Ask any member of the University of Delaware Marching Band (UDMB), and they would likely echo the words of trombonist Danielle Jones.

“The UDMB isn’t about band,” she said. “I mean, of course it is. But it’s a safe place to grow up. It’s a place where we all figured out how to be human.”

The latest issue of UD Magazine, now online and in mailboxes, highlights the palpable pride and love for UDMB and for longtime leader Heidi Sarver, who will retire this spring. 

For 29 years, Sarver helped thousands of Blue Hens become better musicians and better people. That quest to improve lives by both learning and doing permeates other stories within the publication. 

A lighthearted feature on ice cream highlights the hard science that underscores the UDairy Creamery, where roughly 80 students learn the finer points of food production each semester. That July weekend when the freezer broke, and everyone got a sticky lesson in the importance

of affixing warning alarms to equipment? Better than any textbook explainer.

Since the ice cream facility opened in 2008, more than 500 students have parlayed their UDairy experience into scrumptious careers, from developing new products for Mars, Inc. candy bars to creating custom flavors for Fuchs North America. 

As a quality assurance specialist for Turkey Hill, alumna Melissa Ollerenshaw oversees production and safety standards, which sometimes requires the Class of 2020 graduate to taste test 80 samples a week. “I still geek out over my job,” she said. 

Then there are the scuba divers — students like Kelly Logan, whose eventual career in marine science is already taking root. While on a Winter Session scuba course in Florida, she and her classmates participated in multiple dives each day (even a few at night), exploring the crystal-clear waters of Blue Grotto Springs, the state’s largest accessible underwater cavern.

“Aquariums are one thing,” she said, “but to have a softshell turtle stare at you through your mask 60 feet below the surface is a whole new world.” 

From sea to space, Blue Hens work to uncover the mysteries of the universe. As one of only 24 national institutions with land-, sea- and space-grant missions, UD pursues research in virtually every area of existence. 

With 2024 dubbed by NASA as “Heliophysics Big Year,” Blue Hen researchers hunt for everything from habitable exoplanets to dark matter to the origins of cosmic rays and more. 

And closer to home, scholars like Tim Shaffer work to improve public discourse, seeking to remind that while “formal education is about right and wrong — you know it or you don’t — so much of life exists in the gray area in between.”

To read the full issue, visit udel.edu/home/magazine. To submit a letter to the editor, email magazine@udel.edu.