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Growing up in Parkman, Ruth Griffith’s neighbors lived half a mile down the road. The Piscataquis County town is home to fewer than 900 people, and the highest level of education is typically a high school diploma. Griffith described the community as isolated, rural and tightknit.
“When I was in high school, I worked at a small vegetable farm, and I really liked that work — being out in the field,” Griffith said. “I did, for a long time, think that I would be a farmer.”
Instead, Griffith pursued a college degree, attending the University of Maine in Orono. There, she discovered a love of working with data and studying finance, and decided to major in economics with minors in math and international affairs.
This month, she is graduating from the honors college within the state’s flagship university as valedictorian. It’s the highest honor awarded to a student who earned at least a 3.8 grade point average and made significant contributions to the university or wider community.
It’s not her first time earning the distinction. At Piscataquis Community Secondary School in Guilford, Griffith was the 2022 valedictorian, ending a high school career filled with extracurriculars such as debate team, band, varsity tennis and early college courses at UMaine.
Her time at UMaine was equally busy. She spent time in the Women in Economics Club, studied abroad in Ireland through the George J. Mitchell Peace Scholarship, participated in an investment club, and organized the Maine Day Meal Packout, an initiative that puts together thousands of meals for food pantries across the state. She was also named an outstanding graduating student at the honors college for 2026.
Griffith described herself as a hard worker and as someone with a strong support system, such as mentors at school. But she also credited her success to her values: community, action and mindfulness.
“I reflect on them quite a bit, and I think that they guide what I choose to do,” she said.
Andrew Crawley, an economics professor at UMaine and Griffith’s primary thesis supervisor, described her as an “awesome student.”
“She’s curious about what she does,” Crawley said. “I’ve known her for a long time now, and none of that has kind of faded in any shape or form. She’s still as curious as when I first met her. And, as a good researcher, that’s what you want.”
Griffith pursued a research project for her thesis, developing a method to analyze local economies. Her work took a business cycle sorting algorithm that Crawley researched at the macro level — essentially, using market data such as stocks to gauge how economies are performing — and applied the methodology to monthly sales tax data from 43 different economic regions in Maine to measure their economic stability.
“That really hadn’t been done before,” Crawley said. “Ruth was really able to extrapolate out really interesting patterns that [were] emerging after the pandemic. And I think that, overall, it provided a unique, different way of understanding changes in Maine’s very rural, local economies.”
She found that areas such as Freeport with a high retail tax base were more unstable economically after the COVID-19 pandemic. Rural areas, such as her hometown, were also less stable than some more urban regions.
Measuring economies at this level, Griffith said, challenges rhetoric about the “two Maines” — the Portland area and the rest of more rural Maine. Looking at things at a more granular level, she said, better reflects each region’s needs and characteristics.
“I definitely care a lot about thinking about things on the community level,” Griffith said. “I think a lot of nuance is lost when we make these decisions based on an aggregate. And especially from a policy perspective, we have representation on a regional basis.”
After school, Griffith plans to move to New York City to work at TD Bank as part of a risk management team. Eventually, she said she’d like to earn a master’s degree in business administration. She also wants to run a half marathon, though she is not a runner. (“But we’re doing it anyways,” she said.)
As she plans for a future in New York, Griffith said she wants other students from small, rural areas such as Parkman to know they can pursue a wide array of opportunities, just as she has.
“I think coming from a very small place, you’re not aware of all the opportunities available to you, and studying something really niche or that you don’t see in the workforce around where you live feels like it’s not an option,” Griffith said. “But I would love for those students to know that it is.”