What’s New with ADP? Summer 2015 Edition

by American Democracy Project on July 30, 2015

SAVE THE DATE

• #ADPTDC16 National Meeting in Indianapolis, Indiana June 2-4, 2016

ANNOUNCEMENTS

• 2015 Civic Engagement Award Recipients

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE BLOG

What We’re Reading 

• Wilderness and the Common Good-A New Ethic of Citizenship
  University of Wisconsin La Crosse political science faculty member Jo Arney has a new book out — Wilderness and the Common Good: A New Ethic of Citizenship (Fulcrum, 2015). Arney is one of the ADP faculty members leading our Stewardship of Public Lands 2015 faculty seminar as well as curating the emerging Stewardship of Public Lands AASCU National Blended Course. Read more here.

• New Report on the Health of State Democracies
  The Center for American Progress (CAP) released a new report about the health of state democracies.  At a panel discussion in early July, Delegate Alfonso Lopez (D-VA), former state senator Nina Turner (D-OH), political/election law attorney Dara Lindenbaum, and Senator Richard Katz (R-ME) shared their thoughts about the topic with moderator Michele Jawando of CAP. Read more here.

#CLDE15 Meeting in Review: Leveraging Academic and Student Affairs Partnerships to Advance Civic Learning & Democratic Engagement
Our recent 2015 ADP/TDC/NASPA Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement (CLDE) Meeting in New Orleans, La. brought together a collection of faculty, students, administrators, community partners and representatives from our national sponsor and partner organizations committed to advancing civic learning and democratic engagement through higher education. Collectively, we considered one of higher education’s civic missions: to act as stewards of the communities they inhabit as well as to prepare students to be stewards of their present and future communities. Read more here.

Examining Economic Inequality at SUNY Cortland
In June, SUNY Cortland, one of 30 campuses participating in our ADP/TDC Economic Inequality Initiative, launched a monthly series of lunchtime talks addressing issues of economic inequality. The goal of the initiative is to bring together the area’s campus and community members to study the relationships between economic inequality, public policy, business opportunity, social mobility and civic engagement. Members discuss issues that include student loan debt, a livable hourly wage, and poverty. Read more here.

AASCU Policy Publication: Partnering for Prosperity
The American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) is pleased to present Partnering for Prosperity: Advancing the Institutional and State Agenda Through an Effective Collegiate State Relations Program. The report reflects AASCU’s longstanding efforts in fostering optimal state relations and state policy enabling America’s public colleges and universities to fully serve the public good. Read more here.

Partners & Friends

• CIRCLE:

• CIRCLE’s Call for Guest Blog Posts on Impact Measures
• New Data & Report

• Free Publication: AAC&U’s Civic Prompts-Making Civic Learning Routine across the Disciplines
• New NIFI Issue Guide: “Bridging and Bonding – Creating Engaged Communities in a Time of Rapid Change”
• Deliberative Democracy Consortium: Civic Engagement and Democracy News

DATES FOR YOUR CALENDAR

August 1-6:  ADP’s 2015 Stewardship of Public Lands Faculty Seminar in Yellowstone
September 17:  Constitution Day
September 22:  National Voter Registration Day
November 3:  Election Day

#CLDE15 in Review

662 people, representing 205 colleges and universities as well as 41 other organizations, participated in #CLDE15.

Announcing the 2015 ADP Civic Engagement Award Recipients

AASCU’s ADP Honors Leaders with Awards for Civic Engagement at 2015 National Meeting

The 2015 AASCU/ADP Plater, Saltmarsh, and Burch award recipients: Michael Vaughan, Provost of Weber State University (Utah); Adam Bush, Provost of College Unbound; and Patrick Dolenc, Professor of Economics at Keene State College (N.H.), respectively

New Orleans, La.—The American Democracy Project (ADP), an initiative of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU), honored four outstanding leaders in civic engagement today during the 2015 ADP/TDC/NASPA Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement Meeting in New Orleans, La. Three ADP awards were presented: The Barbara Burch Award for Faculty Leadership in Civic Engagement; The William M. Plater Award for Leadership in Civic Engagement; and The John Saltmarsh Award for Emerging Leaders in Civic Engagement.

