ADP joins American Commonwealth Partnership focused on Civic Mission of Higher Education

The American Democracy Project is proud to join the American Commonwealth Partnership, a collaborative national effort to advance the civic mission of higher education. In the guest blog post below, longtime ADP partner and civic learning and democratic engagement advocate Harry Boyte describes the initial partners, goals and efforts of this partnership.

I encourage American Democracy Project students, faculty, staff and community partners to consider submitting short videos or ideas for guest blog posts for the social media campaign that Harry outlines below. I’d love to see ADP efforts spotlighted in this endeavor to ensure that higher education is preparing informed, engaged citizens for our democracy and embracing our role as stewards of place. Please email me directly at domagalj@aascu.org with any materials you’d like me to pass on to the new DemocracyU website that will be launched next week as part of these collaborative efforts.

All my best,

Jen

Jen Domagal-Goldman, National Manager, American Democracy Project

American Commonwealth Partnership For Democracy’s Future: A Coordinated Effort to Reclaim the Civic Mission of Higher Education

By Harry Boyte, Director of the Center for Democracy and Citizenship

American colleges and universities attract millions of students from across the world. As Anthony Grafton writes in New York Review of Books (11/24/11), “at every level…dedicated professors are setting students on fire with enthusiasm for everything from the structure of crystals to the structure of poems.” Yet Grafton’s review of recent books with titles like Academically Adrift and Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given up on the Meaning of Life, also tells a sobering tale. These books detail declines in teaching, detachment from communities, and re-branding of higher education as a ticket to private wealth not public contribution. “The hordes of forgotten students who leave the university…uninspired by their courses, wounded in many cases by what they experience as their own failures, weighed down by their debts, need to be seen and heard.”

On January 10^th, the American Commonwealth Partnership (ACP) will hear these students. ACP is a broad alliance of higher education, P-12 schools and educational groups, philanthropies, businesses and others, part of a coordinated effort with the White House Office of Public Engagement, the Association of American Colleges and Universities, and the Department of Education, to begin a year of activity called, “For Democracy’s Future – Reclaiming Our Civic Mission.” ACP’s role is to “deepen the civic identity” of educational institutions, moving engagement from activities to strong commitments to education as a public good.

The American Commonwealth Partnership, launched on September 7^th in New York at a meeting hosted by Nancy Cantor, Chancellor of Syracuse University, grows out of the American Democracy Project, as well as work with the National Conference on Citizenship, The Democracy Commitment among community colleges, Campus Compact, Imagining America, NERCHE, the Anchoring Institutions Task Force and other engagement efforts. It stresses the role of colleges and universities as stewards of place and anchoring institutions within diverse local ecologies of civic learning. ACP was organized over the past six months by Harry Boyte working with Cantor and other presidents, including Brian Murphy, President of De Anza College, M. Christopher Brown, President of Alcorn State University, Tom Ehrlich, President Emeritus of Indiana University, Freeman Hrabowski, President of UMBC, Paul Pribbenow, President of Augsburg College, and Judith Ramaley, President of Winona State University. It is coordinated by the Center for Democracy and Citizenship, a long time partner with ADP in its Civic Agency Initiative.

The launch will showcase “champions of change” across higher education and among P-12 partners, including leaders in Public Achievement, a youth civic empowerment initiative, from Western Kentucky University and Northern Arizona University. The launch will also release a report, Crucible Moment – Civic Learning and Democracy’s Future, which AAC&U and its advisors have prepared for the Department of Education. The report calls for civic learning to become a “pervasive ethos,” not a marginal activity.  ACP activities will unfold in the 150^th anniversary of the Morrill Act which created land-grant institutions, once “democracy colleges.” ACP champions the democracy spirit for all of education. Three initiatives are already underway:

Social Media Campaign:  Working with JumpStart Productions, producer of NOW on PBS, ACP is developing a social media presence on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, beginning December 7^th, with the DemocracyU website on CIRCLE, the youth civic research center. ACP will sponsor a national competition of student/faculty-produced short (5-min) videos, each profiling a civic initiative. Coaching for video teams will be provided using an interface on YouTube. Finalists will be chosen by a distinguished panel, and online voting will determine the winner. ACP will leverage connections made through the project to cultivate vigorous dialogue on its website and through social media platforms. The social media will also support the deliberative dialogue campaign.

National Deliberative Dialogues: ACP will organize deliberative dialogues in partnership with the National Issues Forums and the Kettering Foundation on higher education’s role in American society, building on research by Public Agenda, about public opinion on higher education. The deliberative process will include an easy to use toolkit; online and onsite training and work with schools and associations in advance; a designated time period in Spring 2012 for discussions, and many ways to report back the results to the nation.

Civic Science and STEM Education: Planning is underway with the Delta Center at the University of Iowa, Molly Jahn with the College of Life and Agricultural Sciences at U-WISC and former deputy undersecretary for education at USDA, and Joel Thierstein, Senior Advisor on STEM initiatives at DoED, for a Civic Science STEM initiative, promoting curricular and co-curricular reform that combines STEM and civic agency education.

For a more detailed description of the goals, aims and contexts of the American Commonwealth Partnership, take a look at this Word document: For Democracy’s Future Star Diagram.

We the People Interview Series: UMBC’s Catie Collins

By Jen Domagal-Goldman, National Manager, American Democracy Project

As part of the Civic Agency initiative, we are conducting a special “We the People” interview series. In this series, we interview intriguing people with different perspectives on the “We the People” phase of our work in ADP. This is the fifth of many interviews that will be included in this series.

Catie Collins is the President of the University of Maryland Baltimore County’s (UMBC’s) Student Government Association (SGA). In her spare time, she is working to complete her senior year studying Psychology, English Literature, and TED Talks.

American Democracy Project (ADP): How did you get involved in the American Democracy Project?

