Community Service Resource Center
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Service Learning Programs
Service Learning Programs
Sample Service Learning Projects
The following is a list of past service learning projects carried out by Bowdoin College students in academic courses. In each case students applied the skills they developed in the particular course to respond to specific needs of the community organizations.
Service Learning in Environmental Studies
Anthropology 218/Environmental Studies 213: Anthropology of Islands
(Anne Henshaw)
In partnership with the Island Institute's "Lobster Tails" project, students worked with an elementary school located on one of the islands in Casco Bay to develop a web page about the island community. This project allowed students to better understand the powerful sense of cultural identity that islanders share.
Community Partners: Cheabeague Island School, Long Island School and the Island Institute
Biology 158/Chemistry 180/Environmental Studies 201: Perspectives in Environmental Science
(John Lichter and Dharni Vasudevan)
This course explores the fundamental biological and chemical concepts that are used to understand the science behind the environmental dilemmas facing societies as a consequence of human activities. Using the skills learned during the course, students collected and analyzed water quality data and vegetation surveys associated with the restoration of a salt marsh in Phippsburg, Maine.
Community partner: The Nature Conservancy
Computer Science 107: Introduction to Computer Science
(Laura Toma)
Using the basics of HTML and software programs such as Dream Weaver and Photoshop, students designed and built websites for local community agencies that did not have them. In the process, students gained experience with some of the ways in which computer science intersects with society.
Community Partners: Brunswick Trinidad Sister Association, Maine Civil Liberties Union, MidCoast Hunger Prevention Program, Pejepscot Terrace, Moving Spirit
Environmental Studies Education Independent Study
(Eileen Johnson and Susan Hayward) Over the course of the academic year, students developed a relationship with a Longfellow Elementary teacher, whose class they taught on a weekly basis. The course challenged the teachers (Bowdoin students) to extend their knowledge of environmental studies and to create meaningful lessons that enriched the elementary education by opening up the Longfellow students' senses to the natural world around them.
Community Partner: Longfellow Elementary School
Environmental Studies 203: Environment, Culture, and the Human Experience
(Connie Chiang)
Students enrolled in this course considered ideas about nature from several perspectives and explored how human perceptions have created both sustainable and unsustainable relations with the natural world over time. The course partnered with four agencies and students completed seven different service learning projects including creating a citizen's guide to brownfields; researching public participation in the brownfield redevelopment process; designing of a web page on the history of the Bowdoin Outing Club; conducting oral histories of BOC alumni; developing of an interpretive trail at Morris Farm; developing curriculum for a local alternative high school; and proposing LEED certification for all Bowdoin construction projects
Community Partners: Bayside Neighborhood Association, Bowdoin Outing Club, Morris Farm, Sustainable Bowdoin
Environmental Studies 241: Principals in Land Use Planning
(Kristina Ford)
In order to better understand the physical principals of land-use planning and the legal and socioeconomic principles that underlie it students interviewed residents from 12 mid-Coast communities to develop an inventory of regional rural resources including recreational trails, open spaces and other areas of value to the region. The groups then evaluated each of the communities' comprehensive plans and ordinances to determine the level of protection afforded these spaces through local regulation.
Community Partner: Sagadahoc Rural Resource Initiative, Midcoast Council for Business Development and Planning
Environmental Studies 391: Troubled Waters: Fishing in the Gulf of Maine
(Anne Hayden)
Two students partnered with The Island Institute to help organize and run a one day workshop on cod research and management in the Gulf of Maine. They are currently preparing the workshop proceedings which will be available in late May.
Community Partner: The Island Institute
Geology 267: Coastal Oceanography
(Ed Laine)
Geology 267 students partnered with Friends of Casco Bay to understand how the oceanography of the Gulf of Maine and of Casco Bay may influence the health of Casco Bay. Students worked on two projects during the course of the semester. The first project analyzed an extensive set of data the Friends of Casco Bay had collected over a 12-year period using a technical graphing program, Ocean Data View. Students also completed a Current and Water Quality Analysis of Quahog Bay in early spring. The goal of this project was to develop and test a method for simultaneously measuring water currents and water quality in Quahog Bay. The project served as a pilot project for FOCB, who will follow up with more extensive data collection this summer
Community Partner: Friends of Casco Bay
History 247: Maine: A Community and Environmental History
(Sarah McMahon)
This semester, two students were engaged in a trial service learning project: creating an online research project about Brunswick for local eighth grade students to use as part of the Maine History curriculum. They designed three locally-oriented historical problems, located primary documents that can be uploaded onto a website, and constructed a guide that sets up a historical problem for students to research and analyze. The community goal of this endeavor is to give eighth graders an opportunity to "do history." Pedagogically, the hope is that the team process of designing a research project will help to prepare History 247 students as they embark on their own research projects.
Potential Community Partner: Brunswick Junior High School
Music 331: Advanced Topics in Caribbean Studies
(Joanna Bosse)
In order to better understand the relationship between musical expression and collective identity formation, including such issues as the role of music in the construction of class, race, nation, and gender, students created documentary movie projects about some aspect of Caribbean music. One topic covered in the course is the overwhelming and problematic role of the tourist industry in educating US citizens about life in the Caribbean. The documentary projects, which were directed towards a public television viewing audience, were created with the goals of correcting, or at least complicating the one-dimensional quality tourism promotes about the region, and perhaps to provide pedagogical tools to Maine public school teachers for use in their classes.
Project made possible with help from the Center for Cultural Exchange and the Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project (ILAP)
Sociology 220: Class Labor and Power
(Joe Bandy)
Addressing course themes, students conducted research to aid agencies with specific projects and developed presentations and/or worked to raise awareness of local issues. Projects included assisting in developing several tools that affordable housing advocates could use to assess the problem in the midcoast area; researching how social security and proposed Presidential reforms may affect working people; reading through policy reports and distilling them into one-page policy briefs; conducting a local public opinion research project on perceptions of homelessness, homeless shelters and affordable housing; researching sources of funding and developing grant data for a Lifeskills Wellness program; and assisting with the development and advertising of Bowdoin College's kNOw Poverty Week.
Community Partners: United Way, Maine AFL-CIO, Maine Center for Economic Policy, The Tedford Shelter, MidCoast Hunger Prevention Program, The Community Service Resource Center (Bowdoin College)
Sociology 310B: Current Controversies in Sociology
(Joe Bandy)
Focusing on current controversies and public sociology, two students completed need assessment projects at local agencies. The students worked to understand their community partners as 1) a basis for understanding future career paths they want to take, 2) a basis for understanding issues of great importance to public sociology, namely environmental sustainability, community development, and poverty assistance for Lots to Gardens, and the causes and solutions to sexual violence for SASSMM. Both papers incorporated publicly oriented sociological research to understand the orientation of their community partner, and they reflected on how their community partners could add to student growth by providing practical and critical insight into important social problems.
Community Partners: Lots to Gardens, Sexual Assault Support Services of MidCoast Maine