“We’re thrilled to honor these outstanding individuals whose work represents the richness of civic learning and democratic engagement taking place on our campuses and in our communities,” says Jennifer Domagal-Goldman, director of AASCU’s American Democracy Project. “The 2015 civic engagement award recipients’ work reflects the efforts needed to ensure that we in higher education are preparing the next generation of informed, engaged citizens for our democracy.”

The Barbara Burch Award for Faculty Leadership in Civic Engagement was established in 2014 to honor exemplary faculty leadership in advancing the civic learning and engagement of undergraduate students and advancing the work of AASCU’s American Democracy Project. Patrick Dolenc, the 2015 recipient of this award, is a professor of economics at Keene State College (N.H.). Dolenc has been engaged in ADP at both the campus and national level, and has successfully integrated civic learning and democratic engagement into his courses and broader work. Dolenc is the faculty chair of the AASCU Economic Inequality Scholars and played an essential role in establishing the new ADP/TDC Economic Inequality Initiative lead by teams from Keene State College and Mount Wachusett Community College (Mass.). The award’s namesake, Barbara Burch, provided extraordinary national leadership in the design, creation and ongoing development of the American Democracy Project.

Michael Vaughan, this year’s recipient of the William M. Plater Award for Leadership in Civic Engagement, is provost and vice president of academic affairs at Weber State University (Utah). Vaughan’s substantial and longstanding focus on civic engagement includes the establishment of a campus civic engagement center in 2004, which he has since expanded to include the larger Ogden, Utah community. Under Vaughan’s leadership, Weber State University fostered extensive curricular requirements around civic engagement and supported community-engaged scholars. He and Weber State have been consistently involved in ADP, both on campus and nationally. The award is named after William M. Plater, Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis’ (IUPUI) chief academic officer from 1987 through 2006. During his term at IUPUI, Plater oversaw the development of civic engagement as an integral part of the campus mission and as a defining characteristic of its graduates.

Lane Perry, Director of Service-Learning at Western Carolina University is also a 2015 Saltmarsh Award awardee.

The John Saltmarsh Award for Emerging Leaders in Civic Engagement was awarded this year to two recipients, Adam Bush and Lane Graves Perry. Bush is the chief academic officer of College Unbound and serves on the board of Imagining America, an ADP partner organization. Perry is director of service-learning at Western Carolina University (N.C.), where he is also an affiliate faculty member in the department of human services. “Both recipients are engaged in path-breaking civic engagement work that advances the deeply democratic purposes of higher education. We want to encourage more emerging leaders with their example,” says John Saltmarsh. The award was created in honor of John Saltmarsh, co-director of the New England Resource Center for Higher Education at the University of Massachusetts Boston, as a tribute to his dedication to nurturing the next generation of civic leaders.

The 2015 Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement conference was originally hosted by AASCU’s ADP as the American Democracy Project National Meeting.  Going forward, ADP and its partner organization for community college civic engagement, The Democracy Commitment, teamed up with NASPA – Student Affairs Professionals in Higher Education to strengthen and deepen the civic learning and engagement work that these associations are all committed to across their institutions—both public and private. Fostering academic and student affairs partnerships and collaborations across individual campuses, initiatives and associations is imperative to this mutual goal.

 

CLDE15: Friday afternoon Plenary Session features Ashé Cultural Arts Center in New Orleans

We’re pleased to announce our plenary session on Friday, June 5th from 5 p.m. – 6 p.m. featuring the Ashé Cultural Arts Center in New Orleans. Based around excerpts of two locally-developed theater productions that engage issues of education and equity, this plenary session focuses on creating campus and community collaborations that honor cultural practices and traditions of pedagogy and justice.

Please be sure to reserve your room at the New Orleans Marriott at the conference rate before Wednesday, May 13, 2015 by following this link.

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Learning through Listening:
Performance and Storycircles as Instruments for Community and Cultural Change
Friday, June 5, 2015 | 5 p.m. – 6 p.m.

