Campus Compact and AAC&U today announced the release of a new publication, Practicing Democracy: A Toolkit for Educating Civic Professionals, by Nicholas V. Longo. The publication is focused on providing tools to faculty at higher education institutions to help them build students’ capacity to engage in collaborative, public problem-solving. Learn more at compact.org/practicing-democracy.
The toolkit is divided into 12 lessons designed to engage students in critical reflection and sustained dialogue that helps them connect with others across differences of background, experience, and perspective. The lessons are targeted to students of all majors and were created with the goal of educating a new generation of “civic professionals”—students who are prepared to facilitate inclusive and participatory problem-solving in communities.
The publication’s author, Nicholas Longo, is a chair and professor of Global Studies and a faculty fellow for engaged scholarship at the Center for Teaching Excellence at Providence College, where he was the 2022 recipient of the Innovation in Teaching Excellence Award. Nick also co-directs the Dialogue, Inclusion, and Democracy (DID) Lab which focuses on using deliberative, community-based pedagogies to promote equity and democracy. He is also serving this year as a deliberative dialogue fellow at Campus Compact. His work, including the earlier publication, Creating Space for Democracy: A Primer on Dialogue and Deliberation in Higher Education, has long focused on engaging students in dialogue and deliberation as a tool for civic education.
