Community-Based Learning Program
The Community-Based Learning Program’s top priority is to help students and faculty to integrate service into their academic work. Our primary focus is the building of partnerships among students, faculty and community agencies in which all parties serve, learn and teach. Community-based learning takes place through a variety of venues at the College. It can be found in many of the courses offered at the College, in much of the research that students undertake, in independent study courses that students design, and/or in senior thesis work.

Faculty across all disciplines engage their students in community-based learning. All courses include a combination of community-based and classroom work. Most offer students options that encourage them to explore individual interests and make interdisciplinary connections. Community-based learning is pedagogy rather than an activity in itself. It may be a single class project, a group activity, or an individual assignment. The best examples are closely integrated into academic study.

There is extensive opportunity for Bates students to engage in research that provides service to the community and addresses larger societal issues. Often this work is done in the context of a course, an independent study, a senior thesis or a summer program through the College. Students have the opportunity to incorporate service into their senior thesis if they wish.
Sometimes a student might tie his/her thesis into prior work that the student has done with a community agency. Other times the student's research might tie in with questions that his/her thesis advisor is exploring in the community. Often students will work with a new community partner to define an issue that needs investigation. 

Community Volunteerism and Student Leadership Development Program
The Bates College Volunteer Program is run by seven Student Volunteer Fellows (SVFs) who work with the volunteer program coordinator to provide many different opportunities throughout the year.  Students can volunteer on a regular basis (mentoring, helping at a soup kitchen) or take part in a one-time activity (Make-a-Difference Day, community Halloween Haunted House). They can volunteer on their own or work with a group of friends, fellow club members, or teammates.  The Volunteer Program will help students find an established program to work in, but it also welcomes and supports new ideas for service projects.  Volunteer Service Grants are available through this office to support student service projects.

Bates - Morse Mountain Conservation Area and Shortridge Coastal Center
The Bates - Morse Mountain Conservation Area comprises some 600 acres, extending from the Sprague to the Morse River and to the upland edge of Seawall Beach. It is private property owned by the Bates - Morse Mountain Conservation Area Corporation, a non-profit corporation with members from the St. John Family (which originally conserved the area), Bates College, and the general public. The Nature Conservancy holds a conservation easement on the property. Bates College manages the area for research and educational purposes.

Seawall Beach and a portion of the Sprague River back dune area are the property of the Small Point Association, whose mission is to preserve the wild, unspoiled character of the beach, its ecology, and its endangered species habitat.

HOW THE AREA IS BEING USED
Conservation And Preservation: Bates College and the Small Point Association are cooperating with The Nature Conservancy and the Maine Audubon Society to preserve the plants, birds, animals, and natural communities within the area. These include the nesting sites of the piping plover and the least tern (endangered species of birds which nest on the bare sand), as well as numerous rare and fragile plants, mosses, and lichens.
Education and Research: Bates College is conducting environmental research throughout the area in cooperation with other institutions and agencies.

Events Management
The Events Coordinator manages the Harward Center’s own events programming and summer programs, some of which are inherited from the former Office of Special Projects and Summer Programs.  Equally important, this office oversees all community use of Bates’ facilities, playing an ambassadorial and support role that is crucial to the Center’s mission of bridging campus and community.  Examples of events hosted on Bates’ campus for our community partners include:

• the 275-person Annual Dinner of the Lewiston-Auburn Economic Growth Council;
• a series of summer development workshops for Maine Advanced Placement teachers;
• the Lewiston High School and Middle School Unity Projects;
• Young Writers workshops;
• events for the Maine Humanities Council;
• Lewiston/Auburn Chamber of Commerce breakfast;
• international gathering to explore the legacy of the Rwandan genocide, a conference yoked to significant community-based learning and research efforts;
• Auburn Community Band concert;
• Bates Christian Fellowship conference;
• Boys to Men conference;
• Central Maine Physics Alliance workshops;
• Contemporary Issues dinners;
• Diversity Leadership Institute;
• College for ME, Androscoggin celebration and awards luncheon;
• Special film showing and discussion of “There Ought to be a Law;"
• Holocaust and Human Rights Center seminar;
• Great Falls Forum session;
• KinderKonzerts;
• National Philosophical Society Conference;
• Marionette Puppet Show;
• Special Olympics Swim Meet…and many more.