The American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) and Campus Compact today announced the members of a design team who will lead the Democracy Inventory Project. This new joint initiative aims to strengthen higher education’s aability to advance democratic engagement efforts nationally. The 21 higher education leaders who form the design team (listed below) represent a diverse set of institutions across the United States and were selected through a competitive application process.
The design team, which began meeting this spring, will synthesize existing democratic engagement, civic learning, and democracy-building research and practices in higher education to inform the development of inventory tools and materials to be piloted across several campuses. Ultimately, the design team aims to provide higher education leaders with comprehensive and adaptable resources to assess their efforts to strengthen democratic values and engagement.
The design team is led by Karina Kloos and Thomas Schnaubelt, who together recently conducted an inventory of civic and democracy-related activities that led to the Democracy Hub at Stanford University, and Scott Warren, who led a comprehensive audit of innovative democratic practices in higher education for Johns Hopkins University. These completed inventories will serve as starting points for the design team.
The design team’s work outcomes and the resulting guidance will serve as the basis for a broader planning project being undertaken by AAC&U and Campus Compact. The planning project aims to transform how higher education organizes itself to scale and streamline the most effective forms of democracy-building work.
“This is an extraordinary group of individuals whose combined depth of knowledge and experience will result in a strong foundation on which we will build this work,” said Bobbie Laur, president of Campus Compact and co-leader of the planning grant. “Their leadership and collaboration will help us think differently, drive innovation, and help higher education to contribute more effectively to creating the equitable and just democracy we all seek.”
“The incredible diversity of insights and perspectives brought by the design team is allowing us to center campus perspectives early in this planning process. AAC&U and Campus Compact share a deep commitment to empowering institutions to forefront their vision for how higher education should advance commitments to democracy. We are here to listen, act, and design together,” said Ashley FInley, vice president for research and senior advisor to the president at AAC&U and co-leader of the planning grant.
The program is supported by a planning grant from Lumina Foundation. Learn more at compact.org/democracy-inventory-project.
Design team members
Karina Kloos, Facilitator
Stanford Democracy Hub Lead at Stanford University
Karina Kloos leads the Stanford Democracy Hub, an effort born out of the 2022-23 inventory and report co-led with Tom Schnaubelt. Karina has also co-led the design and implementation of multiple fellowships and service programs with Stanford Impact Labs, and the university-wide RAISE (Research, Action, and Impact through Strategic Engagement) Doctoral Fellowship. She has professional experience in the domestic nonprofit, international development, philanthropic, and academic sectors, and has published in both academic and media outlets on land rights; women’s rights; indigenous rights; sustainability; nonprofit evaluation; social movements; and democracy, including the 2014 book, Deeply Divided: Racial Politics and Social Movements in Postwar America. Karina received her PhD in Sociology from Stanford. Having spent more than a decade at the university, she is invested in the vibrancy and health of the campus community, as well as leveraging its research and resources to engage and contribute positively beyond the university.
Thomas (Tom) Schnaubelt, Facilitator
Assistant Director, Center for Revitalizing American Institutions, Hoover Institution, Stanford University
Tom Schnaubelt, PhD, is the Assistant Director of the Center for Revitalizing American Institutions at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and serves as a senior advisor to the Deliberative Democracy Lab and the Stanford Democracy Hub, both of which are part of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Tom came to Stanford in 2009 and served as an Associate Vice Provost for Education and Executive Director of the Haas Center for Public Service for 13 years while also serving as a resident fellow in Branner Hall, Stanford’s public service and civic engagement theme dorm. Prior to Stanford, Tom served as Dean for Community Engagement & Civic Learning at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, launched and directed Wisconsin Campus Compact, and led several national service and service-learning programs in Mississippi. He earned a PhD from the University of Mississippi, MA from the University of Michigan, and a BS from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.
