ORONO, Maine — It's a new vision for the University of Maine System to help meet a growing demand statewide for more engineers and other highly skilled workers.
The hope is more collaboration, resources, and capacity to increase enrollment will lead to a boost in future innovators.
Zoe Vittum is a senior biomedical engineering student at the University of Maine, and she wants to change the world with innovation to help patients. She designed a retrofitted rescue sled to safely transport patients following ski mobile accidents.
"This will absorb forces as they are going down the trail," Vittum said.
On most days. the Brewer native works in the Student Project Design Suite of the new Ferland Engineering Education and Design Center.
The $78 million 3-story, 115-thousand-square gleaming center opened last August and is the cornerstone of the Maine College of Engineering and Computing.
The suite has more than two dozen workbenches and specialized shops where students can use 3D printing, metals, wood, and other technologies to create projects and prototypes. The facility houses UMaine's mechanical engineering and biomedical engineering programs, giving students opportunities to collaborate and problem-solve for the first time.
"Just in the room, we are sitting in there, is biological engineering, there are mechanical engineering, and electrical engineering projects, prior to this we were in our own separate buildings, we didn't even see each other," Vittum explained.
There is also a biomedical lab space, the first of its kind in northern New England, where students can learn cell culture techniques. Karissa Tilbury is a biomedical engineering assistant professor.
"They come out the other end being able to present and talk about their work that employers really want," Tilbury said.
MCEC is designed to provide students across the system with more access to programs, resources, and collaboration. It also houses engineering programs for both the University of Southern Maine and UMaine's computer science programs.
It's part of a $240 million signature investment from the Harold Alfond Foundation to help meet the demand for engineers and computer scientists.
"As new industries come to Maine, we want to make sure we have a workforce ready for them, we also think regionally and internationally and our grads have opportunities in all of those kinds of settings," Joan Ferrini-Mundy, the president of the University of Maine, said.
"I think we are more powerful when we work together, so collaboration across universities is really critical to the future of engineering in the state of Maine," Jacqueline Edmondson, the president of the University of Southern Maine, explained.
Sarah Glatter, a graduate student in computer engineering, said collaboration is where science is headed and has inspired her to become a trailblazer—a professor in computer engineering.
"I saw that there was a lack of females, I had no female teachers, I had one electrical engineer that was, the rest of the staff were male," Glatter said.
There are future plans to build a green engineering and manufacturing lab on the Orono campus. The expansion would provide unique opportunities to work in emerging industries including aquaculture and renewable energy.
The Ferland Center, meanwhile, will give the university the capacity to increase engineering and computer science enrollment by as much as 600 students a year.