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The Office of Community Service at USM LAC recently hosted its third annual community partner breakfast which brought together over seventy community partners, USM LAC faculty, staff and students. Pictured here from left to right are: Front Row: USM LAC Professor Michelle Vazquez Jacobus, Sally Holt from the Auburn Public Library, Auburn Public Library Director Rosemary Waltos and Lewiston Public Library Director Rick Speer. Back row: Lewiston Mayor Larry Gilbert, USM LAC student Khadra Jama, Cindy LaRock from the Lewiston Public Library and USM LAC Becki Quimby. |
September 2008
The Office of Community Service at USM LAC recently hosted its third annual community partner breakfast on August 13th, 2008. The event brought together over seventy community partners, USM LAC faculty, staff and students. The purpose of the breakfast is to build relationships, generate new service learning projects, and enhance collaboration among community partners, USM LAC faculty, and students. USM LAC students have logged 3970 hours of service learning in the past academic year alone. Some of the projects suggested by community members at the breakfast included a community beautification project that was proposed by Lewiston Mayor Larry Gilbert, the creation of a student led Green Teams in local schools and the development of a multicultural assessment survey of preschool childhood needs.
Each year, the Office of Community Service recognizes two community partners for their outstanding commitment to civic engagement in the Lewiston-Auburn Area. This year’s recipients were the Auburn Public Library and the Lewiston Public Library. The Auburn Public Library has worked with USM LAC students to design, administer, and analyze surveys that measured the user-friendliness of the library and identify any gaps in services. The students found mentors at the library, who were engaged and available to help guide them in their learning. The Auburn Public Library has provided a safe and creative learning environment for four different USM LAC classes and an intern. It is because of their continued commitment to serving the community that the Auburn Public Library was chosen to receive the 2008 Outstanding Community Partner Award.
The Lewiston Public Library has had a long standing and multidimensional relationship with USM LAC. They have worked with applied social policy students to direct students in doing an assessment of their teen room and then encouraging the students to creatively address the issues by developing an orientation program. They have gathered the students and community together to brainstorm about solutions for youth activities which began with assisting our students in developing an interdisciplinary teen resource guide and culminated through the establishment of the Youth + Adults+ Dialogue = Action (YADA) organization. The library is also a critical partner in the newly formed Downtown Educational Collaborative (DEC) and has been a strong leader in the Collaborative’s projects.
To build on the momentum from the community partner breakfast, the Office of Community Service would like to invite the Lewiston-Auburn community to a Working Communities workshop on September 17th, 2008 from 11:45 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. in Function Room 170 at USM LAC. The workshop will be an opportunity for community members, USM LAC faculty and students to come together to discuss some of the needs that exist in the area and brainstorm ways to work together through collaborative service learning projects which meet mutual needs. For more information or to RSVP please contact Michelle Jacobus at USM LAC at 753-6547 or email mjacobus@usm.maine.edu
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