Lewiston-area college, school receive 2023 Maine Campus Compact Award

Maine Campus Compact celebrated its 22nd annual awards ceremony April 28 at the University of Maine at Augusta to recognize outstanding work in public service and civic engagement by Maine faculty, students, and community and corporate partners.

The award recipients’ positive impacts on campuses and in communities throughout the state reinforce the importance of the public purposes of higher education, according to a news release from Sally Slovenski, executive director with Maine Campus Compact.

The Donald Harward Award for Faculty Service-Learning Excellence recognizes three Maine faculty who integrate community or public service into the curriculum and who work to institutionalize service-learning. Harward was founder of Maine Campus Compact and former board member of national and Maine Campus Compacts. Award winners have shown clear evidence of reflection, community benefit, reciprocity with community partners and a commitment to advocating for service-learning and/or community action on campus and beyond.

The 2023 recipients of the Harward award are:

• Camilla Bridge, instructor and lab coordinator, Biology Department, Saint Joseph’s College;

• Shawn Graham, assistant professor of counseling and behavioral science unit chair, University of Maine at Fort Kent;

• Anelise Hanson Shrout, assistant professor of digital and computational Studies, Bates College.

Shrout’s book, “Aiding Ireland: The Great Famine and the Rise of International Philanthropy,” is forthcoming from NYU press in 2023. In her classes, she focuses on how digital technology can build and strengthen civic identities and relationships, often by connecting the past with the present. Students in her classes work with community collaborators to develop solutions to local problems. These have included developing websites for local organizations advocating for survivors of domestic violence, designing surveys and programming for public libraries in Lewiston and Auburn, and producing walking tours of Lewiston’s historic Riverside Cemetery.

Through these projects, students see community engagement as central to projects of equity and justice, and equitable digital tools as central to community engagement.

The Heart and Soul Student Award recognizes six Maine undergraduate students who are actively involved in transforming their campuses and communities into environments of civic engagement. These students have developed positive community and campus change and have worked to institutionalize their community projects. They have implemented innovative approaches to social, educational, environmental, health, economic and legal issues facing their communities and demonstrated leadership through their successful involvement of others on campus and in the community.

2023 Heart and Soul Student Award recipients:

• Alan Aldrich, Husson University;

• Elizabeth Greenberg, Colby College;

• Annika Mirchandani, Bates College;

• Andrew Martin, Saint Joseph’s College;

• Margo Ngo, Bowdoin College; and

• Tammy Pilkington, Saint Joseph’s College.

Mirchandani began her role as a community outreach fellow at the Harward Center for Community Partnerships during her first year at Bates College. In this role, she ran a brunch program at Blake Street Towers to cook brunch and engage with local residents in the housing community. While the pandemic halted the brunch program, she continued to engage with the Lewiston community remotely from her home in Connecticut, making volunteer check-in calls to residents weekly throughout the rest of the Winter 2020 semester.

Over the 2020-21 academic year, she and a group of volunteers created care packages for Lewiston Housing Authority residents, which provided essential goods and handwritten letters to residents of Blake Street Towers. She was able to run Blake Street brunch for the duration of the 2022-23 academic year, bringing a new generation of Bates students to a program that had not been full steam since 2020.

She also partnered with the Lewiston Housing Authority on her thesis this past fall, “‘Take What You Need, Give What You Can’: An Analysis of the Feasibility of a Community Fridge as a Means to Combat Food Insecurity in Lewiston, Maine.”

Mirchandani will continue her academic career this fall at American University Washington College of Law, where she looks forward to remaining civically engaged.

The Community Partner of the Year Award recognizes an outstanding community partner organization and its staff for their exemplary partnership with an MCC member institution.

The 2023 award recipient:

• Montello Elementary School in partnership with Bates College

Montello’s support of Bates College students through training and valuable learning opportunities has made it an outstanding community partner. At this dynamic school, principal Tiffany Sax and her staff are dedicated to social and emotional learning as well as academics; inclusive teaching approaches; food security; summer enrichment; and a host of other strategies aimed at lifting students out of poverty.

Dozens of Bates students spend time at Montello each semester assisting with Book Buddies, a program designed to increase the literacy skills of younger elementary children and serving as mentors to young students. These two programs bring elementary school staff and students together with Bates students in sustained, high-touch ways that produce multiple benefits for the Montello students, who gain vital literacy skills and build their confidence as readers and learners, while at the same time helping to prepare the next generation of Bates College student leaders to lead with empathy, imagination, and a commitment to the common good.