Feature

Daryl Geer bought a ticket to her first USM show in 1976 and has been coming back ever since. Keep reading to find out what five decades in the audience have taught her about the students on stage.

Luc Harrison and Allison Fogg didn’t set out to work together — one a USM graduate student, the other a USM alumna, each chasing a different question about the health of Casco Bay. Keep reading to find out how their two research projects, and a shared USM connection, brought them into the same water this summer.

On a match night, you can hear the drums and cheers of Fitzpatrick Stadium from USM’s Portland campus, just a short walk from the club. Keep reading to meet the handful of Huskies whose connection to Hearts of Pine started well before the partnership made it official.

Orientation at the University of Southern Maine unfolds over several weeks, beginning when you submit your deposit and continuing through your first semester. Keep reading for what to expect at every step, from your advising appointment through Move-In and Orientation Weekend.

This summer, Camdyn Johnson spent her days in the halls of a museum under renovation, measuring 500-year-old fishing tools and combing through soil samples for clues about what people in Maine ate 12,000 years ago. Keep reading to see how this USM softball player and rising senior is helping rebuild a major exhibit at the Maine State Museum.

Three-year-old Claire has always had a hard time keeping up with her big sister’s bike from the seat of her wheelchair. So two USM programs went to work. Engineering students handled the build. Occupational therapy students made sure it fit her life. Keep reading for how one custom car came together, and what it means for one Maine family.

She came to USM to become a music teacher, but found her real calling somewhere else entirely. Keep reading to find out how a trumpet, a conference in Hartford, and two years at USM led Hannah Paterson to the Marine Corps Band.

Samuel Genovese first walked into a Model UN conference as a nervous high school freshman. Eight years later, he stood at a podium inside USM’s Costello Field House and opened one as secretary-general, the student in charge of the entire event. Behind that full-circle moment is a story most of the 450 high schoolers in the room never saw: months of planning, a student-led leadership team, and everything it takes to pull off the Maine Model United Nations Conference. Keep reading to go behind the scenes with the USM student who ran the show.

When Olivia O’Donnell walked across the stage at commencement this spring, she left with more than she expected: a degree, a group of lifelong friends, and a full-time job she’d start the following week. Find out how a USM Career Hub internship made it happen before she even crossed the stage.

Makenzie Renner ’26 and Caleb Randall ’23 ’26G were among the more than 1,000 University of Southern Maine students who crossed the stage at commencement in May — but unlike most of their peers, the pair had just returned from Austria, where they were invited to present on the history and culture of American music at one of Europe’s leading conservatories. Keep reading to find out how two students from USM’s Osher School of Music took American Art Song to European stages, what it took to get there, and how the experience is now shaping their next steps.