The IEI visited the Advanced Structures & Composite Center (ASCC), where they got to see some of the facility’s current ongoing research projects. Joseph, a Ph.D. student in the mechanical engineering program, was an excellent tour guide. 

We ended our tour at the fully furnished 3D BioHome on site. This modern-style dwelling was printed using a gigantic 3D printer. A relative of one the ASCC employees provided the furnishing, showcasing the house’s live-in potential. Doesn’t this living room look cozy?

More information about their ongoing projects can be found on the ASCC’s website: .

Once again students from the Intensive English Institute were able to participate in the Earn-a-Bike program generously sponsored by the Bicycle Coalition of Maine. Erik DaSilva hosted the event for us on campus and students learned how to ride safely and maintain their bikes.

IEI and BCM hope to host another event on campus this summer.

Thank you, Erik! We will be getting around more quickly and easily now.

Students from the Intensive English Institute participated in a 91±¬ÁÏ tradition by taking part in the Maine Day of Service on Wednesday, April 30th.

First, we joined the Honors College for the Maine Day Meal Packout. More than 53,000 meals were packed and are being distributed to food banks and shelters across the state.

Next, we helped the Fogler Library’s staff tidy up the gardens around the library. We wrapped up joining students and staff for the campus BBQ on the mall. Our newest staff member joined the team and it was his first time as well. Go Blue!

Rehearsals for the 2025 International Dance Festival are underway!  The performers are excited to showcase their cultural traditions on stage at the Collins Center for the Arts on February 22 with the usual matinee and evening performances.  This year we  have 14 groups performing, representing 12 countries.   It is amazing to see the progress each group has made in just a few short weeks and to observe the lasting friendships that are forming.  Dedication and collaboration are the hallmarks of this event and the key to its 21 years of success.  If you would like to support this year’s event please visit the .

In June, the students from the 91±¬ÁÏ Intensive English Institute (IEI) visited Rogers Farm, one of several 91±¬ÁÏ agricultural research stations. It was a day of experiential learning. 

, 91±¬ÁÏ Horticultural Professional, and Christina Lannan, Rogers Farm Enrichment Coordinator, showed IEI students pigments and watercolors made with the garden elements. Students looked at treasure boxes of beans and corn kernels in a remarkable variety of colors and patterns, wandered around the flower beds, felt the furry leaves of Lamb’s Ears, inhaled the heady scent of pink peonies, and admired fat clumps of blueberries. IEI students picked small bits and pieces from the garden to match a vast array of paint samples Kate laid out in planting trays. Then they got our hands dirty! Christina gave everyone a few beans to plant in neat rows. She and Kate encouraged IEI students and staff to return next month to see the beans’ progress.

Before departing, students played a game of Duck, Duck, Goose, a first for many of the students and a very enjoyable (and silly) conclusion to the trip. At least some of us will definitely be back to Rogers Farm to see what’s growing. Many thanks to Kate and Christina for hosting and teaching us about this lovely, productive, garden.

Hey all,

I’m happy to report that the new Activities webpage is live! I have a few more days to get things ironed out before the start of the next session, but I think it looks pretty good so far!

I’ve definitely got to figure out video on our theme. Videos can’t go full width so I’ve settled on using gifs, which look super cool, but I’m having trouble figuring out how to make high quality ones. I don’t have photoshop on this computer unfortunately, so I’m trying to use GIMP and the GIMP Animation Package, but man am I having trouble understanding what to do to make it work! Should have taken CS50 during undergrad.

The philosophy of the webpage is to document activities and make it accessible. One idea for doing this is making a Google Map of all the places we’ve been. Maybe I could link our Facebook albums to it as well! If I continued doing it, it would look so cool – all the little red pins scattered all across Maine! That sense of adventure and accomplishment is one thing seasoned students always tell me; they feel proud when they look back and see all the places they’ve gone to in Maine through IEI Activities!

Interactivity is something that’s missing…I want students to have input on the webpage and somehow contribute to it. Photos are a logical place for them to do this, but I need to explore how to do this. I can embed stuff through the Rich Text Editor so maybe that’s the way to go. Right now, it just feels like me doing stuff and them receiving, which is not the final goal. Can people even comment on these posts? Maybe I shouldn’t be doing this on WordPress.

Tomorrow

Hi everyone! I’m Zhen and I’m the Activities Coordinator at the Intensive English Institute (IEI) at the 91±¬ÁÏ! Now that 91±¬ÁÏ has upgraded its website to WordPress, I want to make this the digital home of IEI’s activities! After moving from a plain email list to Google Groups to Facebook and Instagram to MailChimp, Mailerlite, and Google Forms, it’ll be nice to have a more permanent and accessible place to continue to immerse ourselves in Maine and American culture!

I’m going to use Posts to document what I’m working on and thinking about in relation to my job. I am of Chinese decent and grew up in a mandarin-speaking, Chinese household – celebrating Chinese holidays, eating Chinese food, and being instilled with Chinese morals in an American-context. For me, it was a long journey coming to terms with and understanding who I was and with whom I identified. As such, I empathize greatly with the international students in the IEI, 91±¬ÁÏ, and all around the world. Though what I do here is relatively simple, I strive to make an oversized impact on the experience of our students!

It is currently three days into our two week Spring Break! Today has been an exploratory day focused on understanding how WordPress works and revising the plan for Spring B Activities. I’m trying to integrate WordPress into my workflow as much as possible and try to make everything I do more available. In terms of Activity Sign-Ups, it doesn’t really make any part of my life easier. Google Forms is pretty much better than WordPress Forms in every way except that anyone can access a webpage easily and it is isn’t “umaine.edu”. I don’t know.

I also have been working on revamping the Activities Webpage. I want to make it more dynamic and modern – more alive. Mainly, this will be for potential students and agents, but I also think I can make this more useful for current students with links to resources. For international students, language is of course a big barrier, but the way we as Americans handle information is different than most places in the world. I really, deeply trust things that are online. For example, the US Visa applications are now readily available online, but middle men who help people fill out those applications are still getting lots of business. The visa app is a classical, slow US bureaucratic process that is super unnerving for say Chinese people that never wait have to wait more than 10 minutes for food at most restaurants.

I was looking for webpages for inspiration (USM, BMW, the Verge), but I think I’m just going to base it off of the basic 91±¬ÁÏ page since that’s what the theme was built for. It does support gifs so I want to cut up some of our videos maybe like the USM website.

This was kind of awkward to write – maybe it was just because we are on break right now. As we start the session up and I deal with student issues, this will be more useful.

Publishing before I think too much about it.