Computer Science, Nonprofits and Service Learning

1 Celia Schahczenski, Montana Tech of the University of Montana, Computer Science Department, 1300 West Park Street, Butte, MT 50701 [email protected] Abstract  The nonprofit sector offers excellent database and software engineering projects for computer science undergraduate students. At the undergraduate level, academic collaborations with industry often fail due to differing goals and philosophies. Collaborations with the nonprofit sector have a greater chance of success, since the nonprofit sector and academia share commonalities: both deliver services, have long-term goals that are difficult to measure, and exist to serve an idealistic purposes – the creation of a better society. By involving students with nonprofit agencies we not only help the nonprofit agency better accomplish its mission, we strengthen student awareness that they can improve society and we encourage a sense of civic duty that we hope will last a lifetime.