Catie Collins (CC): I have the incredible luck of being a part of UMBC’s flourishing legacy of civic agency work.  The idea of civic agency is really becoming embedded in both our SGA’s culture, and the culture of UMBC as a whole. Our involvement in the American Democracy Project has really been key in helping to achieve this shift. Attending the American Democracy Project Conference in June 2011 was one of my first acts in office!

ADP: Tell us how you got involved in SGA?

Catie Collins, SGA President at UMBC

CC: In my first year at UMBC, I remember feeling frustrated and powerless. I felt like a cog in the wheels of the university, helpless to change anything, expected to play my role as a student and nothing more. That turned out to be a very large assumption – and a false one – which a friend in SGA soon corrected. They challenged me to step up and create the change I wanted to see myself, rather than waiting for someone to swoop in and save the day. My curiosity was sparked – this was an SGA that didn’t just play politics, it didn’t just play the hero – it worked with students to help them create change and feel true ownership of their campus.  It’s this mission that led me to join SGA, and to eventually run for President.

ADP: What does civic agency and the “We the People” movement mean to you?

CC: Civic agency is such a tricky thing to really define – it’s something often best shared through experience. The definition that really resonates with me is this idea of really breaking down the roles we perceive ourselves to be in – professor, student, administrator – in order to really engage each other authentically. I’ve learned to engage people as partners, to really get to know them as real people, and that has led to far more effective impact than I would have ever expected.

ADP: You’re a student member of the national steering committee of the new American Commonwealth Project – a partnership among higher education institutions and associations, the White House, and federal agencies including the U.S. Department of Education, seeks to further the movement of colleges and universities as agents and architects of democracy – what role do you see yourself playing and what do you hope the project accomplishes?

CC: I’m both excited and humbled to find myself a member of the American Commonwealth Project steering committee. My hopes for both my role and the project are centered on the same goal. I would love to see this project work as a platform for a stronger student presence in the conversations surrounding civic agency. I feel that my contribution to this project will largely be work in facilitating that connection.

ADP: How do you see yourself expressing your civic agency after your graduation in spring 2012?

CC: It’s actually been my very experience with civic agency that has completely shaped my post-graduation path.  My involvement has helped me discover within myself a deep-rooted passion for education. I care so deeply about creating systems of education that promote true engagement, both in terms of the material and in terms of one’s civic engagement. I envision investing my future in exactly this kind of work.

ADP: All our best to you, Catie!

To read more about UMBC’s civic agency work, read this previous blog post, or this one.

We the People Interview Series: Interview with Stephanie South

As part of the Civic Agency initiative, we are conducting a special “We the People” interview series. In this series, we interview intriguing people with different perspectives on the “We the People” phase of our work in ADP. This is the fourth of many interviews that will be included in this series.

A Colorado native, Stephanie South was born and raised on the beautiful Western Slope and finished a B.A. in political science at the University of Northern Colorado in May 2010. She minored in journalism and legal studies and was actively involved on campus as a member of Student Senate, Greek life, the President’s Leadership Program, and the Honors Program. She also studied abroad in the south of France. During her third and final year of college, Stephanie focused her efforts largely on her undergraduate thesis and recently had a portion of her work published as “Making the Move from Shouting to Listening to Public Action: A Student Perspective on Millennials and Dialogue” in the Journal of Public Deliberation.

Stephanie’s collegiate experiences were both broad and diverse, instilling in her a passion for service, Middle Eastern politics, civic engagement, community, and travel.  She spends her free time taking photos, planning trips, working out, and reading Time magazine.  Stephanie is currently exploring overseas volunteer opportunities with hopes of pursuing a year of service post-Fellowship. She eventually plans to attend law school and is extremely interested in advocating for social justice issues.

Stephanie South

American Democracy Project (ADP): Why were you interested in civic engagement?

Stephanie South (SS): In my three years at the University of Northern Colorado, I was a part of the University Honors Program. During my second year of college, the Center for Honors, Scholars, and Leadership, which houses the program, was in the midst of a transition and beginning to shift its focus to incorporate civic engagement more fully. The then director of the University Honors Program, Kaye Holman, and the director of the Center, Michael Kimball, encouraged me to explore the concept of civic engagement in higher education for a possible thesis topic, but at the time, as I was wrapping up classes and preparing to move to Washington, D.C. for the summer, I was not fully enthusiastic about identifying the subject for my thesis, which I had been putting off for a good month or so.

However, before I got on the road for D.C., Mike gave me a copy of Harry Boyte’s The Citizen Solution: How You Can Make a Difference to read on the 25-hour road trip; not long after starting it, I was hooked. In the months that followed, I worked with Mike to narrow my topic, and somehow he convinced Harry to sign on as an external advisor, which I was both honored by and thrilled about.

My passion for civic engagement and my interest in the nearly yearlong project I undertook for my University Honors Program thesis were a direct result of Kaye’s and Mike’s willingness to mentor and push me and, of course, Harry’s book.

ADP: What did you learn about public work as a way to shift Millennials from “shouting” to “co-creation”?

SS: Boyte’s work was extremely influential not only in my writing but in my own life as a student. I found his take on democracy—his public work philosophy—a perfect expression of how I thought humankind should function, of how I thought students at a university should function. I remember a piece Boyte once wrote where he quoted a student he had interviewed, and the student said something about an essential missing piece in the lives of Millennials, a disconnect from their communities.

As a student who was actively and perhaps overly involved in my campus, I did not identify with this, but I saw so many students around me that did. They were simply passing through their college experience, and for most of them, despite popular opinion, it was not the result of apathy. It was disengagement perpetuated by a broken system of higher education. The break I speak of, although I know there are more, is in regard to how students are taught in the classroom and what they are taught about. Students I conducted focus groups with, as well as interviewed one-on-one, were not being engaged by teachers talking to instead of speaking with them. They were tired of one-way conversations had by PowerPoint. They were disappointed with the lack of real world application and context they were learning with their subject matter.

