Announcing the Civic Agency Institute, Nov. 11-12, 2010

 

Read the newest blog post about the Civic Agency Institute here.

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We are pleased to announce the Civic Agency Institute in Washington, DC, November 11-12, 2010. The Institute will be co-hosted by Harry Boyte and Dennis Donovan of the Center for Democracy and Citizenship. We will begin the official program on Thursday, November 11th. We will end the program at 2:00 PM on Friday, November 12th. This means you should be able to fly out as early as 4:00 PM on Friday without missing any programming. The Civic Agency Initiative seeks to further develop and operationalize the concept of civic agency. The goal of this initiative is to produce a series of national models for developing civic agency among undergraduates and to disseminate those models broadly throughout American higher education. For more information about the Civic Agency Initiative, please visit our website or wiki.

To register for the Institute and reserve your hotel room for this excitinginstitute, please contact Cecilia M. Orphan.

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Hotel Information

 

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Hotel Information:  Please read carefully

 

AASCU has negotiated a rate of $169 at the Marriott Residence Inn, located at 1199 Vermont Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20005. This hotel is a short distance (0.6 mile) from the AASCU offices. You will be able to walk to AASCU’s 1307 New York Avenue location. The hotel cut-off date to receive this conference rate is Wednesday, October 13^th. Breakfast at the hotel is included in the $169 rate.

AASCU operates tax-free in Washington, DC and as a courtesy to our members, we will be making all hotel reservations and hotel rooms will be tax-free as well. In order to receive the tax free benefit, AASCU will pay for your hotel room in advance and then invoice you for your stay after the meeting.

You will need to provide a credit card for incidentals upon arrival to the hotel.

PLEASE NOTE:  If you must cancel your hotel room, please notify AASCU by Noon on the day of your scheduled arrival. If you do not notify us in time, you will be charged for a one-night stay. You will not receive the conference rate if you call the hotel directly to make your room reservation. You must make your reservations through AASCU by filling out the attached registration form or by calling Jill Gately, Meetings Manager, at 202-478-4668.

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Program Highlights

 

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• Presentations by Civic Agency campus representatives about their work
• An exploration of the importance of Public Work led by Harry Boyte
• Community Organizing 101
• Facilitated discussions by Harry Boyte and Dennis Donovan of the Center for Democracy and Citizenship
• Information about how to join the national Civic Agency Initiative
• Information about how to launch a Public Achievement project on your campus
• An opportunity to develop a campus project plan

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For questions about the program, please contact Cecilia Orphan (orphanc@aascu.org) or 202-478-7833.

 

For questions about the hotel, please contact Jill Gately (gatelyj@aascu.org) or 202-478-4668.

See you in DC in November!

eCitizenship Institute: November 4-5, 2010

The American Democracy Project (ADP) is pleased to announce the 2010 eCitizenship Institute, taking place November 4-5, 2010, in Detroit, MI. This is an opportunity to learn more about eCitizenship and to become formally involved in this growing and exciting ADP initiative. The three-year initiative, now in its second year, is a partnership of AASCU and the Center for the Study of Citizenship at Wayne State University. The participating institutions are working together to study how emerging technologies, particularly social networking tools, support and facilitate civic and political engagement. The main goal of the initiative is to provide insights and strategies for engaging undergraduates in the use of social networks and technology tools for civic purposes. Those strategies can then be broadly employed to prepare undergraduates for lives of engagement and participation. For more information about the initiative, please visit this website.

Registration

Please contact Cecilia M. Orphan to receive a registration form for this exciting institute.

Agenda

The program begins on Thursday, November 4 with breakfast at 7:30 a.m. and concludes at 2 p.m. on Friday, November 5^th (in time for people to make flights home).

Organizing Your Team

We strongly encourage campuses to bring a team to the Institute. On Friday of the Institute we will be offering structured team time for campuses to begin planning for their on-campus work. A team ideally consists of one student, a member of the campus’s IT team, and a faculty member/administrator. If it is not possible to bring a team, single representatives are, of course, welcome. Teams have been proven to make more dynamic change on campuses, though, which is why they are encouraged.

Hotel Information

The conference is being held at the Westin Book Cadillac.  We have negotiated a special room rate of $129 plus 15% tax for single and double rooms at this historic hotel.

To make a reservation and receive the conference rate, please call 1-888-627-7150 and refer to the AASCU eCitizenship Group. Please note than an early departure fee of $75 will apply to the guest charges if the guest does not notify the hotel of the early departure the day before arrival.  Also, if you must cancel your room please do so one day before your scheduled arrival.

Check in time is 3 p.m.  Check out time is Noon.

The hotel cut-off date to receive this rate is Friday, October 8^th.  After that date you will be subject to the hotel’s regular rates.

For program information contact Cecilia Orphan at orphan@aascu.org or call 202-478-7833.

For hotel and other logistical information contact Jill Gately at gatelyj@aascu.org or call 202-478-4668.

