Scraping together enough money to attend Miami University is frustrating for many students, but the Office of Community Engagement and Service now offers a chance to earn financial support. The only catch: community service.
The Midwest Campus Compact Citizen-Scholar Fellowship Program (M3C) is a 10-state initiative led by the Wisconsin Campus Compact under National Coordinator Kim White.
White said the purpose of the M3C program is to implement institutional change, but also to involve specific students in their communities through service and provide money to lower the cost of their tuition and student loans.
According to White, who also administers the Wisconsin Campus Compact, the M3C program is one that targets students who are first generation or low-income residents of campuses.
"It's an AmeriCorps program and actually, this program particularly targets first-generation or low-income students, so they can be either one of those," White said.
Once this criterion is fulfilled, the student may then contribute 300 hours of community service in the community of their school in order to receive a money reward from the AmeriCorps Educational Program.
"They do 300 hours of community service over a year and then they get a $1000 educational award stipend," White said. "So they don't actually get the cash themselves - the money can either go toward their tuition, or their student loans after they graduate."
Monica Ways, director of the Office of the Community Engagement and Service, said her office recently began offering the M3C program to eligible students.
"This year, for the first time, we are running M3C," Ways said. "The grant that our office wrote and was funded, will allow eight such students to participate in the program."
According to White, the community service the student must engage in can be any service to a school or to any non-profit organizations. For instance, the student could participate in environmental services in their local community. For the service hours to count and be documented, the student must register with their campus coordinator.
"It has to be community service fulfilling a community need," White said. "They have to go through a campus coordinator. Miami has a program so they would have to go through the campus coordinator, so they would have to go through Monica (Ways), and they would have to actually enroll in the program."
As for any students already applied in the program, Hailee Gibbons, an AmeriCorps Vista and campus fellowship coordinator in the Office of Community Engagement and Service released the information that she has already put together the first M3C cohort group.
"With the eight spots there are six fellows and two mentors," Gibbons said. "Right now we're just working within the America Reads tutor population. I have already picked all the applicants and the current cohort right now has two juniors, five sophomores and a first-year."
Gibbons said there are high expectations of the bonds within the cohort group since the fellowship will meet weekly to talk about what's going on in their lives and within their service. This bond will then create a support system along with allocating financial help academically.
Both Ways and Gibbons expect the program to expand in coming years.
"Our hope is to grow the program over time, but this is the first year," Ways said.
Gibbons added, "I am really enthusiastic about it and I think it's going to go really well, and I really think we'll be able to continue expanding on it in the future."
