Courtesy of Sam Cogswell

Founded in 2021, the Student Community Action Network (SCAN) is a volunteer-based internship program for 12 Bowdoin sophomores and juniors to work at local Midcoast nonprofits or in local Maine government offices. Throughout the semester, students work virtually or in person on capacity building projects to strengthen the mission and effectiveness of their organizations.

This semester’s cohort includes placements at United Way of Mid Coast Maine, Bowdoinham Community Development Initiative, Merrymeeting Food Council, Tedford Housing, ProsperityME and more.

Sam Cogswell ’11, associate director of the McKeen Center for the Common Good, assists in leading the program. She explained that the program was developed out of a need for connection with the broader community after the Covid-19 pandemic.

“The SCAN program was started back in 2021, and it was actually a program for sophomores who were coming to campus for the first time after the weird [Covid-19] year,” Cogswell said. “We wanted to find a way that they could get connected with our office.”

Besides the growth of the program to provide funding for more students, she highlighted another change the program has undergone since its founding four years ago.

“One thing that’s also changed about the SCAN program over time is that students originally would go out and find their own internships,” Cogswell said. “Now we have an application system where community partners … get to select the student who’s going to be a part of the program for the fall semester. So it feels like it meets community needs and has a little bit more structure than it originally [had] back in 2021.”

Cogswell also emphasized the importance of students working within the greater Midcoast community.

“Students are working in a really wide variety of places. We’ve got a bunch of people in Brunswick. There’s a placement in Bowdoinham and Bath and Lewiston and Portland. I think that it can really be useful for students to get off campus and interact with the community,” Cogswell said.

She praised the valuable career experience students gain from working within a nonprofit.

“One thing that’s unique about the SCAN program is that we focus on the capacity building aspect of the nonprofit experience. A lot of students have had experience doing direct service work like putting food on the shelf or tutoring a child, but a lot of students haven’t always had that experience of seeing how it works operationally and how nonprofits think about their structure,” Cogswell said.

Cogswell noted that the SCAN program helps students build more of the organizational and administrative skills behind nonprofit operations.

“Over the course of the semester, I can see their understanding of how the nonprofit functions but also how the sector works together and how nonprofits have a unique ecosystem of partnership to address really complex community challenges,” Cogswell said.

Abigail Woldgebriel ’28 is a member of this semester’s cohort, working at Mid Coast Hunger Prevention. She emphasized the personal connections she made throughout the fall working at the food bank run by the nonprofit.

“I think the most rewarding process for me was getting to see a lot of the same people a lot, so it was a relationship. And, of course, it was fun. It was nice to be a bit more personal,” Woldgebriel said.

Woldgebriel also discussed how the support from the McKeen Center was crucial to her experience.

“I like how Bowdoin has a lot of opportunities for service. You can do anything you want by speaking or volunteering on your own. But I liked how [SCAN] was so structured [and had] that education aspect of it too. I liked it being a little more formalized, and I also like the idea of a cohort, so I could talk to people about my experiences and not be alone,” Woldgebriel said.

She highlighted how the program taught her about the realities of working in nonprofits.

“It was fun to learn a lot more about nonprofits, even though I wasn’t really thinking about it as a career. I thought it was still good to know in my experience,” Woldgebriel said.

This Friday, the McKeen Center will host its first “SCANposium” from 2:30 to 4 p.m. in the Shannon Room in Hubbard Hall, where students, faculty and community partners can view posters sharing work done by the students this semester.