What people said about the first eCitizenship Institute.

“I felt motivated to learn about, understand, and use these tools that were taught to us to become more a part of the world I live in and help others do the same. Every ADP/ AASCU conference I have attended has left me feeling more informed, motivated and empowered in knowing that everyone can do something – and that these social media tools are free and only a click away.” Joy D. Britt, Grad Student, University of Alaska, Anchorage

“After attending the ecitizenship institute last November, I found new ways to use social networking tools to engage and inspire fellow students to become more involved in our College’s community. I realized that social networking could be used to mobilize people into action quicker than other mediums. It was an experience that has changed my view of being a citizen and has opened new avenues to express myself as an active member of my community through social networking tools.” Lauren Rohrer, Student, Richard Stockton College of New Jersey

See you in Detroit!

An Empowering Heritage – Democracy Colleges and Freedom Struggles

Wednesday, February 24

3:00 PM–4:00 PM eastern
2:00 PM–3:00 PM central
1:00 AM–2:00 PM mountain
12:00 PM–1:00 PM pacific

Registration details will be posted to this website on Tuesday. Please save the date of this exciting webinar.

Single Site Connection: $169 USD
Single Site Connection AND archived CD from the program: $253.50 USD
Archived CD (or on-demand): $169 USD

The webinar series, Agents and Architects of Democracy aims to spark discussion and action on the future of higher education and its roles as architects and agents of thriving democratic societies. Join us as we explore the history and future of civic agency, and the theory and practice of empowerment, as an organizing theme for higher education.

Acknowledging higher education’s complex past, this second webcast in the series, “An Empowering Heritage,” looks at forgotten histories useful for today’s change efforts: the ways in which colleges and universities have sometimes functioned as “free spaces” where people develop civic power and confidence. The webcast will explore the roles of higher education in the freedom movement, and look at the history of land grant “democracy colleges.”

Could a renewed focus on agency deepen civic engagement in higher education to include not only activities — programs, centers, and courses – but also a democracy identity, institutions deeply grounded in their communities and regions and “filled with the democratic spirit,” as former Harvard president Charles Elliott once described his university? Will such an emphasis generate new forms of public scholarship, new approaches to engaged teaching, and partnerships which help communities to gain control over their future in a global environment? What are policy and social change strategies to foster empowering cultures and practices in higher education?

This fast-paced one-hour program will offer an opportunity for questions and answers during the program. Do you have a question now for presenters that you recommend they address during the program? Email your question to webcast.question@scup.org.

Handouts will include the presenters’ PowerPoint images and other supportive articles for your reference.

Participants will be able to:

• Develop ideas for how to ground current civic change efforts in their institutions’ traditions and history, rather than present them as a revolutionary new departure
• Learn lessons and strategies from the past for creating and sustaining free spaces – empowering cultures – to counter today’s negative trends
• Understand current democracy building efforts in a larger and inspiring context that generates hope and a sense of possibility
• Gain an introduction to a more complex and nuanced “third angle of vision” about higher education, neither simple celebration nor simple critique

Who Should Attend This Webcast?

• Those involved in the community engagement strand of higher education (service learning leaders, participatory action research groups, etc).
• The engaged teaching/student as collaborator networks, and groups like AAC&U which have made this a major emphasis
• Those interested in questions of public scholarship — Imagining America institutions, leaders in disciplines (sociology, history, geography MLA, political science, Social Science Research Council) who have been pushing for “public sociology,” “public history, etc.
• Those concerned about the trends toward higher education becoming a private good, not a public good.

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Moderator:

Harry C. Boyte is founder and co-director of the Center for Democracy and Citizenship now at Augsburg College, and a Senior Fellow at the Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota. For more than twenty years, Boyte has helped to organize and direct action research partnerships and projects aimed at developing practice-based theory for what works to engage citizens in public life. Boyte is also the founder of Public Achievement, a civic and political education initiative that aims at developing the civic agency of young people now in hundreds of communities in 23 countries. Boyte has authored eight books on democracy, citizenship, and community organizing.  In the 1960s, Boyte was a field secretary for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the organization directed by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Harry Boyte is married to Marie Louise Ström, a democracy educator with Idasa, the African democracy organization.

Presenters:

Scott Peters Scott Peters joined the Department of Education at Cornell University in August of 1999. He earned his Ph.D. in Educational Policy and Administration (1998) from the University of Minnesota. Before his graduate study, Peters` served for ten years (1984-1993) as Program Director of the University YMCA at the University of Illinois, where he worked with students, faculty, staff, and community members on a variety of civic education and community development initiatives.  Dr. Peters` research program is centered on a critical examination of the social, political, and cultural identities, roles, purposes, and work of academic institutions and professionals. A key theoretical and practical problem his research seeks to address is that of the dilemma of the relation of expertise and democracy in the academic profession.

A second presenter is being secured. As soon as we have confirmation we will post their biographical information.