While academics is their top priority, many Bates students also take pride in and invest time in their extracurricular activities. With 29 varsity sports teams and around 100 recognized clubs on campus, students don’t have to go far to find and feed their passions. At Bates we appreciate the commitment students give to their extracurriculars, and we support them in finding creative ways to share their passions with off-campus communities. For some students, this means pursuing the leadership position of Community Liaison for their team or club. The role of the Community Liaison is to work with the Harward Center to plan and carry out a community-engaged event, activity, or program that meets a community-identified interest or need and aligns with the interests of the club and team. Recent community-engaged programs have featured the Bollywood Dance Team, the Men’s Soccer Team, the Video Game Club, and the Helicase Biology Club, among others.

When Lewiston Middle School teachers asked for a cross-cultural learning experience for their students earlier this semester, the Bates Bollywood Dance Team stepped up. Organized by their Community Liaison, team members visited the middle school to share the history and culture of Bollywood dancing and to perform for an enthusiastic audience of 150 students and teachers. At the conclusion of the performance many questions were asked by the eager students, who wanted to know more about how these college students got involved with the club and about their experiences in college more generally. Things went so well that future collaborations are in the works!

Another program that was kicked into play this semester is a partnership between the Bates Men’s Soccer Team and Longley Elementary School. Here again, the partner reached out to the Harward Center to ask for volunteers, this time to help encourage fair play and teamwork during the frequent spontaneous soccer games that characterize recess at the school. In response, the Bates team’s Community Liaison was activated, and a new partnership was birthed, with Bates players volunteering twice weekly, running skills and drills one day and helping to coach and referee games on the other.

While the two Community Liaison programs above began with community requests, sometimes college-community partnerships start with an idea from the college. When the Community Liaison from the Bates Video Game Club approached the Harward Center about engaging with local youth through video gaming, we contacted our long-time friends at the PAL (Police Activities League) Center in Auburn to see if the idea might be of interest. Together, the PAL Center director and the club’s Community Liaison have now executed two well-received programs bringing local youth and college students together for shared fun and conversation, first on the Bates campus and then at the Auburn Public Library.

Community Liaisons from Bates clubs and teams have also become go-to partners for the Harward Center as we organize or support field trips and on-campus activities for thousands of local school kids each year in an effort to inspire college aspirations. A case in point this year has been the Bates Helicase Biology Club, whose engaging presentations about DNA and chemical reactions were a highlight of the day for students from four Auburn elementary schools who spent an afternoon on the Bates campus under the auspices of the Auburn Community Learning Center.

From soccer to science and dance to video games, the Lewiston/Auburn community and Bates students find creative ways to share with one another their many interests and passions.