Tricia Lizotte of Lisbon and Christine Bosse of Lewiston are among 20 students and faculty from Saint Joseph’s College of Maine who will volunteer in Guatemala, the second-poorest nation in North America, from Jan. 2-9. Lizotte is a sophomore nursing major at Saint Joseph’s and Bosse is a senior nursing major.

According to theology professor and trip coordinator Dr. Steven Bridge, the team will assist Partners in Development, a nonprofit organization based in Ipswich, Mass.

The volunteers will conduct basic community health and dental assessments, along with helping to construct a new home for a family of nine. (The family is currently living in a one-room wooden shack with a dirt floor.)

The group will be based in a small Mayan village near the city of San Antonio, but plans to make a few cultural/recreational side trips, including visits to the world-famous Lake Atitlan and the Mayan ruins in Tecpan.

Megan Wood, daughter of Dr. Glenn and Kate Wood of Otisfield, a 1997 graduate of Oxford Hills High School, and a 2001 summa cum laude graduate of Susquehanna University, Selinsgrove, Penn., graduated on Aug. 28 for the Ohio State Univesity in Columbus, Ohio with a Master’s of Science degree.

Wood earned her M.S. in nursing with a focus in nurse-midwifery and women’s health. During the spring and summer of 2005, Lori Bellwood, CNM at Central Maine Obstetrics and Gynecology in Lewiston, was a preceptor for Megan.

In October 2005, Wood passed her national certification examination in midwifery and is now a licensed certified nurse midwife in Ohio.

Currently, she is pursuing a Ph.D. in nursing at the Ohio State University College of Nursing and works part-time as a maternity nurse in Circleville, Ohio.

She is also a graduate research associate for the Ohio State University hospital system. Wood is a member of the Phi Kappa Phi graduate honor society and Sigma Theta Tau nursing honor society.