It began to dawn on me that students were being treated like consumers with all sorts of propaganda simply being shouted at them. What they really wanted and what America really needs is for students to be treated like citizens; for students to become stakeholders in their own lives and communities, to translate their professional purpose into one that exists for public benefit, to become problem solvers and co-creators and co-producers of public goods.

ADP: What did your experiences and what you learned at UNCO have to say about the broader movement for civic empowerment and educational change?

SS: If American colleges and universities want to get back to their roots and truly make higher education about more than getting students in and out the door with a degree as fast as possible, then they must answer the call for community. Our institutions must work not only to educate students on how the collective can be created and on the power of it, but they must foster opportunities for the intentional conversations that allow community to thrive. And, if this generation, the Millennials, is to truly reach its potential and make a return to the commonwealth, then higher education must give them the proper instruction to be citizens. They must not only teach them how to utilize their collegiate experiences and chose career path to contribute to their communities, but they must empower students to do so by giving them a voice, and, therefore, a stake in the commonwealth.

However, this is a two-way street, and if higher education institutions are willing to give students the stage, students have to step of to the mic[rophone]. This conversation cannot be a monologue; both parties have to add their voice to the exchange. As a result of my thesis and the conversations I had with students, professors, and administrators during the course of my research, I believe that higher education reform in the sense that I see it is entirely possible if both university professionals and students commit to making the move from “shouting” to “listening.”

State of the Student Union: Reclaiming Student Unions as Civic Spaces

By Cecilia M. Orphan, National Manager, American Democracy Project

What if there was a physical place on every college campus available for people to do public work? What if this place provided resources for students and university leaders to organize for positive change on campus and in their communities? What if this place educated students about civic life and engaged them in political activities?

Lately I have been thinking about the physical structures on university campuses and their various uses. Perhaps it’s because I am reading a book that criticizes many of the non-academic structures on campus (Higher Education? How Colleges are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids). The argument in the book is that universities should be places for academic inquiry – not student recreation – and that university budgets should only allocate funds to structures and activities that reinforce education. While I believe there is some merit to this argument, I think that there is an important role for university student unions to play in fostering a healthier society and in educating informed, engaged citizens for our democracy. On far too many college campuses, though, student unions are only meeting the recreational needs of students and are doing very little – if anything – to enhance campus civic life.

I remember my early encounters with my first university’s Student Union (at Oregon State University). It houses a large emporium of food vendors, the student book store, a bowling alley, a recreation facility, and a ballroom with large, ancient couches. I spent a lot of time in the student union, usually studying or taking naps between classes, buying food or university merchandise, and – being in touch with my blue collar roots – bowling. I  was also able to attend many political events in the union and learn about civic opportunities in my community thanks to OSU’s dedication to using the union as a hub of civic life. The stated mission of OSU’s student union is below:

At the heart, our organization is about building community.  We believe that community contributes fundamentally to the quality of life of individuals and campus society.  We have a responsibility to create community that facilitates civic engagement and interaction.  The Memorial Union is an integration of three main units and goes about creating community in different ways: the Union through physical space, Student Leadership & Involvement through Events and Programs and Student Media through student run publications.  Within each of the three main units there are several subsections.

From what I learned during my limited research on the history of student unions on American colleges campuses, my civic experiences with the student union are somewhat unique. OSU’s student union falls in line with a long history of student unions whose primary purposes are to serve as recreational facilities for students.

The first American student union, Houston Hall, was established at the University of Pennsylvania in 1896 and was modeled after the University of Oxford’s Student Union. Houston Hall houses UPenn’s student government and, as is outlined in its constitution, ”the object of Houston [Hall] is to draw together students, officers, and alumni of all Departments of the University in a wholesome social life, and to provide for them suitable amusements and recreations.” Indeed, the founders hoped that students would pass “their leisure hours in harmless recreation and amusement” (taken from UPenn’s website). Though Oxford’s Student Union was used as a model for Houston Hall, what is interesting about Houston Hall’s stated purpose is that it is somewhat of a departure from the foundational purposes of Oxford’s Student Union.

According to its website, Oxford’s Student Union can be traced back to the 13^th Century and was created to help ease tensions between students of various nationalities who were fighting on campus. Such fighting at times resulted in student fatalities. The modern mission of Oxford’s Student Union is “to represent Oxford University students in the University’s decision-making, to act as the voice for students in the national higher education policy debate, and to provide direct services to the student body.” As you can see from reading its mission and visiting its website, Oxford’s Student Union pays close attention to civic life.  Since the establishment of the first student union at UPenn, almost every American university has followed suit and created student unions. Unfortunately, the original political and democratic purpose of Oxford’s Student Union is not often mimicked throughout this network of student unions.

Most American student unions are home to their Student Government Associations (SGA). Far too often, though, SGAs more closely resemble popularity contests than student-run democracy. In an ADP Blog post about student governments, Yasmin Karimian of the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) wrote about her experience as student government president. In her blog post, Yasmin helps us think about a new role for student governments as agents and architects of democracy. The students at UMBC reformed the SGA into an organization on campus that works with students to solve community-based problems. To this end, Yasmin believes that “it is the time for student leaders to re-envision the function  of student governments across the nation. Imagine a world where we are all seen as creators of our own communities… Student governments could be the stepping stones to that world.” I couldn’t agree more. I believe that along with reforming student governments around the country, it is also time for university leaders to reclaim their student unions as civic spaces on campus. While I don’t believe that the recreational aspects of the student union should be totally abandoned, I do believe that we should use this space on campus to promote civic engagement.

How can we reclaim our student unions as civic spaces? Nancy Kranich, in her ADP Blog post about Academic Libraries as civic spaces, provides the rough outline for a road map about how this might be done. Arizona State University also offers an interesting example of how student unions may be used as hubs of civic life on campus. Students at ASU are working to “shape the mission and vision for the [Student] Union [as a] future hub for programs related to community service, service learning, AmeriCorps, high impact careers and social entrepreneurship.” Student unions could also serve as the hub of student leadership in civic engagement initiatives on campus.

Would you like to reclaim your Student Union as a civic space? Below are some ideas about how you might do this.

