Serving Students and Community
At Northern, faculty and students along with community partners pursue rich service learning experiences. These classes, designated as Academic Service Learning (ASL), are a readily-available opportunity.
Benefits for students include:
- working in teams, practicing collaboration, learning leadership and followership;
- demonstrating self-efficacy by helping to solve real-world problems;
- integrating classroom knowledge with community wisdom through reflection.
Benefits for the Upper Peninsula and beyond:
- community-identified needs are addressed;
- NMU grads more likely to remain after graduation, or return later;
- existing businesses are strengthened and new ones founded.
Benefits for faculty:
- greater student engagement and retention;
- more positive learning outcomes and course evaluations;
- in-depth relationships with community and regional partners.
Faculty Mini-Grants Available!
Academic Service Learning (ASL) is a long-standing tradition at NMU. Faculty who have tried it realize that the extra effort leads to demonstrably-improved student satisfaction. Students appreciate the meaningful high impact experiences and skills applicable to future careers. Potential employers value student ASL experience as they evaluate graduates.
To encourage the growth of ASL course offerings at Northern, Faculty Mini-Grants up to $750 per class per semester -- to defray expenses for students, faculty, and community partners -- will be available beginning Summer 2026.