Scott Warren, Facilitator
SNF Agora Fellow, SNF Agora Institute, Johns Hopkins University
Scott Warren is a fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. He is currently leading an initiative focused on exploring, researching, and convening a pro-democracy conservative agenda in the US, organizing convenings focused on bridging long-term and short-term fixes for democratic reform, and supporting cities in efforts to promote civic participation and democratic engagement. At SNF Agora, he also launched Democracy Moves, an international network of youth activists pushing for democratic change, which is now part of Restless Development, and helped Johns Hopkins University in exploring its own role as a beacon of civic engagement and democracy. He has also advised USAID on youth civic and political engagement. Warren is the founder of the national civics education organization Generation Citizen, where he currently serves on the Board of Directors. He served as the organization’s CEO for more than 11 years, helping grow Generation Citizen to become one of the preeminent civics education organizations in the country, promoting action civics across diverse geographies through best-in-class programming and concrete policy change. Warren published a book in 2019, Generation Citizen: The Power of Youth in Politics, and was named an Echoing Green Fellow in 2010, and a Draper Richards Kaplan Fellow in 2012.
Maria Avila
Independent Consultant & Scholar
Maria Avila is an independent consultant/scholar. Previously an Associate Professor of Social Work at California State University, Dominguez Hills, she is the author of Building Collective Leadership for Culture Change: Relational Organizing on Campus and Beyond (2023). Her work with the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), an international organizing network started by Saul Alinsky in Chicago in 1940 led to her civic and community-engaged scholarship practice as director of the Center for Community Based Learning at Occidental College (2001-2011), and to her collaborative, research in action methodologies, which include narrative inquiry and community organizing practices aimed at creating institutional and organizational change. She earned a MA in Social Service Administration from University of Chicago and a PhD in adult and community education from Maynooth University, in Ireland. Avila is originally from Northern Mexico, where she began her professional career and her community organizing work. She has given presentations at local, national, and international venues, including in Mexico, Ireland, Great Britain, Germany, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Uruguay, and Chile.
Craig Berger
Associate Director, Community Engaged Learning, Kent State University
Craig Berger is the Associate Director of Community Engaged Learning at Kent State University. Craig works with faculty, staff, students, and community partners to design, facilitate, and capture the impact of learning experiences that strengthen the Kent area and foster students’ civic agency. Prior to working at Kent State, Craig served as Coordinator of Student Life for Campus and Civic Engagement at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), co-facilitating a cross-campus coalition to organize, incentivize, and deepen culture around civic learning and democratic engagement work and experimenting with democratic pedagogies in courses and programs. Craig received his M.S. in Student Affairs in Higher Education from Miami University and his B.A. in Political Science from Allegheny College. Craig previously served as Chair of the American Democracy Project (ADP) Steering Committee and collaborated with thought leaders in NASPA and ADP to develop the Civic Learning & Democratic Engagement Theory of Change.
Jodi Fisler
Senior Associate for Assessment Policy and Analysis, State Council of Higher Education for Virginia
Jodi Fisler serves as the Senior Associate for Assessment Policy & Analysis at the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV). She oversees the state’s student learning assessment policy, which includes civic engagement as a core competency, and she has coordinated numerous statewide civic engagement-related initiatives. Jodi previously worked as the Director of Student Affairs Planning & Assessment and Assistant to the Vice President for Student Affairs at William & Mary. She earned her PhD in higher education administration from the William & Mary School of Education.
Sylvia Gale
Executive Director, Bonner Center for Civic Engagement, University of Richmond
Dr. Sylvia Gale is Executive Director of the Bonner Center for Civic Engagement at the University of Richmond in Richmond, Virginia, She serves on the National Advisory Board of Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life (2005-11, 2023-current), was the founding director of Imagining America’s Publicly Active Graduate Education Initiative (PAGE), and a founding co-chair of Imagining America's initiative on “Assessing the Practices of Public Scholarship,” which explores and advances assessment practices aligned with the values that drive community-engaged work. Sylvia is committed to co-creating opportunities for transformative liberal arts learning far beyond traditional institutional boundaries, and has published on innovative assessment, engaged graduate education, and the power of institutional intermediaries to effect change. She was a 22-23 Fulbright Finland Mid-Career Professional Development Grantee, hosted by the Deaconess Foundation, Helsinki, and Tampere University of Applied Sciences, where she documented professional practices in circulation in a network of Finnish community centers aimed at promoting civic agency.
