CMC Service Learning Opportunities for Community Partners

CMC Students Want to Help Your Cause!

Colorado Mountain College (CMC) is proud to announce a new program in which students apply their academic skills to projects that help your organization. Students do this under the guidance of an instructor within a course called Service Learning. The first session will run this summer of 2012.

Service Learning vs. Community Service

Service Learning is different from Community Service because students use their academic course of study to design and complete a project for your organization. Experienced faculty will help you to identify one or more projects and then work to identify a student(s) with the appropriate skills for your project. During the course, faculty will work with students and you to ensure that the project is successful in meeting your needs and is completed on time.

Being a Community Partner

To get involved, you need to become a Community Partner. Doing so is simply a matter of signing up by contacting CMC and then connecting with the Service Learning faculty to identify some possible projects. CMC will then list your organization and possible projects for students to select from. It all starts by having a conversation with CMC faculty as soon as possible. Once that is done you will be listed as a Community Partner and your possible projects will be available to students. CMC faculty will then work on identifying students with the appropriate skills to complete your project.

The Project

The project can be any identifiable work that fits the student’s academic interests and results in a final deliverable to you. This could be working on data collection, helping with organizational assessment, marketing or developing your web presence, just to name a few. The student’s total time commitment will be approximately 90 hours, 80 of which will be spent on-site at your organization over ten weeks.

Providing a Mentor

Because the student is working on a project with a fixed timeline we ask that you identify an employee to serve as the student’s mentor. The mentor should have enough of an understanding of the project and your organization to serve as the student’s advisor. The mentor will also serve as the primary contact between CMC faculty and your organization regarding both the student’s performance and the project. The mentor will also provide input to faculty for evaluation purposes.

To Sign-Up

Contact Nicole Fazande at CMC (970-468-5989 / nfazande@coloradomtn.edu) to sign up your organization and provide a contact who can work with CMC Service Learning faculty to brainstorm some possible projects for you. From there you will be contacted by a faculty member to have a phone call in which we will actually brainstorm projects. It’s that simple!