Luke Colomey ’22
Why UNE
I visited a lot of schools trying to find the right fit for me. All of the different things that I wanted in a college came together at UNE. I love the scenery here. The location of the school is awesome since we’re right on the water. Being able to look at that view every day is always comforting. The size of UNE was exactly what I was looking for, and I like that it’s nearby to some urban areas like Portland but still feels far away.
My favorite thing is the community. The faculty and the students here are so close. I really love it. Everyone is really friendly and willing to help out and collaborate. Through my experiences with classes, clubs, intramural sports…it’s all been so open and welcoming. There is a really good air on campus all the time.
Beyond the Classroom
I was looking for a way to get some of my own writing published, so I reached out to some of the English faculty. They told me that there was a need for officers for Zephyr (UNE’s literary and artistic magazine) because the officers were going to be graduating, so I took on the position of editor-in-chief. I worked with a team to really make Zephyr our own. We added a lot of things to the edition this year. We were able to get some extra funds to change things like the size of the magazine, the font, adding borders, and even adding color this year. In 21 years of Zephyr, this was the first edition with color.
One thing that’s really stood out to me at UNE is my ability to work with different academic fields. They all overlap and enhance my experience. I find that the small programs communicate with one another for the full arts and humanities experience. One big highlight of my time at UNE is that I did the Arts and Humanities Capstone for my English minor. It was a capstone project where I had to do a big research paper. I took a lot of political science sources, references, and questions and mixed them with English, literature, philosophy, and history sources. It was a really cool thing to do to be able to mix a lot of my different interests and the different fields that I work in. I had professors from both disciplines help. It was a really cool, collaborative project.