Philip Goodrich
Manager, Campus Life Initiatives, University of California, Los Angeles
Philip Goodrich currently serves as Manager of Campus Life Initiatives at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). In this role, Philip provides leadership for campus civic and voter engagement initiatives, helps manage the Student Affairs Mitigator (SAM) program, oversees the Commuter Support and Programs office, and supports a variety of divisional and organizational programs around leadership, dialogue, and engagement. He is a graduate of UCLA's Master of Education in Student Affairs program and received his Bachelor of Arts in History and Political Science from Chapman University. In his free time, Philip enjoys watching college football, reading non-fiction, and spending quality time with his family and friends.
Brian Harlan
Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs, Cornish College of the Arts
Brian Harlan was appointed Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs in 2024 and brought to the college a wealth of experience and knowledge from both Academic Affairs and Student Affairs. He formerly served as vice provost for academic affairs at the California Institute of the Arts, as well as associate provost for educational effectiveness, associate provost for integrative learning, vice president for student experience, and acting provost. Prior to CalArts Brian was the assistant dean for academic assessment and planning at Occidental College in Los Angeles, and before this director of Doheny Research Library, and director of assessment at the University of Southern California. Brian has extensive experience in assessment, accreditation, integrated planning, institutional research, and educational and institutional effectiveness. He has served as an accreditation liaison officer for WSCUC regional accreditation, and for Arts Accredit national accreditation for art and design, dance, theater, and music. He is also active as an accreditation evaluator and has served on numerous regional and national assessment committees. His research interests include qualitative methods for equity-based learning assessment, quality assurance in higher education, and the impact of the arts on self, intra and interpersonal relationships, culture, society, and the environment.
Caroline Lee
Faculty Director, Landis Center for Community Engagement, Lafayette College
Caroline W. Lee researches social movements, organizations, and democracy in American politics. She is Professor of Sociology and Faculty Director of the Landis Center for Community Engagement at Lafayette College. Her current project, Public or Perish: Community Engagement in U.S. Higher Education, examines the unintended consequences of efforts to promote democratic practices and civic engagement in U.S. higher education. Her book Do-it-Yourself Democracy: The Rise of the Public Engagement Industry (Oxford 2015) studies the public engagement industry in the United States.
Jason M. Leggett
Associate Professor of Behavioral Sciences & Director, Center for Civic Engagement, Kingsborough Community College
Jason Michael Leggett is an Associate Professor in the Behavioral Sciences Department and the Director of the Kingsborough Community College Center for Civic Engagement. He teaches Constitutional Law, the U.S. Judiciary, and Environmental Law and Politics. His work focuses on rights consciousness among marginalized communities. He is most interested in how these individuals think about legality in everyday practice against injustice. He draws upon experience in political organizing and community activism to co-create educational opportunities that provide alternative visions of the future toward more equitable social relations. This research has addressed climate change inaction, systemic racism, reproductive rights, migration, and homelessness.
Marianne Magjuka
Assistant Vice President for Campus Life & Executive Director, Office of Civic & Community Engagement, Wake Forest University
Marianne Magjuka serves as Assistant Vice President for Campus Life and Executive Director of the Office of Civic & Community Engagement at Wake Forest University. In this role, she provides strategic vision for civic learning and democratic engagement, student engagement, leadership, and community-based experiential learning. She is the co-founder of the Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement Knowledge Community within NASPA Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education. Marianne received her B.A. and M.Ed. from the University of Notre Dame and holds a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania.
