LEWISTON — University of Southern Maine Lewiston-Auburn College hosted civic, nonprofit and business leaders in a community engagement celebration on May 26. The event, organized by the Druker Office of Community Engagement, included students, faculty, staff and new USM President Glenn Cummings.

Cummings praised the students’ work in 176 different local organizations, both for their contribution in the past year to the Lewiston-Auburn community and for the students’ own growth.

Community engagement helps them live better lives, he said.

“When we ask ourselves the questions, ‘How do we create good students?’ and ‘How do we really engage people for a good future where there’s happiness?’ We have to say to them, ‘What will you do to contribute to somebody else?’” said Cummings.

In the previous academic year year, LAC students worked on 241 different community projects or activities. And though total student hours in the past year are currently being tallied, they are also expected to be very high, said Michelle Vazquez Jacobus, the community engagement scholar at LAC’s Druker Office of Community Engagement and an associate professor in social and behavioral sciences.

During the 2013-14 academic year, USM LAC students contributed 21,854 hours in community engagement work. They were joined by LAC faculty and staff, who contributed an estimated 4,680 hours and 3,435 hours, respectively.

Projects this year included activities like helping kids with their homework at Lewiston’s Tree Street Youth and volunteering at Museum LA, to semester-long internships with organizations such as Tri-County Mental Health Services. Some students even authored business analyses of small, local companies.

Each experience benefited the students as well as the community, Jacobus said.

“We can study terms like ‘cultural competence,’ ‘community capacity building,’ ‘interdisciplinarity,’ and ‘empowerment,’ she said. “But it’s actually working together, the getting out, walking around and being part of the community which really teaches us and really allows us to learn and change.”