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SOUTH PARIS — Financial help is now available in a couple of forms to students accessing their college courses through the University College Center, the center has announced.
Students at the South Paris center can get some extra help buying books if they access the college’s tutoring support services, and those enrolled at the University of Maine at Augusta who use services in South Paris or the Rumford center are eligible for a scholarship that will help support their studies.
The Oxford Hills Community Scholarship Fund is giving students who access tutoring support two distinct times a $50 book voucher, up to twice per semester. The Tutoring Pays Off program hopes to motivate students to seek the support services they need to be successful in their course work through the University College center.
“I look at this as a real win-win for our students,” said Lisa MacDonald Cooper, director of University College at South Paris in a news release from the center. “Even better, I think it demonstrates how communities can invest in themselves. By using Oxford Hills Community Scholarship funds for students staying in our community and taking college courses, lowering a cost barrier, and encouraging active success strategies, we are encouraging the persistence needed to complete a degree. These are our community members, our neighbors we’re helping. I believe that comes back to us in the end.”
Another recently added scholarship source comes from a wider-based community effort through the non-profit development group Maine West, which is a partnership of local and regional organizations dedicated to addressing systemic rural challenges and enhancing community well-being in Western Maine, according to the release.
Cooper is a working member, and helped the group create the Western Maine Scholarship Fund, which was established at the University of Maine at Augusta in 2016 with a gift from the Betterment Fund and Maine West. The scholarship is available to UMA students attending the University College centers in South Paris or Rumford who have a minimum GPA of 3.0 and have completed a minimum of 24 credit hours (sophomore standing). Two $1,250 scholarships will be awarded each fall and spring semester the fund is available, according to the release.
Cooper, director of both the South Paris and Rumford centers, said she worked to establish the scholarship, “because it was regionally focused.”
She said the Maine West group “is an interesting blend of community partners developing ideas through increased collaboration across the economic, education, health and conservation sectors. The focus on cross-sector collaboration is a great approach to addressing many of the issues facing Western Maine. We see those issues play out in the stories of our students.
“The scholarship is a way of encouraging those students to stay with it, despite some of the challenges they face, and to be rewarded for their hard work,” she said.
Those who know students taking courses through University College should pass the word along, Cooper said. “That, too, will prove to a student that their community is behind their success,” she said.
For more information, call the South Paris center at 743-9322.