Jessica Mann
Assistant Vice President of Community Engagement, Duquesne University
Jess Mann, Ph.D., has spent her career in higher education supporting the institutionalization of community engagement. She is the Assistant Vice President for Community Engagement at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In this role, she oversees the Center for Community-Engaged Teaching and Research and the Duquesne Volunteers Office, which encompass extra-curricular, co-curricular, and academic community engagement as well as the university’s civic and democratic engagement initiatives. Dr. Mann is a seasoned consultant and trainer who has worked with institutions and non-profit organizations to improve their policies and procedures, conduct assessments and evaluations, create strategic and long-term vision plans, and enhance their organizational cultures. Her research explores community-university partnerships, community engagement, and educational interventions related to cultural competency, inclusive practice, and civic engagement.
Chelsea Morrese
Executive Director of Community Engagement & Director, Landis Center for Community Engagement, Lafayette College
Chelsea Morrese is the Executive Director of Community Engagement and Director of the Landis Center for Community Engagement at Lafayette College. Chelsea’s work focuses on coalition-building within communities to create action around shared values and goals. She has successfully led community development projects, coordinated local events, and managed partnerships with businesses, nonprofits, and government agencies. In her work with students, Chelsea fosters a sense of civic responsibility, encouraging them to engage with their communities, as they navigate key concepts such as democracy, justice, and social responsibility.
Agnieszka Nance
Executive Director, Center for Public Service, Tulane University
Agnieszka Nance is the Executive Director for the Center for Public Service (CPS) at Tulane University. She joined Tulane University in 2005 as faculty in the Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies. She became associated with CPS in 2007 to support its efforts in faculty development. Currently at CPS, Agnieszka directs an office with over twenty employees to help ensure that Tulane fulfills its mission of public engagement. In 2004, Nance received her Ph.D. in Germanic Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Before moving to the United States, she lived and studied in Warsaw and Vienna, earning a Magister degree in Germanistik. Agnieszka Nance serves as the Treasurer and Board Member of IARSLCE, she is participating in the advisory Board of the ByWater Institute and the National Advisory Board for Public Service at Harvard College. On Tulane’s campus, she is co-chairing the Civic Engagement Taskforce.
Patty Robinson
Faculty Director, Civic and Community Engagement Initiatives, Center for Civic Engagement, College of the Canyons
Patty has worked at College of the Canyons (COC) since 1999, serving as sociology instructor, department chair, and dean. She currently leads the college’s campus-wide emphasis on democratic participation as faculty director, civic and community engagement. Patty has completed seven Bringing Theory to Practice (BT2P) grants, including The Way Forward grant. This project launched Civic Dialogues, a state-wide virtual speakers’ series that has welcomed the nation’s leading scholars, researchers, and practitioners of civic and community engagement. Patty also participated in the 2-year Mellon Foundation Partnerships for Listening and Action by Communities and Educators (PLACE) grant. She has published several articles addressing the “civic mission” of community colleges, and serves on the Board of Directors, National Issues Forums Institute (NIFI). Patty is co-author of COC’s recent Carnegie Community Engagement Classification application—the first California community college to receive the designation. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis.
James Roland
Sr. Director, Center for Civic and Community Engagement, Exec. Director, Atlanta Urban Debate League & Director, Emory Center for Advancing Nonviolence, Emory University
James Roland is a nationally recognized communicator, community builder, and educator. He currently serves as Sr. Director of the Center for Civic and Community Engagement at Emory University and Executive Director of the Atlanta Urban Debate League. He has over 20 years of working in underserved and under-resourced communities in Atlanta and across the country. During his tenure at Emory, he has positively impacted thousands of secondary and post-secondary students and their communities. As a result, he has received numerous teaching and community service awards. Roland was the principal architect of an after-school program recognized by White House Saving America’s Youth Initiative, co-edited the book, Using Debate in the Classroom: Encouraging Critical Thinking, Communication, and Collaboration, and was recently published in the Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning. He currently serves on several boards, advisory groups, and steering committees - including the Emory Votes Initiative, TRUCEN Leadership Group, and the National Association of Urban Debate Leagues.
