FARMINGTON — The University of Maine at Farmington’s Partnership for Civic Advancement celebrated its third year of operations recently at the campus.

Sponsored each year by the Partnership’s sustaining partner, the Bangor Savings Bank Foundation, the program recognizes the contributions made by the student interns, their community sponsors and faculty advisers.

This year, 41 interns were recognized for their work through 44 different internships with 33 regional businesses and organizations.

With the launching of the Partnership’s leadership education and training component this past fall, this year’s celebration also recognized the achievements of 17 student leaders who successfully completed the Partnership’s 2014 Leadership Summit.

Bangor Savings Bank Foundation has recently decided to continue its support for the Partnership for an additional three years, Celeste Branham, director of the Partnership and UMF vice president for student and community services, announced.

“The Partnership is a highly successful experiment in experiential learning at UMF, designed to benefit students and the community beyond UMF,” Branham said. “This vision could not have been realized without the sustaining sponsorship of Bangor Savings Bank, to whom we are indeed indebted.”

Making a second three-year commitment to the same program was not something the Bank’s Foundation normally does, Yellow Light Breen, executive vice president and chief strategic officer for Bangor Savings Bank, said.

“It was so compelling to us because of what the Partnership accomplished,” Breen said. “They knocked it out of the park and blew the cover off of it.”

According to Breen, the UMF Partnership approached Bangor Savings Bank with this program concept three years ago and said it would have 30 student interns and 50 community partners. Earlier this year, they had 77 student interns and more than 80 community partners, and are rapidly closing in on 100 community partners.

“The decision to invest in the Partnership is totally selfish,” Breen said, because they see the reward to their company. “The returns are so obvious, to Western Maine and Maine and we’re darn proud of it.”

UMF President Kathryn A. Foster told students the story of her internship experience in Baltimore while in college and how it changed her life. “It not only gave me a chance to use the knowledge I’d gained in the classroom and test myself in the real world, it helped me gain important skills needed on the job and confidence.” The experience “was real,” she said, “and I felt like I had made an important contribution to the city.”

Ellen Bowman, counselor and psychotherapist at Belgrade Central School, and Brandon Monroe, a UMF senior who has been working at the Belgrade school as the expressive arts therapies intern provided an improvisational music performance.

The goal of UMF’s Partnership for Civic Advancement is to engage students in meaningful, community-based activities. All partnership activities are designed in collaboration with the Western Maine community to address community needs and economic and community development priorities, and with students and faculty to achieve specific learning objectives of the students.

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