• Meet with your SGA president and learn about his or her hopes and dreams for the space. Challenge the president to think about how the student union may be used not only to entertain students but to engage them in civic life.
• Host student civic events in the union.
• Work with the SGA to establish a Democracy Plaza in the union so students might engage in ongoing conversations about democracy and pressing issues of the day.
• Host voter education and registration outreach activities in the food court.
• Host a Community Outreach Resource Fair in the union that will allow students to learn about community engagement opportunities.
• Establish a room in the student union devoted to public work and use this room for student training on community organizing and public work.
• Host political debates in the union.
• Host town halls and forums on important issues impacting your local community.
• What else? Please use the comments section below to add your ideas about how we might reclaim student unions as civic spaces.

For us to be serious about preparing students as civic agents, it is important for us to leverage every resource on campus to this end. Harnessing the often untapped civic power of student unions is one way we might create an institutional culture that fosters student civic development.

We the People Interview Series: Interview with Cheryl McClellan

As part of the Civic Agency initiative, we are conducting a special “We the People” interview series. In this series, we interview intriguing people with different perspectives on the “We the People” phase of our work in ADP. This is the third of many interviews that will be included in this series.

Seated: Rebecca Hamlin, Molly McInnis, Kayla Krebs, Heidi Austin Standing: Schyler Novak, Cheryl McClellan

Cheryl McClellan has worked in a broad range of educational venues, from serving as an HIV/AIDS counselor and advocate, working with people recovering from traumatic brain injuries, training people in First Aid and CPR, to working with children in her own son’s classroom.  Cheryl is passionate about education and special education in particular.  She is currently a graduate student at Augsburg College in Minneapolis, Minnesota and is working toward teaching licensure in special education with a dual emphasis in learning disabilities and emotional and behavior disorders (EBD).

During her time at Augsburg, Cheryl worked with Harry Boyte and Dennis Donovan, our two key partners in the Civic Agency initiative. Through this experience, Cheryl was able to lead a transformation in how special education is taught at Augsburg. What follows is her inspiring story.

Cecilia M. Orphan (CMO): Why did you join Public Achievement?

Cheryl McClellan (CM): For me it wasn’t about joining Public Achievement (PA). It was about joining an initiative that could better serve students often marginalized by our education system.  As I learned more and more about the initiative, I became really excited about PA as a model for transforming how we meet the needs of students with emotional and behavior disorders.  I also saw the potential of PA to shift the ways in which all students engage with each other and their communities.

CMO: What changes have you seen as a result of your participation in PA?

CM: I recently had to ask myself the same question – in preparation for a brief speech at Augsburg – and as I was thinking back over the past academic year, I was surprised by the amount of change I have experienced.

I didn’t know what to expect when I agreed to participate in the project.  All I knew was that I wanted to be a part of the Special Education department’s pilot program that was attempting to re-envision the way we teach students labeled Emotional Behavioral Disability (EBD). PA seemed to offer a new way to engage these students and integrate them into the fabric of their schools and communities. So often these are the students that are tucked out of sight in basement classrooms or in the furthest corners of schools.  They may go to school, but they are not part of the school culture. PA offered a way to change this, and it did.

I expected the students to develop new skills and uncover individual strengths, and they have done so.  Leaders and visionaries have emerged from this group of students often labeled as “behavior problems.” The students have announced their presence to the school community and redefined what it means to be in an EBD special education program.  The school culture is shifting. Students from general education are working with students from this special education program. Staff have recognized and celebrated the work of our PA students. Our PA students have become more visible as members of their school community.

Our PA group is also transforming culture and expectations outside of school. I am reminded of a recent conversation I had with a public school teacher over lunch. As I described our PA project aimed at installing a solar thermal system to heat the school’s water supply, this teacher stopped me and stated, “Middle school students are working on solar energy?” She continued, “Wait, you mean kids with EBD?”  This exchange sums up the subtle beliefs many have about students labeled EBD. Our pilot project is challenging these assumptions.

Personally, PA has changed the way I see myself as a future teacher.  I entered Augsburg planning to focus on learning disabilities as my specialty area. I could not envision working with students having emotional and behavior disorders. In some ways I bought into the stereotypes that many have about these students. This PA project has challenged my assumptions, and as a result of my experience with this PA project, I have added EBD to my teaching licensure. I now have a new understanding of civic engagement as a teaching tool and philosophy capable of bridging the divide between special education and the greater community.

I also know that PA has changed how I see myself in my non-teaching roles. I know I am a better citizen, better community member, and better parent as result of being part of this project. I refuse to accept any less of myself than what I ask from my students, and I am finding my public voice and civic commitment as a result.

CMO: What changes have you seen in your fellow college students?

CM: We all have benefitted from the hands-on experience of weekly coaching.  Our weekly PA meetings provided opportunities to put educational theory into practice and to meld teaching practices with PA philosophy.  We have watched – and learned from – the magic that can occur when students are excited and engaged their learning.

We have all gained confidence, not only in our skills as future teachers but also as future colleagues.  Unlike many PA projects, this one involved co-coaches. We have had to learn to build and maintain collaborative relationships. In the end, the biggest change I’ve seen is that we have transformed from being scared students to seeing ourselves as professionals.

We the People Interview Series: Interview with Jason Lowry

As part of the Civic Agency initiative, we are conducting a special “We the People” interview series. In this series, we interview intriguing people with different perspectives on the “We the People” phase of our work in ADP. This is the third of many interviews that will be included in this series.

Jason Lowry is a Master’s student in the Sustainable Communities Program at Northern Arizona University (NAU). For the past two years, he has been a Public Achievement coach and the coordinator of Public Achievement at NAU, a leader of the weatherization and community building action team and an apprentice organizer in the Northern Arizona Interfaith Council. During his graduate studies he is researching strategies for integrating Public Achievement and community organizing into schools.

