Student Stories

BLUElab Metro is far more than a typical student organization within the University of Michigan’s College of Engineering. We are a student-run, multidisciplinary team dedicated to a singular, powerful mission: to design sustainable, community-centered solutions that directly address local challenges while empowering the people most affected by them. We believe that true engineering excellence is found at the intersection of technical innovation and social responsibility. Our work focuses on long-term partnerships rather than short-term fixes, allowing us to design with our community members rather than just for them. This collaborative approach ensures that the outcomes are not just functional, but deeply tailored to the specific goals, cultural heritage, and needs of our partners.

Since 2023, our efforts have been entirely focused on a transformative partnership with Willow Run Acres (WRA), a nonprofit founded by T.C. Collins in Superior Township, Michigan. T.C. is a visionary community leader who views the land as a classroom and a tool for empowerment. Through WRA and the Clay Hill Community Farm, he works tirelessly to address food insecurity and the erasure of Black history in Washtenaw County. T.C.’s connection to farming is a generational legacy, handed down through ancestors who farmed under the most difficult circumstances of enslavement and sharecropping.

This project has come about as part of the UM Library’s Territorial Acknowledgement Working Group, who has investigated multiple tangible actions the University is able to accomplish to honor the original stewards of this land, the Anishnaabeg and Wyandot peoples, whose ‘land grant’ allows for this University’s existence. One of these action items is to become leaders in Indigenous Knowledge sharing, which includes this project to transcribe/caption Ojibwe language lessons to make them available online through the UM Library via Alma Digital. These language materials were created by Basil Johnston, a prominent Anishnaabe scholar, whose work continues to educate native people long past he walked on.

As someone currently in the MSI (Master of Science in Information) program, I was on the hunt for any opportunity to work within an information space. I didn’t have much experience in said field, and so I was set on a mission to find a chance to work somewhere in the U-M Library throughout the academic year. And so when I discovered this position as an engagement fellow, I was immediately excited to both widen my scope and hone my skills as an information professional and work on a project with a subject matter that interests me personally.

The project, “Exploring Anime: Collections Research and Outreach Programming”, was focused on research, collection analysis, and outreach/programming with the AskWith Media library’s anime collection. Within the scope of our project, my project teammate Alina Murata and I defined “anime” as an audiovisual medium consisting of animated works of Japanese origin. Thus the overarching theme and question of our project was of the significance and relevance of anime within the library collection, as well as how that can be incorporated into programming.

As the Winter 2026 semester draws to a close, the Student Employee Engagement Committee (SEEC) would like to acknowledge the hardworking student employees that are vital to the daily operations and success of the University of Michigan Library. The support they provide to students, faculty, staff, and guests is immense and we truly appreciate all of their efforts!

The Library Student Ambassadors reflect on their experience hosting Café Shapiro 2026.

The Library Ambassadors collaborated with the Design Lab to hold a Design Day event.

The Stamps MFA Cohort ‘25 created an artist catalogue titled stop-loss, documenting our thesis exhibition. The idea was born from a collective desire to bring our projects to print while understanding our work within the context of contemporary art theory. The book features seven second-year Stamps MFA students: Hannah Buchanan, Sam Griffith, Andy Maticorena Kajie, Laura Mackie, Okyoung Noh, Charlie Reynolds, and Darren Spirk. Each artist has four pages featuring photographs of their thesis exhibition in the Stamps Gallery. Wall text from the thesis show is juxtaposed alongside exhibition photos taken by Andy Maticorena Kajie. In addition to the MFA students, we also asked Stamps faculty, staff, and collaborators to contribute writings that analyze how the theses connect to each other and our current socio-political climate, including themes such as loss, climate futures, identity, politics, and landscape. The catalogue itself is about 50 pages, designed by Detroit-based designer Emily Anderson with the inclusion of thesis exhibition graphics by Sam Griffith. Detroit’s Inland Press printed 150 copies of the 5.5” x 8.5” saddle-stitched catalogues. This project is a way for us to reflect on and examine our work and the work of our peers, which merge visual practice with critical inquiry to foster dialogue.

Commodity production drives roughly 27% of global deforestation1. This loss accelerates biodiversity decline, degrades soils, and undermines forests’ capacity to sequester carbon. In response, governments are increasingly turning to market-based environmental governance mechanisms to curb deforestation in global supply chains. Notable examples include New York State’s proposed Tropical Rainforest Economic & Environmental Sustainability (TREES) Act and the European Union Regulation on Deforestation-Free Products (EUDR).
The EUDR, expected to enter into force in December 2026, will require producers of deforestation-risk commodities to provide polygon-level evidence that their products are deforestation-free. While these policies are designed to advance environmental goals, they also raise urgent questions about equity and inclusion in global supply chains.
At the center of these concerns are smallholder farmers. Small-scale and family farms manage approximately 87% of the world’s agricultural land2. In many deforestation-intensive value chains—such as timber, beef, and palm oil—smallholders make up a substantial share of producers3-5. Yet these actors often lack the financial, technical, and administrative capacity to comply with stringent traceability and verification requirements. As a result, many fear exclusion from global markets as sustainability regulations take effect.
This raises a critical question: Will well-intentioned deforestation governance inadvertently reinforce existing social inequities by pushing smallholders out of global supply chains?

Meditation has been deeply impactful in my life, and I want others to experience the positive shifts that come with it. Reflecting on my nine years of practice, I realized that current tools fail to track progress objectively or adapt to a person’s real-time needs. As a regular user of the Headspace app, I’ve often wondered if I’m performing the technique correctly or if my experience is actually deepening over time. A major limitation with standard guided meditations is their reliance on fixed-interval reminders. If a user loses focus ten seconds after an awareness reminder, they might spend the next few minutes lost in thought rather than training their mind. This inspired me to create a system where awareness reminders could adapt to the user by detecting when focus is lost and gently nudging them back immediately. This approach helps sustain awareness longer, naturally decreasing the need for reminders as the user’s skill improves.
The U-M Library mini grant provided the support needed to make this happen. With the funding to purchase a Muse Athena EEG (electroencephalography) headset, I brought the idea to my graduate Human Computer Interaction (HCI) course and teamed up with Alexander Bartolozzi, Donald Lin, and Annus Zulfiqar. Together, we built Reflect - an EEG-powered app that uses machine learning to accelerate the learning rate of meditation practices. It tracks meditation states in real-time, playing a gentle audio cue to restore awareness when the mind wanders, and dynamically adapts to the user's ability to maintain focus.

On Friday, November 21st, the library Student Ambassadors hosted a Sip and Paint in the third floor Shapiro Gallery!