Outgoing KIDS Consortium President Outgoing KIDS Consortium president and founder Marvin Rosenblum (left) with incoming President Dr. W. Bumper White, Professor at UMS, Lewiston-Auburn College.

KIDS Consortium is pleased to announce the election of USM, Lewiston-Auburn College Professor W. Bumper White as its new President of the Board of Directors. Dr. White succeeds the Founder and long-time President of KIDS Consortium, Marvin Rosenblum of East Boothbay.

Based in Auburn, KIDS Consortium helps transform classrooms and communities through an award-winning educational model that has touched more than a quarter-million students to date. KIDS (Kids Involved Doing Service-Learning) assists teachers, administrators and community partners as they work with K-12 students to identify, research and address real community challenges - an approach known as service-learning. KIDS Consortium, founded in 1992, is a nonprofit organization that serves more than 40 school districts in Maine and throughout New England.

KIDS Consortium Executive Director, Fran Rudoff, said, "the organization is honored that Dr. White has agreed to assume this leadership role. His considerable experience in the field of teacher education will be of great value to KIDS Consortium as we work to engage more K-12 schools and institutions of higher education in service-learning." White is a tenured faculty member at the University of Southern Maine, Lewiston-Auburn, and is the Program Coordinator of the Collaborative Learning And School Success (CLASS) teacher education program. The CLASS program is a collaborative college-school partnership and a professional development school (PDS) model committed to the concept of the simultaneous renewal of the Auburn and Lewiston school districts and of teacher education at USM/LA. In addition to his administrative responsibilities, he also works with pre-service students and in-service teachers out in the schools, and teaches many different courses and seminars in education. Dr. White lives in Durham with his wife Ann Marie Bartoo and daughter Emily.

In the late 1980's, Rosenblum of East Boothbay worked with municipalities across Maine to encourage broad-based citizenship participation in the comprehensive planning process. His community planning work led to creation of the KIDS Consortium service-learning approach and incorporation of the KIDS Consortium in 1992.

Rosenblum, who will continue to serve on the KIDS Consortium Board of Directors, has 55 years of experience in education, job training, and human resources, and has taught all levels from kindergarten through graduate school at such institutions as UCLA's Laboratory School and Stanford's Graduate School of Education.

Locally, he spent ten years in the Boothbay school system, serving as principal and eighth grade teacher at Boothbay Center School, also serving as boys' and girls' basketball coach, boys' baseball coach and girls' softball coach. He then became the Guidance Director at Boothbay Region High School before receiving a Ford Fellowship.

He is credited with establishing the Boothbay Region Student Aid Fund, the Boothbay Region Art Foundation, and was active in the local association serving retarded children.

About the leadership transition at KIDS, Rosenblum says, "the organization has grown in leaps and bounds over the past decade, and I step down knowing that we have one of the best educational models in the world."