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What is the Maine Regulatory Training and Ethics Center?

Community, training, and engagement in an expanding regulatory climate.

Maine Regulatory Training and Ethics Center (MeRTEC)
At MeRTEC, our primary focus is to:

build relationships with community partners
offer a professional training curriculum for compliance professionals, and
engage USM student interns with local businesses

An Expanded Regulatory Climate
The University of Southern Maine (USM) developed the Maine Regulatory Training and Ethics Center (MeRTEC) in direct response to concerns expressed by our community partners that the expanded regulatory climate in which they are operating, along with the risks associated with noncompliance, were impeding innovation and economic growth.

Education and Training
As part of Maine’s public university system, USM is uniquely qualified make a meaningful contribution to education and training.

The center provides technical assistance, training, internships, and a minor in regulatory compliance, and a certificate in regulatory ethics.

In collaboration with the University of Maine School of Law, and with support from UNUM, WEX, Inc. and the Portland Regional Chamber of Commerce, MeRTEC successfully launched its new Regulatory Compliance Certificate Program for non-lawyer compliance personnel in 2017.

MeRTEC Staff and Faculty

Ross Hickey
Ross Hickey is a nationally recognized expert in research compliance, and is the Assistant Provost for Research Integrity and Director of the Maine Regulatory Training and Ethics Center (MeRTEC) at USM.

Bruce Thompson
Bruce Thompson is a full-time faculty member in the Department of Psychology at the University of Southern Maine, and serves as Chair of the USM IRB. Dr. Thompson’s primary research and teaching focus is on early childhood social-cognitive development, particularly processes related to emergent metacognition and associated language abilities.

Carol Nemeroff
Dr. Carol Nemeroff is Professor and Chair of Social and Behavioral Sciences, and is a principal in the Maine Regulatory Training and Ethics Center. Her research focuses on magico-moral thinking in everyday life; cross-cultural approaches to ethical reasoning; and gender and culture. Her teaching focus is on clinical and ethical applications and underlying brain mechanisms of these topics.