New Media students help community as they learn

The University of Maine’s commitment to community engagement inspired the Stillwater Lab, a program created for new media students to promote local culture and community engagement. 

The lab was founded two decades ago and is co-directed by Joline Blais and Jon Ippolito, both professors in UMaine’s new media program. As part of its mission, the Stillwater Lab promotes community service and experiential learning through projects such as the Ripple Initiative. 

“The idea is to create courses that are launchpads for creativity, for contribution and for community engagement,” said Blais. Several of her classes participate in the Ripple Initiative’s model of service learning, wherein the class curriculum centers around providing a community service. In the case of Blais’ New Media Design classes, this takes the form of working with local organizations to create digital stories, like the wild blueberry farmer videos on the Wild Blueberry Heritage Center website, or professional websites for Maine-based organizations. Blais hopes that the Ripple Initiative inspires more collaboration and partnerships between the university and the local community.  

Blais traces her call to service learning to when Dell and Marie Emerson of the Wild Blueberry Land reached out to Blais to request help telling the story of Maine’s wild blueberry farmers.  Marie Emerson, who is also a wild blueberry grower at Wescogus Wild Blueberry, described Blais’ past students as “dedicated” and “working from the heart.” In the spring 2025 semester, Blais’ class is returning to the Heritage Center’s website to provide a full redesign of the website.

The Ripple Initiative’s service-learning model also helps the participating students learn new skills in a professional environment. “This is the first time I’m designing a site that is actually going to be used by people. There’s a lot of functionality stuff I’ve been learning,” said Tyler Edwards, an undergraduate new media student in Blais’ web design class. 

The opportunity to work with real clients has motivated students to apply their learning outside the boundaries of just digital storytelling and web design. One participant of the Ripple Initiative is the Kindness Corner, an independent educational show produced by Lynette Olsen, a schoolteacher in Appleton, Maine. Olsen received help from Jonathan Williams and Josiah Webber, who volunteered their video and technology expertise to help Olsen set up her studio.

“We’re giving her advice on how to bring it to life. She knows what she wants and how to get there, but she doesn’t know the technical side of it,” said Williams. The Kindness Corner show is still in production. Other organizations that worked with new media students through the Ripple Initiative include the Maine Office of Tourism, the Chemo Pond Lake Association, the Maine Wild Blueberry Museum and the Permaculture Association of the Northeast.

Blais’ new media classes showcase a potential that both pushes students to learn with real-world work and does tangible good. 

“I really care about helping young people realize their education can help their own communities,” Blais said. “That’s what Stillwater Ripple is about.”

Written by Jesse Bifulco, Communications Intern

Contact: Erin Miller, [email protected]