers that might be good fits, what kind of training and education is available, and scholarships and grants that could help pay for it.

College for ME also coordinates early college programs in six local high schools, a program started and run by Joan Macri, the former college aspiration director at Lewiston High School.

Early College helps high school students take college courses to gain the experience, credit and confidence to succeed in college. Since Macri started working with high schools, “we’ve seen the impact of that,” Phillips said. More students are taking college courses. Four high schools that have early college coaches — teachers who recruit students to take college courses — have seen the numbers go up by 60 percent.

But the biggest mission of College for ME-Androscoggin is helping adults.

“So many have some college but not yet a degree,” Phillips said. “That’s where the dream is the most powerful.”

Often a big moment in the lives of their children, such as taking a child to kindergarten or watching one graduate from high school, is when many adults come through the door saying, “It’s my turn,” Phillips said.

Since its inception, the goal of College for ME-Androscoggin was to double the number of Androscoggin County residents who have college degrees by 2015.

“I know we’re not there,” Phillips said. But the percentage of adults with degrees in the country has risen from 24 percent in 2000 to 29 percent today, Phillips said.

Initially, the bump was from people getting associate degrees at the community college. In the past couple of years, more are getting bachelor’s and master’s degrees, she said.

The original goal was an ambitious one, she said. “We still hold it. We’re gaining some ground. But you need aspiration goals bigger than your reach. We ask that of students all the time. Our goal is bigger than our reach.”

As a nonprofit, College for ME-Androscoggin is financed by fundraisers and grants.

‘Resiliency Week’ giving credit to college-bound adults

LEWISTON — Thirty years after getting his associate degree while working full time in law enforcement, Jon Tibbetts earned his bachelor’s degree in criminal justice last month at Kaplan University. He’s chief of police in Oxford and is going for his master’s.

At age 19, Cynthia Lizotte of Lewiston was a high school dropout, the mother of two and having a hard time finding a good job. She got her General Education Development certificate, enrolled in college and earned her associate degree. Then she got her bachelor’s degree at Kaplan University. Today she works as an eligibility specialist at the Department of Health and Human Services.

Like many who overcame obstacles, Tibbetts and Lizotte are resilient, Jan Phillips, executive director of College for ME-Androscoggin, said.

From now through Friday, Resiliency Week is being observed in area schools, businesses and organizations.

A community-wide summit last year looked at new ways of assessing future adult college students. Rather than looking at risk factors, “start with how they have dealt with adversity in life, what resources they draw on,” Phillips said. “Often we find people have been very able to overcome amazing odds against them through being resilient. That’s a paradigm shift, a good one.”

Traditionally, the first time a counselor met with a potential adult college student, “we used to say, ‘Did you ever do college before?’ Or, ‘Gee, you went to an unaccredited school; we’ll have to put you in a remedial class.’”

The new way is to include asking them about how they handled a challenge. When asking people about that, all of a sudden they are empowered, Phillips said. “It really gives them the ability to think, ‘I can do this.’”