FARMINGTON -- For nearly a year, Maine students knocked on doors, sat hunched over pages of voter lists, made thousands of phone calls to strangers, and drove candidates through rural neighborhoods and down long dirt roads.

Every day, for the past two months, young Republicans and Democrats at the University of Maine at Farmington met with their peers to plan campaign strategies. They also volunteered at their county political headquarters.

Several are students in James Melcher's Practical Politics class, and their volunteer time was also required homework. The professor of political science teaches this class during election years, and he makes campaign work a requirement.

"You choose the campaign with which you will be involved. You should pick just one campaign or party so as to be more deeply involved, and more importantly, a specific campaign effort," Melcher told the students at the beginning of the semester.

"Choose a campaign in which you believe and for which you will be willing to work for a minimum of 10 hours a week."

Many of Melcher's students started the semester after their party caucuses in February, and many were already veterans of the political process.

Tyler LeClair, a junior, worked for Sen. Susan Collins' campaign. LeClair's classmate, Keith Mahoney, R-Farmington, ran a challenging campaign against incumbent Rep. Janet Mills, D-Farmington, for her House seat in the 89th district. A junior at UMF, Mahoney received 1,434 votes, and Mills received 2,807 votes.

LeClair started in politics in the eighth grade, and he said he was sure he'd be running for office in the future. He was recovering Thursday from an exhausting schedule of knocking on doors and passing out literature in Franklin County. He had started as a poll watcher in Farmington at 8 a.m. Tuesday but stayed awake nearly all night, watching returns.

LeClair also worked for Angela Courchesney, R-Jay, a UMF senior and fellow member of the College Republicans. Courchesney challenged Paul Gilbert (D-Jay) for an open seat formerly held by Ray Pineau, D-Jay. Courchesney didn't win but polled respectably; she received 1,418 votes, and Gilbert received 2,732. Courchesney had been an outreach coordinator and vice-chairwoman for the UMF College Republicans; executive director of the state's College Republican Chapter; and a member of the UMF Student Senate and Franklin County Republicans.

Ethan Wiley, a junior, worked for candidate Ann Woloson, D-Belgrade, who challenged incumbent Walter Gooley, R-Farmington, in Senate District 18.

"I wrote a couple of letters to the papers, and did some public relations work, and I did doors, too," Wiley said. "I worked on a bunch of campaigns."

Wiley said what impressed him the most was meeting people and hearing some of their stories. On many of his door-to-door visits, he listened to concerns about the state government budget woes, the cost of fuel to heat their homes and the overall economic malaise.

"A lot of them were really worried about how they were going to make ends meet and how they could afford health care," he said. "There were a lot of the same stories."

Melcher said the latest statistics showed that 80 percent of Maine voters went to the polls or voted absentee. Many of them were students who had become committed Republicans, Democrats and Greens, often running for office or working with campaign staffs.

Another of Melcher's alumni, Obama For America organizer Kelley Smith, was willing spend months eating fast food, sleeping a few hours each night, and organizing crowds of eager volunteers swarming the Democrats' small office space on Broadway.

Melcher's students were required to keep journals and present a discussion of their campaign experiences. They had to submit a six-page analytical paper, including discussion of activities and a strategic analysis of the campaign results. A second five-page paper researched their findings on youth participation in elections.

Ultimately, Melcher said, they all agreed with former Speaker of the U.S. House Tip O'Neill's observation that "All politics is local."