In each performance, stewardship of place is at the forefront in both the content and in the development of its writing. The plays were developed through Storycircle methodology—a group facilitation process built around narrative and personal experience with longstanding traditions in African and African American cultural practices and community theater histories.

“Thirteen Lessons” is a story-theater work presented in episodes which are taken from oral histories and first-person testimonials of individuals caught in circumstances of illiteracy and others committed to working to help them obtain improved literacy skills. This play was developed in collaboration by AshÉ Cultural Arts Center and the Loyola University (La.) Lindy Boggs’ National Center for Community Literacy.

“Lockdown” paints a vivid picture of charter schools in post-Katrina New Orleans, La., staffed by well-meaning, but overwhelmed outsiders who eject youth for discipline violations when what the students need is support and understanding.

Following the productions, Carol Bebelle, Co-founder & Executive Director, Ashé Cultural Arts Center (La.) and Adam Bush, Chief Academic Officer, College Unbound will moderate a conference-wide Storycircle, asking participants to reflect and engage with both New Orleans and their own campus-community partnerships.

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CAROL BEBELLE 

Carol Bebelle is a native New Orleanian and a proud product of the New Orleans public school system. She received her undergraduate degree (BA) from Loyola University in sociology and her master’s degree (M.Ed.) from Tulane University in education administration. She spent nearly 20 years in the public sector as an administrator and planner of education, social and health programs. In 1990, Carol embarked on her path of independence which started with establishing Master Plan Development Associates (MPDA), a private consulting firm that offered planning, development and grant writing services to human service programs and initiatives. Her clients were non-profits, health, social, education, arts, cultural, religious programs, entrepreneurs and artists. Carol is a published poet whose work has appeared in several anthologies and journals over the years. In 1998, Carol Bebelle and Douglas Redd founded Ashe’ Cultural Arts Center, a pivotal strategy and force for the revitalization and transformation of Oretha Castle-Haley Boulevard, formerly known as Dryades Street. On this boulevard in Central City, the community has created a vision for a cultural corridor with African and Caribbean culture as the theme. Carol is a national advisory board member of Imagining America and co-designed AshÉ’s partnership with College Unbound to open Ashé College Unbound.

ADAM BUSH

Adam is the chief academic officer of College Unbound (www.collegeunbound.org); a college degree pathway working to create a more just higher education for underrepresented adult college students and influence higher education policy by building a curriculum around the changing world of work and civic engagement.  Adam co-designed College Unbound’s partnership with Carol Bebelle and the Ashé Cultural Arts Center (www.ashecac.org) in New Orleans (La.) to open AshÉ College Unbound. Adam received his Ph.D. in 2013 from USC’s American Studies and Ethnicity department for his dissertation, “Passing Notes in Class.” He is also a member of the next generation engagement collective of the New England Resource Center for Higher Education (www.nerche.org), and a board member of Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life and the past national director of IA’s Publicly Active Graduate Education (PAGE) program (www.imaginingamerica.org) a network dedicated to developing and recognizing new types of training, teaching, and professionalization in higher education centered around access, inclusion, and civic engagement for a new generation of graduate students and early career faculty.

We look forward to seeing you in New Orleans for this meaningful professional development opportunity. For more information on speakers, the conference schedule and to register if you haven’t already, please click here.

CLDE15 Reminder: Book Your Hotel Rooms by Wed. 5/13 for Group Rate

 

The 2015 ADP/TDC/NASPA Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement Meeting (CLDE15) promises to a meaningful professional development opportunity and gathering of the civic engagement and democratic engagement community in higher education. CLDE15  is rapidly approaching and we want to remind you to book your hotel rooms by May 13, 2015 to take advantage of our group rate. 

If you haven’t booked your hotel room yet, please be sure to reserve your room at the New Orleans Marriott at the conference rate before Wednesday, May 13, 2015 by following this link.

We look forward to seeing you in New Orleans for this meaningful professional development opportunity. For more information on speakers, the conference schedule and to register if you haven’t already, please click here.