wIn response to COVID-19 and the call from community partners in Tampa Bay, the University of South Florida’s Office of Community Engagement and Partnerships moved quickly to facilitate collaborations for online mentoring and tutoring. By utilizing resources at the University and community organizations’ close ties to families in Hillsborough County, a new pathway to prevent K-12 learning loss during COVID-19 emerged. USF’s College of Education recognized the urgency for practicum students and student tutor employees to continue learning and working during the pandemic. College of Education (COEDU) students were connected with local community organizations to host online tutoring and mentoring sessions with K-12 youth. The central mission of the program was to prevent K-12 learning loss during COVID-19 in Tampa Bay while COEDU students continued their education and employment in the spring/summer semesters. Key stakeholders across the University also provided support to transition from in-person to online K-12 student support. These efforts sought to build the foundation for an online...

Learn more about Campus Compact's Safe Elections Project and the critical role students can play in ensuring a safe, fair, and accessible election this November. Hear more about how you can encourage student participation, help enlist them as poll workers, and advocate for institutional policies that support students who take on this vital role.

Presented as part of the Election 2020 Series. In an age of hyper-partisanship and divisive public discourse, how can we help our students engage in the upcoming elections with a posture of inquiry, empathy, and generative conversation? With the low youth turnout in the last Presidential election, there’s a lot of effort being spent getting young voters to vote. But are we doing enough to help students become capable and confident voters, helping them approach their voting decisions as independent and critical thinkers? What if what shows up as “voter apathy” is lack of clarity? Vote by Design is an award-winning voter literacy project incubated at Stanford University’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (d.school) that teaches voters how to view the job of the U.S. President through leadership qualities and qualifications  (vs. sound bites or parental and peer influence).  It blends critical thinking, civics literacy, and conversation across different perspectives to help voters create a more robust and personal understanding...