Community Service @ USM

Real Learning that Makes a Difference!

Learning extends beyond the classroom at USM, in community engagement on campus and beyond the campus in the greater Portland community. Exciting opportunities to learn while serving the community to address real needs of real people include one-time or short-term projects, semester-long projects, or leadership roles.

Co-curricular community service is what we call volunteer work not connected to academic courses, but an experience that includes a reflective component to bring learning outside the classroom into focus.

Projects are available just about every week, and you can sign on for one or many. Some roles (like mentoring) require a semester-long or academic year-long commitment because of the one-to-one relationship involved. For student groups, we'll happily organize a custom-made project for small, medium, or large groups for half-day or full day team building and community service.

Service learning refers to community work that is embedded in a course for credit. This can range from a single assignment to a semester-long project, or anything in between. We invite faculty to contact us for support in creating, arranging, and implementing service learning components in their courses.

On this site, you'll find a calendar of upcoming service projects and long-term placement possibilities, copies of our weekly update email and our newsletter, pictures of past projects, a blog where students share their community service experience, and much more. We're always expanding our work and our website, and we'd love to hear your ideas about both of them. Look around, enjoy, and thank you for the good work you do!