During this time of great political unrest in the state of Arizona, Public Achievement and Civic Agency have helped provide citizens in Flagstaff and beyond with the hope that they can work together despite political and ideology differences to solve community-based problems and create cultures of civic agency and engagement. What follows is a synopsis of his inspiring story as well as advice for faculty and students about how they might use a “We the People” ethos to create positive change in their own communities.

Cecilia M. Orphan (CMO): Students at Northern Arizona University have been working to make “We the People” a reality. How are they doing this?

Jason Lowry (JL): NAU is seeing a huge surge in its student engagement throughout campus. Students I work with are at the forefront of organizing in the Flagstaff and NAU communities around immigration work, Public Achievement (the student democratic engagement and leadership initiative) in two different elementary schools, and as well as extensive student and community organizing around energy efficiency and renewable energy.

I am also engaged – and have been engaged for a couple of years now – in Public Achievement and the energy efficiency organizing. These two pieces have been some of the most powerful and empowering experience for me and the other students I work with. We have worked with elementary schoolers on food drives, community gardens, new books for their old library, and community health programs. We have also organized to build support and energy for the creation of a $2.7 million dollar energy efficiency revolving loan fund for the Flagstaff area!

CMO: Have you noticed any changes in the students you are working with? Do they conceive of themselves and their communities any differently after engaging in public work?  

JL: I feel a difference in the students. They come in with wide eyes yet they leave seeing possibility. Many of the students I work with are now assuming leadership roles within the project and creating innovative organizing strategies on their own. At first this was a slow process that required gently nudging the students forward. Now I can stand back as they take projects by the horns. For many students, organizing on the ground and seeing tangible results has helped them feel that they can and are making a difference. Subsequently, many are planning to stay engaged in their communities for years to come.

These students are reviving my hopes for Arizonan democracy by stepping up to the plate and asserting their leadership in a democratic way. Even though the situation is grim with budget cuts to the universities, attacks on immigrants, and a continued reliance on unsustainable energy sources, students are embodying the idea of ‘We the People’ and making their community their own. They are tired of waiting and are finding meaningful ways to get engaged and seeing possibility for change in places I would not have ever looked.

CMO: Have you noticed any changes in yourself because of this work? If so, what kind of changes?

JL: Wow, I absolutely have. First and foremost, I have a renewed faith in people and our communities. After seeing so many people come together to work for humane ends and understanding that they are the ones that will make it happen, it has rekindled my belief that people, when they work together for a common goal, can and do accomplish great ends.

I have also begun to see many seeming crises as opportunities for engagement. Where I once saw the issues at hand as limiting, I know see them as opportunities and I understand at some level how to work to make the change.

CMO: How might we communicate the “We the People” spirit to students around the nation?

JL: Students are tired of politics as usual. They are tired of being written off as disengaged and apathetic. It seems as though many of them just don’t know where or how to begin. The spirit of “We the People” has to be talked about as it relates to possible opportunities for organizing or what is already going on.

The message is simple. What we have won’t work. We need something new and we can’t wait for others to fix it. Let’s organize and make something happen understanding this is a lifelong endeavor, not a onetime fix.

CMO: How might we use social media tools to help build the “We the People” movement?

JL: Hmm… social media is not my forte. However, I know it can be a very powerful tool to augment the work we are doing on the ground. Too often people see social networking tools and technology as the cure-all for the problems we are facing. I would caution that the use of social media tools need to be connected with that relationship and community building that face-to-face organizing provides. One without the other is greatly limiting. But social media can make organizing efforts more united and broader in scope as we share information of what is going on in our own communities and quicker to react.

Social media tools can also create powerful public stages by translating local organizing efforts into a larger context of what’s going on in our states, country, and the world. I believe that these tools will play a key role  in helping the “We the People” movement gain ground and will also help local organizing efforts find energy and a sense of possibility.

CMO: What advice would you give faculty members who are hoping to awaken this same civic spirit in their own students?

For me, this type of student civic spirit comes from a few places. First, find student leaders on your campus. John Paul Lederach[1] writes about critical yeast; those people that are able to expand energy and engagement throughout their communities and spaces. Find these students and mentor them in the art of democratic engagement and public work.

Second, give them the reigns and let them take charge. One of the main differences I have seen between those groups that are really engaged and those that are not is that successful faculty provide guidance but let the students run the show. I think the Industrial Areas Foundation’s Iron Rule is important here: Never do for others what they can do for themselves.

Lastly, help them find possibility and the skills to make things happen. If we don’t help them form a broader vision, our efforts may lead to a continuation of the status quo. Don’t push them that way, just sew the seeds of possibility and try to nurture them the best you can!

CMO: What advice would you give students?

JL: Find a mentor. Get to know someone, preferably many people that are passionate about something similar to your own interests and invest time and energy in creating a solid relationship. My own work has mostly turned into mentoring students through individual meetings, visioning, and strategy sessions. I believe mentoring relationships are so important because I know the effect they had on me personally.

Also, laugh a bit. Make fun of the hard times we’re in. Humor might provide a light of possibility that seriousness would otherwise snuff out.

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[1] Lederach, J. P. (2005). The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace. Oxford University Press, USA

We the People: Update on the Civic Agency Initiative

By Cecilia M. Orphan, National Manager, American Democracy Project

In light of the increased attention on the part of the Department of Education and many philanthropic organizations on college completion and workforce development, leaders in the American Democracy Project have found ways to tie their work to these goals. Most notable in this effort is the work of the Civic Agency initiative which seeks to develop and operationalize the concept of civic agency. Within this initiative, we deliberately emphasize the connection between developing a strong set of skills that are both civic and professional in nature. To describe this connection we use the phrase “21^st Century Skills.”

Participants at the 2010 Civic Agency Institute.

The notion of civic agency involves the capacities of citizens to work collaboratively across differences like partisan ideology, faith traditions, income, geography and ethnicity to address common challenges, solve problems, and create common ground. Civic agency requires a set of individual skills, knowledge, and predispositions. Civic agency also involves questions about institutional design, particularly how to constitute groups and institutions for sustainable collective action. Over the last three years of our partnership with the Center for Democracy and Citizenship led by Harry C. Boyte and Dennis Donovan, we have experimented with strategies for developing a strong sense of civic agency on the part of undergraduate students.

