Our new Student Co-Design Teams program is a groundbreaking opportunity for member campuses to launch or enhance transformative student voice initiatives with the support of the Campus Compact coalition and initial seed funding.
We know that student leadership and voice are central pillars to effective civic engagement work, campus culture, and community relationships, but we know too many barriers (time, money, support) prevent innovative ideas from staff and students about embedding student leadership and voice from coming to fruition. Campus Compact wants to change that.
Based off visioning from our Student Design Fellows cohort—a two-year fellowship designed to empower students and revolutionize civic leadership development—this report was created to offer guidance for institutions that would like to implement student engagement strategies developed by students themselves
Building off that successful model and vision we created the Student Co-Design Teams program with the support of Lumina Foundation, encouraging Campus Compact institutions to launch similar student-voice initiatives on their campuses and create replicable models that can scale across our national network.
Program Details
Who Should Apply?
To participate, campuses must be active Campus Compact members to apply. Teams must be composed of an equal number of students and non-students (staff, faculty, administrators, or partners), with a maximum of six members per team. We aim to recruit teams that vary in institutional type, size, geographic location, and student population served.
Program Components
Selected campuses will be provided a $5,000 implementation grant that can be used to incubate a new civic student voice initiative on campus (ex. student-led leadership board for a campus center or students on a community partner board, etc.), expand a successful existing student-voice partnership (ex. student government and faculty senate committee on civic participation, etc.), and/or do a research initiative centering student voice that will lead to tangible outcomes for campus and/or the community.
The selected campuses will be provided with Campus Compact staff support (Director, Student Engagement) and will be required to attend monthly meetings with the other Co-Design Teams to share best practices, learn from each other’s challenges, and capture shared insights and themes to be shared with the rest of Campus Compact’s network. All teams will be required to send two members to present at our annual conference in the Spring, with stipends provided to help cover registration, hotel, and flight expenses.
2026 Student Co-Design Teams
Utah Valley University
Orem, Utah
Centralizing Student Feedback
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, Virginia
The Public Service Advisory Board
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
The Pitt Civic Collective
University of Colorado
Boulder, Colorado
Graduate Student Centered Think Tank
University of Montana Western
Dillon, Montana
Land, Water, and Sky (LWS) Center
Pacific University
Forest Grove, Oregon
Transition Advisory Council Model
Mercer University
Macon, Georgia
The Moments that Move Us: An Initiative for Civic Activation
Bates College
Lewiston, Maine
Student Voice Research Initiative
Image
Student Design Fellows Report
This detailed report summarizes the extensive research of Campus Compact's Student Design Fellows and offers guidance for institutions that would like to implement student engagement strategies developed by students themselves.
Throughout this report, you will find a summary of the Design Fellows' research conducted over a two-year period through a wide variety of modes and methods. Broken into six themes and seven programmatic ideas, the Design Fellows' findings provide a clear roadmap for Campus Compact student engagement moving forward.