For the second year in a row, the Corporation for National and Community Service named Bates College to the President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll with Distinction for exemplary service efforts and service to disadvantaged youth.

“I am delighted that, for the second consecutive year, Bates has been recognized nationally for our accomplishments in community service and community-based learning,” said David Scobey, director of the Harward Center for Community Partnerships and Donald W. and Ann M. Harward Professor of Community Partnerships.

“Being selected as a distinguished college on the President’s Honor Roll is a tribute to the hundreds of Bates students, faculty and staff who place community service at the heart of our educational endeavor. The Harward Center applauds their commitment and celebrates this honor,” Scobey said.

Launched in 2006, the Community Service Honor Roll is the highest federal recognition a school can receive for its commitment to service-learning and civic engagement. Honorees for the award were chosen based on a series of factors including scope and innovativeness of service projects, percentage of student participation in service activities, incentives for service and the extent to which the school offers academic service-learning courses.

Some of the collaborative efforts that best exemplify the work that Bates is doing include partnerships with the Lewiston Public School System and Lewiston Housing Authority, and “collaboratories” that include the Downtown Educational Collaborative and Y.A.D.A. (Youth + Adults + Dialogue = Action).

The Harward Center maintains partnerships, many spanning a decade or more, with more than 120 community organizations. This community work was nurtured early on through the Bates Center for Service-Learning, established in 1995 as one of the first of its kind. The commitment to community partnerships was extended through the 2005 formation of the Harward Center, which now houses the Service-Learning Program.

“College students like those at Bates College are tackling the toughest problems in America, demonstrating their compassion, commitment and creativity by serving as mentors, tutors, health workers and even engineers,” said David Eisner, chief executive officer of the corporation. “They represent a renewed spirit of civic engagement fostered by outstanding leadership on caring campuses.”

Overall, the Community Service Honor Roll awarded six schools with Presidential Awards. In addition, four schools were honored with Special Achievement Awards, 127 as Honor Roll with Distinction members and 391 schools as Honor Roll members.  In total, 528 schools were recognized.  See the full list at www.nationalservice.gov/honorroll.

More than a third of colleges and universities in the United States offer service-learning courses as part of their curriculum. Chosen by the President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll with Distinction in 2006 and 2007 and honored by the Carnegie Foundation in 2007 for community engagement, Bates is featured in “The Guide to Service-Learning College and Universities.” Published in 2007 by Beyond the Books, the guide profiles some of the nation’s most engaged institutions of higher learning.

Bates is one of 62 schools, out of 76 recognized, to receive the Carnegie Foundation’s classification for community engagement under both “Curricular Engagement” and “Outreach and Partnerships.” Bates is one of only three New England liberal arts colleges to receive this classification. Unlike the foundation’s other classifications that rely on national data, this is an “elective” classification — institutions chose to participate by submitting required documentation.

“We’re one of three liberal arts colleges in New England to hold this institutional classification,” says Anna Bartel, associate director for the Harward Center, “and it indicates a level of college-wide commitment to community engagement that is foundational to our identity.”

Bates College is one of 11 institutions of higher education named by the National Community-Based Research Networking Initiative to receive funding for innovative community-based research projects.

Of nearly 100 proposals submitted to the NCBRN, these 11 were selected for their innovation and anticipated contributions to the field of community-based research that engages faculty, students and community stakeholders in creating social change.

Each project is built on the foundation of a strong existing CBR program that will provide the infrastructure necessary to involve students, faculty and community partners in innovative research projects that will be developed, documented and shared through grant funding.

“We are particularly enthusiastic about this project because it yokes Bates’ commitments to rigorous undergraduate research and to substantive community partnership, empowering students to bring each to the service of the other,” says Anna Sims Bartel, associate director of Bates’ Harward Center for Community Partnerships. Bartel led the crafting of the proposal.

The Harward Center maintains partnerships, many spanning a decade or more, with more than 120 community organizations. This community work was nurtured early on through the Bates Center for Service-Learning, established in 1995 as one of the first of its kind. The commitment to community partnerships was extended by the 2005 formation of the Harward Center, which now houses the Service-Learning Program.

The Bates proposal features “The CBR Fellowship Experience,” academic-year and summer CBR student fellowships that will serve as part of a developmental model for civic engagement.

