About Us

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“If you want happiness for a lifetime – help the next generation.”
(Chinese Proverb)

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Why We Do It

The opportunities Montana Education Partnership facilitates enable students to connect what they learn in the classroom to their adult lives. Montana Education Partnership is focused working with educators and students to strengthen 21st century communication, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, cultural awareness, and problem solving skills. These skills will make Montana’s students sought-after, competitive professionals in a global economy.
Montana Education Partnership believes in a school community learning approach to education that cultivates student’s inspiration and aspiration and prepares our young citizens to be responsible and engaged in public life.
At the same time, Montana Education Partnership always designs learning opportunities in partnership with the local community. Montana Education Partnership believes it is up to us, in collaboration with the leaders of tomorrow, to make sure that service remains part of our national spirit and that all of us are connected to one another as citizens. We must ensure that when faced with challenges, Americans can and do rise together to meet them.

What We Offer

Guided by a fierce commitment to community service, Montana Education Partnership connects and consults with partners to:
  1. Provide resources for students to present to civic groups, engage stakeholders, and recruit adult advocates and champions.
  2. Enable students to receive academic credit for their service, and establish pathways for students to earn college degrees in education or health related fields.    
  3. Provide or fund service-learning professional development workshops.
  4. Support teachers’ efforts to make curricular connections to service-learning projects, and students’ project management leadership skills.
  5. Provide mini-grants to fund student-driven service-learning projects.
  6. Use young people’s service to meet corporations’ social responsibility goals.
  7. Cultivate youth philanthropy.
  8. Leverage technology and existing opportunities to standardize and scale up best practices.
  9. Highlight best practice in school-business partnerships.
  10. Establish or enhance after school programs that spark and use young people’s civic interests to reinforce learning goals, instill the spirit of adventure in learning, support healthy behaviors, and strengthen community.

Who We Are

Heather Margolis, Executive Director of Montana Education Partnership
Heather Margolis is the Executive Director of Montana Education Partnership, a non-profit education organization in Bozeman,Montana. Montana Education Partnership works with school districts, communities, foundations, public and private sector to inspire academic achievement in Montana’s youth and unlock their full potential as contributing members of a democratic society.
Heather Margolis has nearly two decades of experience working in the field of education, youth development, and national service. Heather is an AmeriCorps alum and has her undergraduate degree from the University of Colorado Boulder, studied at Oxford University and has her Masters in Education from NYU’s Steinhardt School of Education. After teaching in New York and Philadelphia, Heather left the classroom to work for City Year Greater Philadelphia. As the Director of Education, Heather trained corps members to provide in school and out of school academic support and facilitate service-learning programs with 16 after-school sites and 32 in school partners. Heather worked with City Year National to develop City Year Whole School Whole Child training model.  In 2005, Heather moved to Washington DC taking on a new role as the Director of Strategic Initiatives for the National Service-Learning Partnership at Academy for Educational Development managing the State Farm Good Neighbor Service-learning Initiatives, the training and launch of the State Farm Youth Advisory Board who would be responsible for granting five million dollars annually and the W.K. Kellogg Service Learning Emerging Leaders Initiative.  In 2009, Heather and her family relocated to Helena, Montana.  Heather currently serves on the Holter Museum of Art Board of Directors, the co-chair of the Montana AmeriCorps Alumni, and is also ServeNation Montana’s State Director.
Marc Morgan
Regional Manager, Denver Kids Inc, Colorado
Marc is the Regional Manager for Denver Kids, Inc.  Denver Kids Inc is an organization that helps Denver Public Schools students, grades K-12, who face the personal challenges of higher risk environments to successfully complete high school, pursue post-secondary options, and become contributing members of the community.
Former Managing Director of Program, Service and Recruitment, Marc managed the day-to-day operations and overall vision of City Year Denver’s program, service, and recruitment efforts.
Marc is an alumnus of City Year Greater Philadelphia ’03 and a member of the inaugural LEAD City Year class. Prior to joining the City Year Denver Start-Up Team as the Start-Up Director, Marc served as the National Director of Secondary School Initiatives at City Year Headquarters; in that role he led the development of City Year’s school-based service model Whole School Whole Child for the middle and high school environment.   Marc’s  experiences range from leading strong teams in school-based service, to planning and implementing annual training conference, to the development of training and tools to facilitate the corps member experience.
Marc received his B.A. in sociology, B.S. in administration of justice, and minor in information systems and statistical analysis from Penn State University. He also recently participated as a W.K. Kellogg grant recipient as an Emerging Leader for Service Learning with the National Youth Leadership Council and National Service Learning Partnership. He currently serves as an Adult Commissioner for the City of Aurora, Colorado’s commission on youth and founding board member for the Montana Education Partnership and the treasurer.
Laurel West Lennon
Middle School Humanities Teacher, The Key School, Annapolis, Maryland
Laurel received her Master of Arts degrees from Teacher’s College, Columbia University in in 2001, while teaching at an all-boy’s school in Manhattan where she also served as the Assistant to the Head of the Middle School.  In 2002, she moved to Washington, DC to teach at St. Patrick’s Episcopal Day School as a lead 5th grade language arts and humanities teacher, as well as serving on the Equity Committee and the Character Education Committee.  In 2008, Laurel began to teach at The National Cathedral School as an assistant librarian in the Middle and Upper School library.  She remained at the all-girls Cathedral School until she moved to Annapolis, Maryland to teach at Key School as a Middle School Humanities teacher.  She has spent the last two years volunteering for the Homeless Children’s Playtime Project and has photographed all the children in the program to raise awareness of the humanity of these children and their situations, while providing a visual piece for their annual fund-raiser.  Laurel is married to Colin and is the mother of two girls.