2011-2012 Community Service Learning Reports

It's great to be able to share good news!  In the academic year just past, USM students provided a total of 71,779 reported community service learning hours, impacting the community in areas including community and public service, support for persons with disabilities, domestic/sexual violence prevention, environmental, health, hunger and homelessness, education/youth, and more -- benefitting over 1,000 K-12 students through mentoring and tutoring alone!  Twenty-eight faculty members taught 44 academic courses that reported engaging students in service learning, with 927 students learning by serving in community partner settings.  The "monetized"  value of all reported student service to the community is $1,208,768.06!

 

The full reports are here: www.usm.maine.edu/community. I offer public congratulations and thanks to our Programs Coordinator and AmeriCorps VISTA member Stacy Normand, who authored the Impact Report; to Alicia (Sampson) Ethridge, Service Learning Coordinator, who worked with faculty and students to incorporate service learning into courses; to Belana Warmflash, Mentoring Coordinator, who worked with King Middle School and Portland High School to match and support mentors; and to Sherry Whittemore, Education and Community Coordinator, who provided training and support for students serving in K-12 schools and after school programs, for their critical contributions to this work. 

 

I invite you to share the news, and ask us how  you can get involved as we move forward, delivering on the USM promise of "engaged learning that transforms lives and communities!"

 

 

 

Andrea Thompson McCall, Director

-Community Service Learning

-Religious and Spiritual Life

University of Southern Maine

P.O. Box 9300

Portland, ME 04104-9300

 

Phone 207-228-8284

FAX 207-228-8403

Agency on Aging Client Needs Help

Once again our community partners at the Southern Maine Area Agency on Aging have reached out to us (because students have responded willingly in the past!) to ask for help on behalf of a client.  He is an elderly man who is in a rehab facility, and who needs help to collect, box, and move his personal belongings from the furnished apartment where he lived before he went into the facility.  He will transport himself, and meet a volunteer (or better, two volunteers) at the apartment, where he can oversee but is not physically able to collect and box his personal belongings.  No furniture will be moved; only clothing, books and papers, and other assorted personal belongings, amounting to about 4 or 5 boxes.  The apartment is on Mellon Street in Portland, and the belongings need to be transported and delivered to the rehab facility, Saint Joseph Manor on Washington Avenue in Portland.  If you can round up the boxes, so much the better!

 

If you can help, please contact Sylvia Harkins at the Southern Maine Area Agency on Aging, 396-6553 or sharkins@smaa.org.

 

Thanks for your consideration of this, and for all the fabulous service of all kinds performed by members of the USM community this academic year!  Our total of reported community service, service learning, and internship work for non-profit community partners in 2011-2012 is 71,779.6 hours!

 

Yours in commitment to community,

ATM

 

 

 

Andrea Thompson McCall

 Director of Community Service Learning

 University Interfaith Chaplain

University of Southern Maine

P.O. Box 9300

Portland, ME 04104-9300

 

Phone 207-228-8284

FAX 207-228-8403