Harward Center CBR Fellows will have access to funding, faculty and Harward support during the summer as well as the academic year to develop and execute substantive, collaborative community-based research projects.

A CBR fellowship will often be the culminating project in a student’s civic engagement. These upper-level students will also have experience in research methods and community partnerships, allowing them to expand and deepen existing Harward Center partnerships. Finally, CBR Fellows will benefit other students, sharing their own knowledge about the surrounding community and partner organizations.

As CBR Fellows, students will benefit from and enrich a vibrant network of campus-community partnerships, experience the close mentorship of faculty and become part of a growing cohort of students engaged in community work through HCCP. As Bates and Lewiston benefit from this work, so will the national CBR community, as Bates develops and shares training, support and reflection materials for other institutions to support similar programs.

In addition to Bates, the institutions whose projects were selected are: Appalachian State University, Boone, N.C.; Berea College, Berea, Ky.; Northeastern University, Boston, Mass.; Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas; Tufts University, Somerville, Mass.; University of California-Berkeley, Berkeley, Calif.; University of Vermont, Burlington, Vt.; University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wis.; Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, N.C.; and Whitman College, Walla Walla, Wash.

In being awarded innovation grants, these 11 institutions join the National CBR Networking Initiative, a larger network of community-based research practitioners funded by Learn & Serve America and spearheaded by Princeton University and the Bonner Foundation. This initiative is coordinated by Princeton University’s Community-Based Learning Initiative and will generate a range of best-practice tools and resources, including Websites, manuals and data valuable to students, faculty and the community.

Innovation subgrantees, such as the Harward Center, will make significant contributions to this network as they develop and share new models for community-based research, as well as tools and resources to support other institutions in implementing them.

Bates College is one of the nation’s best colleges fostering social responsibility and public service, according to The Princeton Review and Campus Compact. It is one of 81 institutions in 33 states that The Princeton Review commends and features in its forthcoming book, Colleges with a Conscience: 81 Great Schools with Outstanding Community Involvement (Random House / Princeton Review Books, 2005). Available in bookstores on June 21, the book has two-page profiles on each college and advice for applicants.

“A college with a conscience,” says Robert Franek, Princeton Review vice president, admissions services, “has both an administration committed to social responsibility and a student body actively engaged in serving society. Education at these schools isn’t only about private gain: it’s about the public good.”

“We are honored to receive the national recognition that comes with inclusion in this publication,” said Sue Martin, associate director of the Bates College Center for Service-Learning. “Service-learning has a long history at Bates, and this brings particular attention to the academic emphasis of our work. It is a tribute to our community partners, our faculty, and most of all, our students,” Martin said.

The Princeton Review, which produces classroom and online test-prep courses, books and other education services, partnered with Campus Compact, a national organization committed to the civic purposes of higher education, to develop Colleges with a Conscience and choose the schools featured in the book.

The book’s editors also invited dozens of organizations with expertise in campus community service and student engagement to nominate colleges for inclusion. Criteria included the college’s admissions practices and scholarships rewarding community service; support for service-learning programs, student activism and student voice in school governance; and level of social engagement of its student body.

The Princeton Review and Campus Compact winnowed a list of 100 schools from a pool of more than 900 colleges. From this shortlist, the editors collected extensive data about schools’ service programs and policies, surveying their students and faculty/staff. The 81 schools chosen for Colleges with a Conscience represent a diverse range of institutions by geographic region, campus size, setting (urban/rural) and type (public/private).

Presented in partnership with the Bates College Center for Service-Learning, the fair features more than 450 projects created by students in grades 9 through 12.

Projects are eligible for medals and cash awards bestowed for best-of-fair and first-, second- and third-place prizes in each of three grade divisions — 9th, 10th and upper-class. Last year, 30 LHS students were honored for their work on a dozen projects.

Projects run the gamut of scientific disciplines. Last year’s winning entries included studies of dissolved oxygen in springtime meltwater, the relationship between exercise and blood pressure and the variance in freezing rates among different juices.

The fair is made possible in part by a partnership with the Bates Center for Service-Learning. Bates students help organize the fair, and last year’s fair involved more than 60 Bates faculty, staff and students who spent an afternoon judging the projects and talking to participants. The college also supports the fair through a Bates Science Education Outreach Grant funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.