AUBURN – Roadtrip Nation, which has evolved into a PBS series, three books and an online community, will visit Central Maine Community College as part of its annual fall campus tour. One of its signature green RVs will be on the Auburn campus from 9 a.m. to noon and 2 to 5 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 15.

Three teams of Roadtrip Nation “Roadies” are visiting college and high school campuses across the United States, holding Roadtrip Nation film screenings and helping spread the word on the Roadtrip Nation movement. The Roadies will visit more than 40 campuses nationwide, reaching out to students from coast to coast in an effort to help college students find their own road in life. CMCC is the only community college and the only Maine stop on their fall itinerary.

The philosophy that drives Roadtrip Nation – a grassroots movement that encourages students to hit the road in search of interviews with people who have defined their own distinctive routes through life – is the search for eclectic individuals who have resisted pressures to conform and who have become successful by following their own paths. This movement has spawned a free-spirited documentary series on PBS that follows the adventures of the road-tripping students as they travel the nation.

It all started in the summer of 2001 when four recent college grads decided to take a road trip in hopes of discovering their place in the world. The idea behind the road trip was simple: If you don’t know what you want to do in life, go out and talk to people who are doing something you admire and ask them about the journey they took to get there. They hit the road and three months and 17,000 miles later had interviewed 85 individuals.

Since then, Roadtrip Nation has evolved into a broader movement to help individuals define their own lives. In addition, the “Behind the Wheel” and “Independent Roadtrip” grant programs enable students to hit the road to interview their own list of leaders across the country.

These experiences and more are shared on their Web site at www.roadtripnation.com.