Colleges and universities have developed increasingly sophisticated strategies for advancing civic and community engagement focused on student learning, social impact, and creating healthy and just communities. However, these strategies often remain siloed within institutions and across institutional contexts. A new joint planning effort led by the American Association of Colleges & Universities and Campus Compact will aim to organize these collective efforts nationally and more fully enable higher education institutions to support and advance democracy.
As a first step, we are convening a Design Team of campus leaders from across higher education. Design Team members will audit existing campus democratic engagement activities and programming to help build an understanding of the current landscape. The Design Team’s findings will lead to a guide that will enable other campuses to audit their work—and ultimately lead to the development of collaborative tools and resources to scale and streamline democratic engagement across colleges and universities. The application is open now.
Additional details:
- It is not required to have previously conducted, or to currently be conducting, a democracy audit.
- One of the key considerations in creating the design team will be having diverse perspectives in terms of institutions—types, geography, and individuals.
- The process of conducting a democracy audit is distinct from, complementary to, and can be informed by parallel processes such as campus climate surveys, the Carnegie Classification, accreditation reviews, and other types of audits
- Previous audits conducted by Johns Hopkins University and Stanford University will serve as a starting point for our design process and may be useful in understanding the distinction and complementarity to related processes
We are excited to build a dynamic team. If you have questions, please feel free to contact Scott Warren ([email protected]), Karina Kloos ([email protected]), or Tom Schnaubelt ([email protected]).