What we are finding is that the programs that produce strong civic outcomes for students also help prepare them for the workforce. Additionally, I have observed anecdotal evidence that suggests that students involved in Civic Agency activities tend to persevere to graduate attainment. While the data is still anecdotal, I’m sure that with a little more digging we’d be able to find actual statistics to support this evidence. This has helped leaders within the initiative demonstrate their commitment to degree attainment and workforce development while developing student civic skills.

The challenges facing American democracy are too complex and deep-rooted to rely simply on elected officials to solve. Indeed, we need a concerted search for solutions that involves everyday people, business leaders, students, non-profit leaders, and governmental officials. This realization gave birth to the new phase of the Civic Agency initiative called “We the People.” In the We the People (WtheP) vision, government is our meeting ground, partner and common instrument in addressing our problems and building a shared life. Students in the Civic Agency initiative are beginning to use their civic skills to foster partnerships with business and NGO leaders and local government with the goal of solving public problems. We launched We the People last fall and many of our campuses have started experimenting with strategies to encourage partnerships between students and elected officials.

What follows is a set of updates about We the People and Civic Agency.

Western Kentucky University (WKU) by Terry Shoemaker

Western Kentucky University’s Institute for Citizenship & Social Responsibility (ICSR) is dedicating the entire month of April to WtheP activities. These activities will include a “Wii the People” civically-minded bowling league, a four-week league that uses Nintendo’s Wii bowling game, that will gather together groups from around WKU’s campus including the Young Republicans, Young Democrats, African-American Studies, WKU Americans for an Informed Democracy (AID), and FeelGood to participate in civic dialogue on contemporary issues while Wii bowling. The league runs through April with the Wii Bowling Championship game set for April 12th.

The ICSR will also bring two guest speakers to WKU’s campus in April.  First, author, activist, and public theologian, Brian McLaren will speak to students and community members on “Being the Change” on April 11th.  McLaren, who published the book, Everything Must Change in 2007, has been instrumental in creating an emerging social justice initiative among evangelical Christians.  He will challenge WKU students to become change agents.

Second, Jon DeGraaf, co-author of Affluenza and National Organizer for Take Back Your Time, will be at WKU’s campus on April 28th. DeGraaf’s work on consumerism and society has been influential in recognizing over-consumption as a systemic issue in America. He will challenge WKU’s students to recognize their time poverty and consumerism, and imagine another way of being. In addition, ICSR will show John DeGraaf’s film Affluenza on April 14th. Third Tuesday Tea, ICSR’s regular monthly meeting to discuss contemporary topics with WKU students, faculty & staff, will be dedicated to the topic “Consuming Democracy.” This timely event will be a precursor to John DeGraaf’s visit and will bring energetic conversation to the topic.

Other organizations are also centering their events around the idea of We the People on WKU’s campus. A group of students will visit the Highland Research and Education Center in New Market, Tennessee. Another group is participating in a poverty/hunger simulation. Still another is working to cater all these events raising money for the Hunger Project.

For more information visit this website.

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University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) by David Hoffman

In the fall 2010, a third annual cohort of 30 students completed our Civic
Imagination and Social Entrepreneurship course, in which students work in groups to envision, develop and prepare to launch campus and community change projects. Among the projects developed in the class were an online networking space for campus activists, a campaign to discourage distracted driving, a program to inspire K-12 students with visits from collegiate scholar-athletes, and an organization dedicated to addressing incidents of injustice on campus.

We’re also in the process of developing an initiative tentatively entitled UMBC’s Civic Year. The concept is to deepen and make more visible UMBC’s support for civic agency through a year of themed activities, including courses, contests, art exhibitions, online discussions and community-building events.  These activities are likely to encompass recurring programs that might not otherwise emphasize civic agency, including research conferences, book discussions, service projects and speaker series. Our intention is that much like a successful Olympic games, this intense period of themed activities will produce lasting (civic) infrastructure improvements and make civic innovation and agency even more central to our campus culture.

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San Francisco State University (SFSU) by Gerald Eisman

Over the past two years, the Civic Agency project at San Francisco State University has centered around the development of a consortium of local universities who have partnered with neighborhood stakeholders (residents, city agencies, nonprofits, merchants, faith-based and secular community-based organizations) to co-create resilient communities – those rich in social capital and optimally prepared to respond to, and grow from, both short and long term challenges and opportunities.

Founded and coordinated by the Institute for Civic and Community Engagement (ICCE) at San Francisco State, the consortium, named the Neighborhood Empowerment Network University (NENu), serves as a hub for community-engaged scholarship in the Bay Area by facilitating connections among and between local academic institutions and neighborhood stakeholders in support of the larger NEN network. In order to facilitate those connections, NENu engages in three core activities:

1. recruiting and retaining academic institution partners and neighborhood stakeholders,
2. providing linkages to city agencies and other asset managers, and
3. providing the infrastructure to facilitate communications among all NENu partners.

Target neighborhoods (called Engaged Learning Zones – ELZs) are selected for focused NENu activities by the agreement of each of the three dimensions of the partnership – neighborhood leadership, city government representatives, and academic partners. Currently four ELZs are underway – in San Francisco’s Ocean/Merced/Ingleside (OMI) district, North Beach, Polk Street, Western Addition, and we hope to soon launch activities in the neighborhoods Northwest of Twin Peaks.

Initial activities involved stakeholder interviews, identifying assets, public forums, prioritizing issues, and directed action through service learning. Students in varied disciplines such as Urban Studies, Instructional Technologies, Geography, Art, Broadcast Communication, Public Administration, Marketing, Communication Studies and others have contributed to ELZ activities. University students are currently assisting in the development of inclusive online tools for neighborhood leadership development, research on indices for measuring community resilience, GIS mapping of community assets, cohort mapping of leaders and their organizations, and internships in the offices of city supervisors.

