Students to build energy-efficient window inserts in ongoing service learning effort
Over the next week, nearly 60 graduate and undergraduate students in economics, engineering, ecology and environmental sciences, and other majors will volunteer their time to build and wrap window inserts for 21 area community members to help conserve heat in their homes this winter.
The project is an outgrowth of a partnership developed last fall between students in a University of Maine pilot course in economics, the Rockland-based nonprofit Window Dressers and the Unitarian Universalist Society of Bangor.
UMaine students in the pilot service learning course, taught by assistant professor of economics Sharon Klein, helped build more than 350 inserts last fall, aided by students from Brewer High School and members of the Old Town Rotary Club. This fall, Klein is coordinating another service learning effort, integrated with her two existing sustainable energy courses, in partnership with Daniel Dixon, UMaine sustainability coordinator; Daniel Mistro, a graduate research assistant in the School of Economics; and Stanley Peterson, a teacher at Old Town High School and former student of Klein.
Beginning Saturday, Oct. 29, a team of 54 undergraduates and five graduate students will take turns putting together and wrapping 226 window frame inserts at the Unitarian Universalist Society of Bangor. Community members receiving the inserts signed up through Window Dressers. Nearly a quarter of the inserts go to low-income families for $1 per insert.
Members of the public who want to help students put together and wrap window inserts can sign up online.