■More than 180 people joined together at the Northampton Lodge of Elks on Saturday, to honor Robert Cloutier as Northampton’s Elk of the Year. William Scott, one co-chairman of the event, said, “the Elk of the Year Award program is designed to pay just honor to a member of the Lodge who has exhibited a willingness and desire to promote the many phases of Elkdom that are so important to a strong lodge.”
■Bjorn Wiberg, assistant executive director of the Hampshire Regional YMCA, has announced that the YMCA is finalizing plans for a new program — Indoor Archery. “This is a sport which is increasingly growing in popularity with people of all ages and throughout the world, as is evidenced by the fact that archery will be included for the first time in the Olympic Games in 1972,” Wiberg said.
■It took 18 months, 80 candidates and untangling a roll of bureaucratic red tape, but Northampton has at last hired a person to fill a financial administrative post created in 1994. Ann Marie Schauer of Granby will begin the job of financial administrator for the Department of Public Works on Monday, after being selected this week from a final list of five candidates.
■Three Russian physicians visited The Cooley Dickinson Hospital yesterday, adding a close-up look at that element of medical care to the understanding they’re gathering about life in the United States. The visitors touring the hospital seemed impressed with what they saw.
■Hadley Virtual Academy will open next September, with middle and high school students from all over Massachusetts taking classes online, following the School Committee’s affirmative vote Monday. The academy will be free to Hadley students, and some parents have already expressed interest in enrolling there instead of Hopkins Academy, the town’s bricks-and-mortar school.
■The search committee charged with finding a new head of school for the Pioneer Valley Performing Arts High School has named three finalists for the job. The three are: Scott Goldman, principal at Smith Academy in Hatfield; Laura Davis, director of teaching and learning at PVPA; and Karen Adamson, principal at Bolton High School in Bolton.