USM Spotlight

University of Southern Maine (USM) students, faculty, staff, and alumni are getting involved and giving back. From internships to research, community engagement to public service, and so much more, we are proud to share their stories.

A health care provider wearing a face mask, scrubs, and a rainbow watch band places a bandage on the injection site of a patient, who just received a vaccine and is wearing two, layered face masks.

March 2021

More than 250 nursing students from across the entire University of Maine system will enter clinics and hospitals this spring to participate in Maine’s COVID-19 vaccination deployment. 100 of these dedicated students are from the School of Nursing at USM — they’re ready and willing to help and grateful for the experiential opportunity.

A close up of a microphone on a swivel arm mount tinted USM blue with gold gradients in the top left and bottom right corners. In the background is a computer monitor that displays audio files in editing software in front of a window with closed blinds. The Hired Huskies graphic appears in the bottom right corner.

February 2021

Are you wondering what our Huskies do with their first-rate education? Available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, our Career Hub and WMPG teamed up to launch a new "Hired Huskies" podcast that will provide you with some answers! Through personal interviews, you'll get a taste of some remarkable careers of our alumni from all walks of life and professional industries. Learn tips and tricks for getting hired and launching your own successful career.

Colorful houses in Greenland's capital city of Nuuk overlook the ocean. Snow covered mountains crowd the horizon.

January 2021

We recently joined the Arctic Education Alliance to help build international education programs that support training in sustainable tourism, hospitality, and land and fisheries management in Greenland. Funded by a two-year, $1.8 million grant from the U.S. Department of State, the partnership will lead to collaborations — like student exchanges — between USM and the University of Greenland.

Ashanthi Maxworth, assistant professor of electrical engineering, giving a presentation about space environments for CubeSats.

November/December 2020

Thanks to a $2.8 million grant from NASA, we launched a series of workshops to engage Maine high school students in Cube Satellite development. "CubeSats" are miniature research satellites that have ushered in a new era of space research. Workshop speakers included an award-winning educator, engineers from NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a commercial CubeSat kit company, and USM faculty.

A badge that reads, 'Best Colleges U.S. News & World Report Social Mobility 2021' appears in the upper left corner of a photo of a graduate wearing a mortarboard decorated with small, fake roses and text that reads, 'Be the change; empower; respect; advocacy; empathy; USM BSW.' A tassel with blue, gold, and white strands hangs over one edge.

October 2020

The U.S. News & World Report college rankings for 2021 are here! Out of 4,000 colleges and universities in the country — 1,500 in the northeast — we ranked as a top university for social mobility in the northern U.S. The strength of our undergraduate engineering program also earned recognition.

Assistant professor Heather Shattuck-Heidorn wearing a brick-red cardigan sweater, a statement necklace, and teal circle earrings.

August/September 2020

COVID-19 is killing more men than women, and Heather Shattuck-Heidorn — assistant professor at USM and co-founder of the Harvard GenderSci Lab — wants to know why. That's the reason she helped develop the U.S. Gender/Sex COVID-19 Data Tracker, the most comprehensive collection of sex-aggregated statistics offering data and analysis on the pandemic.

An illustration of our husky mascot wearing a mask against a gold gradient on a grey background.

July 2020

This fall, classes at USM will be offered in a combination of online, blended, and face-to-face modalities. Our decisions and actions during this period of disruption will be grounded in ensuring the health of our students by working to prevent the spread of COVID-19, maintaining the quality of our learning experiences, practicing new norms of behavior, and continuing to live our values.

Julia Gustafson ’20 wearing a brick-red zip-up hoodie over dark grey overalls and a black stone on a gold chain.

June 2020

In addition to getting accepted into master's degree programs focused on landscape archeology at five prestigious universities in England and Ireland, Julia Gustafson ’20 is a Fulbright Alternate. She credits faculty and staff at USM for guiding her through the Fulbright application process, and her research experience, including two fellowships, for gaining the attention of the 2020 Fulbright jurors.

Dr. Asheesh Lanba and Berkeley Elias in our MIST Lab with their face shield prototypes displayed on a table that sits between them. Both men are wearing blue latex gloves and have face masks hanging around their necks.

May 2020

When Maine Medical Center asked USM to help alleviate critical shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE), Berkeley Elias, Daniel Madison St Peter, and assistant professor Asheesh Lanba immediately responded. Using 3-D printers in our Maker Innovation Studio, they created 28 face shield prototypes in less than 36 hours to send to healthcare professionals fighting COVID-19.

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