Kimberly Rosenfeld
Professor of Communication Studies, Chair, Department of Communications Studies & Chair, Department of Women & Gender Studies, Cerritos College
Dr. Kimberly Rosenfeld is a tenured faculty member in the Communication Studies department at Cerritos College located in Southeastern Los Angeles, CA. Her titles include Professor, Women and Gender Studies Department Chair, and Education Department Chair. Kimberly holds a Ph.D. in Education with an emphasis in Cultural Studies from UCLA and an M.A. and B.A. in Speech Communication from CSU-Fullerton. During the 2023-2024 academic year, she was award Cerritos College’s prestigious Diversity Award for work and dedication to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. Kimberly Rosenfeld works to instill civic literacy, citizenship, and engagement by co-organizing and co-hosting, with Patty Robinson (College of the Canyons) and the California Community College Statewide Success Network (3CSN), an ongoing series of Civic Dialogues. Civic dialogues invite esteemed national civic engagement experts to share insights and take deep dives in service of increasing knowledge and awareness of higher education’s civic mission. Her civic engagement work extends to working to develop a statewide community college taskforce to address the civic equity gap among community college students. Her work also includes serving as the Cerritos College faculty mentor in collaboration with CSUDH as they implement Govern Newson’s College Corp grant program. Finally, she sits on the Board of Directors for the Association of California Community College Teacher Education Programs (ACCCTEP). Dr. Rosenfeld also teaches graduate classes for UCLA’s department of education including philosophy of education, cultural studies, critical media literacy, and technology in education.
Pam Shropshire
Special Assistant for Presidential Initiatives, Swarthmore College
Pam Shropshire is an unabashed strategic generalist who uses pragmatism and an innate curiosity to advance the mission, vision, and goals of organizations in the nonprofit and higher ed sectors. Currently, she serves as the Special Assistant to the President of Swarthmore College where her portfolio includes the design and implementation of special projects (such as the Get Out the Vote committee) constructed to advance the President’s mission of preparing students to thrive in a global, interconnected world. Prior, she administered Swarthmore’s Aydelotte Foundation working to demystify liberal arts education aiming to make it more relevant and relatable to diverse public audiences. Before Swarthmore, she drove the core operations of the Office of the President of The University of the Arts. She also served as the Communications & Program Officer at Pennsylvania Humanities Council, as Program Director at The Leeway Foundation, and as Marketing Manager at International House of Philadelphia.
Rebecca M. Townsend
Associate Director of Assessment, Holyoke Community College
Dr. Townsend’s career includes nearly 30 years of teaching communication at community colleges, private universities (in the US and in Poland), and flagship public universities. At Holyoke Community College, a Hispanic Serving Institution in Western Massachusetts, she provides leadership in planning, curriculum, and assessment. Her teaching, scholarship, and service are in the intersection of civic engagement, democracy, and higher education. President Obama honored her for her community college civic engagement in transportation planning with a “White House Champion of Change” award. In her civic life, she has been a rail and transit advocacy group founder, regional planning commissioner, and local elected official leading town meeting democracy, and immediate past president of the Massachusetts Moderators Association. Her scholarship on rhetoric and culture spans local to global, from town meeting deliberation to civic engagement in regional transportation planning, to a new book on presidential rhetoric in Central and Eastern Europe.
Austin Wilson
Manager, Community Engaged Learning, The Swearer Center, Brown University
Austin Wilson is the Manager for Community Engaged Learning at the Swearer Center for Public Service at Brown University. He leads Brown Votes – a nonpartisan collective impact initiative committed to fostering democratic engagement across campus. With equal participation from students, faculty, and administration, Brown Votes streamlines voter initiatives at the University and advocates for processes that create more democratic participation for all members of the Brown community. He also manages Swearer's Social Innovation Fellowship for students interested in community-based innovations that address critical issues in our society. Austin received his M.Div from Duke in 2017, where he was introduced to the practice and power of community organizing through volunteering with the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC). From there, he worked with Resourceful Communities to support grassroots organizations addressing food security in rural North Carolina. When he's not at Swearer, Austin is probably writing music or trying to make his three-month-old laugh