LEWISTON – Maine Campus Compact (MCC) will receive $92,500 from the Davis Educational Foundation to partner with University of Maine at Augusta to prepare 4-year college faculty to deliver online service-learning courses.

“With online courses growing at a rate of 41% over the past two years, we knew we had to move fast to find ways for online students to apply their learning in real world contexts,” said Liz McCabe Park, MCC Executive Director.  “This grant will give faculty the ability to move students in a virtual learning environment out into the community to apply their learning and make a difference.”

In online learning, students take courses over the internet, interacting with their faculty through text, images, streaming video and audio, and chat. The student and the faculty member are separated in space and possibly in time.  Service-learning is a teaching method that takes students into a community service setting to apply their learning in the real world. It has been shown to motivate students to learn and keep them in school through increasing the meaning and challenge of their courses.

Through the two-year Fusion Project, 50 faculty members from 6-9 Maine higher education institutions will learn how to infuse service-learning components into online courses.  Students who participate in the online courses created by participating faculty will get hands on, real-world experience to strengthen their learning and create connections to the larger community.

Established in 1994 and hosted at Bates College, MCC is a statewide coalition of 18 college and university presidents working to build strong communities and a more just democratic society by developing students’ citizenship and problem solving skills through community-based learning.  MCC is an affiliate state affiliate of Campus Compact, which encompasses more than 1,100 college and university presidents – representing some 6 million students-dedicated to promoting community service, civic engagement, and service-learning in higher education. More than 15,000 student volunteers at MCC member campuses provide some 1.6 million hours of service annually, with an economic impact of more than $25 million a year.

The Davis Educational Foundation was established by Stanton and Elisabeth Davis after Mr. Davis’s retirement as chairman of Shaw’s Supermarkets, Inc.