Saint Joseph's College - ME
EN-10: Community Partnerships

Saint Joseph's College began collaborating with the Riverton School in support of their challenges over 6 years ago. The Riverton School community works diligently to balance the needs of a diverse transient student population with Maine’s requirement for academic accountability, but they struggle with a high rate of student mobility, increasing numbers of English Language Learners, and low socioeconomic status. Pre-service teachers (in SJC's education majors) provide hands-on science lessons every year, and Dr. Janice Rey, the driving force behind the partnership, regularly writes grants to fund supplies. The College also collaborates with the state coordinator of Project WET and Poland Spring in Poland, Maine to offer Make a Splash Day annually on campus for Riverton students. The program is designed to ensure that students experience interactive learning stations emphasizing water behavior and conservation. Pre-service teachers facilitate all of the activities, while Poland Spring finances all materials, food, and transportation.

The newly-created Institute intends to serve as an innovation hub, promoting sustainable agriculture and local economic development. Its mission focuses on New England’s food security goal to build the capacity to produce at least 50% of the food for all New Englanders by 2060. The Institute serves as a supporting organization for the development of Maine’s food and beverage industry by providing critically needed workforce training, facilities for scale-up of home operations, business development, and collaboration of other supporting organizations. The Institute will support the industry with a physical and digital space designed to teach skills to a diverse community of learners, generate new business for local farms, and foster business development in the regional food system. A primary goal is to develop a network of farmers from across the Lakes Region and marketing and technology professionals throughout Greater Portland. By bringing these key entrepreneurial forces together with critical infrastructure and resources in a hub focused on achieving regional agricultural goals, the Institute will provide critical support to economic growth in Maine.

The Sustainable Communities Initiative (SCI) is a year-long interdisciplinary program sponsored by the College that partners faculty, staff, and students with a local community to engage in real-world problem solving aimed at increasing the level of sustainability in its broadest sense, from environmental action and economic viability to social integrity. Each semester, municipal partners work with the College to identify relevant projects for community-based learning courses. The program is beginning its 4th year and is currently exploring new towns to partner with.