One immediate outcome has been the creation of a database of community service opportunities that will be shared by NENu universities to help direct students to community sites. The database will utilize contemporary social media tools on top of traditional listings of community organizations.

Of central importance to NENu is the development of bridging and bonding social capital in a city whose neighborhood demographics are both diverse and changing dynamically. The strength of these bonds will provide a platform for addressing a wide range of issues and help the city as it prepares its residents to respond to and recover from any natural disaster including, as predicted by geologists, a major earthquake in the next 20 years.

For more information about the Civic Agency initiative, please visit this website. For more information about We the People, please visit this website.

Tackling the Empowerment Gap

By Harry Boyte, Center for Democracy and Citizenship

One goal of “We the People” is to overcome the “empowerment gap” in education – affecting not only disadvantaged students but also, in different ways, all students, teachers, staff, families, communities, and school administrators – by creating empowering learning and teaching cultures. In this organizing work, Public Achievement, the civic education initiative many ADP schools are adopting, is a seedbed for democratic change in education and in the society.

Background

The phrase “the empowerment gap” comes from Sheldon Berman, superintendent of the Louisville Kentucky schools. Berman has called for a change in frame from the “achievement gap,” a narrow set of metrics on student success, to “the empowerment gap” (see “Tackling the Empowerment Gap,” Learning First Alliance, October 31, 2008; also attachment “The Empowerment Gap Versus the Achievement Gap,” Education Commission of the States, 2010).

Here is some of the base of research and theory building which buttresses a focus on the empowerment gap:

• A rapidly expanding body of research demonstrates that student success is best measured by broad indicators which assess how and whether students become empowered agents of their own education and lives, capable of shaping their environments. This view challenges narrow metrics of success (embodied in “The Achievement Gap”) in part for failing in their own terms, often widening inequalities. Students as empowered agents are equipped with habits and skills of deliberation, critical thinking, contextual thinking, complex reasoning, life long learning, collaborative problem solving, and productive action. Evidence from a variety of sources indicates that while students as empowered agents do well on tests and typically have high graduation rates and college attendance and completion rates, their path toward such success is far richer and more multidimensional than a focus on standardized testing allows; it is cognizant of students as “whole people,” with multiple talents and capacities and public as well as private, careerist motivations (see for instance Deborah Meier, The Power of Their Ideas; Hilary Swank, Freedom Writers, Bill Ayers, Teaching Toward Freedom; Annette Lareau, Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life; for parallels in higher education, Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, Academics Adrift, and Chronicle of Higher Education commentary from January 25, “Are Undergraduates Actually Learning Anything?”; Scott London, Doing Democracy: How A Network of Grassroots Organizations Is Strengthening Community, Building Capacity, and Shaping a New Kind of Civic Education);
• Tackling the empowerment gap widens the lens of where education takes place to include families, neighborhoods and a variety of community institutions and settings (Lawrence Steinberg, Beyond the Classroom: Why School Reform Has Failed and What Parents Need to Do; Nan Kari and Nan Skelton, Creating a Culture of Learning in St. Paul);
• Tackling the empowerment gap revitalizes the older mission of education for citizenship. In recent decades, this ideal has dramatically weakened as schools have lost connection to parents and communities and become understood as the path to private, not public goods. The Center for School Change has documented the disappearance of parent engagement from teacher education curricula (see appendix with George Mehaffy in Boyte, “Against the Current: Developing the Civic Agency of Students,” Change magazine, June 2008). Deborah Meier and Diane Ravitch famously found common ground about such developments (see the exchange in Education Week February 26, 2007, “Bridging Differences.”);
• Tackling the empowerment gap translates theory and principles drawn from community organizing into cultural, institutional and professional change in ways that build civic capacity and civic agency (see for instance Xavier de Sousa Briggs, Democracy as Problem Solving: Civic Capacity in Communities Across the Globe; Jeannie Oakes et al, Learning Power: Learning for Education and Justice, and Jeannie Oakes and Maurisa Sanders, Beyond Tracking: Multiple Pathways to College, Career, and Civic Participation; Dennis Shirley, Community Organizing for Urban School Reform; Clarence Stone et. al., The Politics of Reforming Urban Public Schools);
• The concept of public work, developed by the Center for Democracy and Citizenship and its partners over two decades and at the heart of Public Achievement, is gaining global recognition for its success in such translation (see for instance, Boyte and Kari, Building America: The Democratic Promise of Public Work,; also Boyte “Constructive Politics as Public Work,” forthcoming Political Theory).

“Overcoming the empowerment gap” is part of a larger We the People movement for democratic change in America. We the People joins efforts for civic renewal and political reform with educational reform. Education has often been seen as separate from the civic and political reform movements, but as James Madison once put it, “Knowledge will forever govern ignorance.  A people that mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power that knowledge brings.”

Put differently, without creating interconnections among what until now have been largely separate strands of change, it will be impossible to rebuild a culture of democracy that develops the civic agency of “We the People” to tackle the biggest challenges we face as a society.

Martin Luther King Day: Renewing a Spirit of Empowerment

I asked Harry to write about how AASCU campuses might use MLK Day as a launching point for “We the People” activities. Below is his description of how this might be done. Please watch for the release of the updated MLK Day Guide. I will send it out next week.

Harry writes an update to this blog post about the similarities between the Freedom Movement and the We the People movement. Read it here. –  Cecilia M. Orphan

By Harry C. Boyte, Center for Democracy and Citizenship

I am writing from South Africa after two days of remarkable conversation with students, staff, and faculty at the University of the Free State in Blomfontein. I was impressed yet again with the similarity between the spirit of empowerment that infused the freedom movement against apartheid in South Africa  and the same spirit in freedom movement which shaped me as a college student in the 1960s at Duke University.

Parallels extend to the present. The “We the People” movement for citizenship and citizen empowerment has parallels here in South Africa. “Students have a very strong desire to become effective agents of change,” said Moses, a student leader in the University of the Free State. Alan Boesak, a legendary religious leader during the anti-apartheid years now meets regularly with students at the University of the Free State. He echoed Moses’ thought. “I have not had such conversations with students about the need to make change the 1980s.”

With these conversation fresh on my mind, I’ve been thinking about how Martin Luther King Day might be more than a commemoration of past history or occasions for service projects. How can it become a time for laying groundwork for movement building that reclaims democracy as the work of the people?

Here are four possible activities in the vein of “We the People” movement building for Martin Luther King Day:

• Use the day to hold discussions, reading groups, forums, and debates on the deep and often overlooked themes of organizing for empowerment that infused the freedom movement, themes that are as fresh and relevant today as in the 1960s. Sources include Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” – note especially the conclusion, where King argues that the movement is calling the whole nation back to “the great wells of democracy dug deep” at the nation’s founding – what do you think he meant? Also Charles Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom (which describes the distinction between “mobilizing” and “organizing” in the movement); and Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Struggle (which tells the story of the remarkable Ella Baker, who went south with the charge to help create a sense of overall movement out of scattered islands of discontent).
• Hold a debate on “populism.”  In a conversation I had as a young college student with Dr. King in St. Augustine in 1964, told me he was a “populist,” by which he meant something very different than the way the term is used today to describe figures like Sarah Palin or disgruntled protestors like the Tea Party. King meant the movements for democratic change that stretched from the black and white farmers coalitions of the 1880s through the farmer and labor movements of the 1930s to the freedom movement of the sixties. The debate: what is populism?
• Martin Luther King and the freedom movement held a view of government very different than the “pro” and “anti” government politics of today. Government was a complicated but essential resource for the movement, that need to be challenged but also that required effective partnership building work. Sometimes politicians and government workers deeply disappointed us in the movement, when they turned a blind eye to brutality; sometimes (as with the case of Hubert Humphrey or elements of the Justice Department) they were partners who exposed injustices and worked with us to pass historic civic rights legislation. But the idea of “We the People” government was alive and well, and the civil rights movement inspired a generation of public policies called “maximum feasible participation,” in which citizens participated extensively in the design and implement of government programs. Find examples of “We the People” government still alive in your community, or discuss how they might be created between young people and government agencies.
• Public Achievement, the youth empowerment and organizing initiative which several ADP campuses have adopted, descends from the citizenship schools of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Explore the possibilities of Public Achievement as a living “citizenship school” in the tradition of the freedom movement for your campus. For more information about Public Achievement, visit this website.

For an updated version of the ADP/NASPA MLK Day Guide, please visit this website.

Question: What are you planning to do to celebrate MLK Day?

Dennis Donovan at Castleton College: The Frontlines of Civic Agency in Education

by bythepeopleaugsburg

Dennis Donovan conducted a training at Castleton State College in late October

Dennis Donovan conducted a training at Castleton State College in late October

“Castleton College has all the ingredients to become a higher education ‘democracy demonstration’ site for us and a leader in Public Achievement and the We the People movement,” said Dennis Donovan after his visit to the American Democracy Project Civic Agency Initiative school in Vermont.

Over the course of three days in October, Donovan conducted trainings and workshops for Castleton students, faculty, administrators, and community members. In the campus-wide event, titledInstitutionalizing Civic Engagement through Organizing, participants learned to “understand and distinguish between three ways of conceptualizing democracy and what it means to be a student, faculty, or community leader, and also began to practice community organizing skills.”

Castleton College first became involved in civic engagement through the leadership of its Academic Dean Joe Mark in the 1990s and eventually began sending a core group to the American Democracy Project’s annual conferences on “educating citizens” from 2003 onward. In 2008, Castleton was invited to join the American Democracy Project’s Civic Agency Initiative, which “seeks to further develop and operationalize the concept of civic agency” by “producing a series of national models for developing civic agency among undergraduates.”

The concept of civic agency involves developing the capacity of citizens to collaboratively solve problems. It entails a marked change in culture to adopt “practices, habits, norms, symbols, and ways of life that enhance or diminish capacities for collective action.” Castleton is unique in that as opposed to having one center or project designed to spread concepts of civic agency, its focus is infusing ideas into the whole campus.

“The institution is designed with so many opportunities and experiences that students will naturally bump into things,” says Academic Dean Joe Mark. “The college will never demand outright that people do civic agency, as this approach doesn’t work. Civic agency is not a graduation requirement — we want it ubiquitous, but not mandated.”

And ubiquitous it is. Concepts of civic agency have been incorporated into Castleton’s orientation practices, RA program in campus dorms, student government and other student groups, curriculum on service learning, education department curriculum, and interactions between faculty members, as well as Castleton projects with the broader community.

“Castleton has made a conscious effort to ‘graft’  civic agency concepts onto a lot of different programs to create culture change and a tipping point,” says Dean of Students Dennis Proulx. “The goal of Dennis’s training was to unite all of the grafts and expose bigger themes and it worked.”

Changes are already afoot in Castleton’s work with the Slate Valley Teen Center and partnership between the athletics department and a local elementary school. There has been a greater shift in thinking to considering the teens and elementary students as “co-creators” within these two initiatives, and allowing them to have a greater participatory effort through use of the Public Achievement model. People are getting excited.

Academic Dean Joe Mark also noted the progress of the student government after Dennis’s visit. Ryan Badinelli, the treasurer in Castleton’s student government, was first exposed to civic agency from attending an American Democracy Project conference and did not know what to expect. He describe civic agency as changing both Castleton and himself.

“The college has grown in prestige, academics, diversity — growth from community engagement and the idea that everyone has the ability to succeed,” says Baldinelli. “In the push for civic agency, students are beginning to realize that Castleton is there for them. Dennis Donovan was able to bring more understanding to people about what is going on in this movement. People need to meet Harry and Dennis, who have powerful ideas.”