Democracy in Action: How Can We Encourage and Safeguard Voting?

This webinar will focus on how students can strengthen their leadership capacity and contribute to civic life by organizing, leading, and participating in nonpartisan, deliberative National Issues Forums about how to encourage and safeguard voting, a hallmark of our democracy. With an emphasis on practices for bringing people together to talk deliberately about what can be done to ensure that elections are fair, efficient, and secure, participants in the webinar will explore ways to talk productively about a range of perspectives and concerns about the issue and to set directions for moving forward—locally, regionally, and nationally.

Speakers:

• Betty Knighton – National Issues Forums Institute
• Kara Lindaman – Winona State University

Four Curricular Lenses for Centering Community Engagement, Equity, Justice and Movement Building

This webinar explores four “lenses” or conceptual frameworks for centering community engagement, equity, justice, and movement building in curriculum. The lenses: Naming the moment and our intervention; Paradoxes of education; Legacies and frames; Discomfort and resistance. Drawing on a range of fields of research, on personal experiences as scholar, dean, and now consultant for colleges and universities across the country, and particularly on lessons from social movements, the webinar speaks to both novices and veterans in anti-oppressive education by both affirming progressive interventions and troubling conventional wisdom. By the end of the session, participants will be able to define and illustrate four conceptual frameworks for centering community engagement, equity, justice and movement building in curriculum.

Speakers:

• Kevin Kumashiro – Kevin Kumashiro Consulting

Higher Education’s Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic: Building a more sustainable and democratic future

This webinar will feature key themes from the 2021 book Higher Education’s Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic: Building a more sustainable and democratic future, which included contributions from some 40 authors across the globe. Published as part of the Council of Europe’s Higher Education Series and edited by Sjur Bergan, Tony Gallagher, Ira Harkavy, Ronaldo Munck, and Hilligje van’t Land, the book examines the ways in which higher education not only has responded to the immediate crisis but also how it can and should contribute to a more sustainable, equitable and inclusive society.

Speakers:

• Ira Harkavy – Netter Center for Community Partnerships at the University of Pennsylvania
• David Maurrasse – Marga Inc.
• Brian Murphy – De Anza College

Radical Imagination in Action: Re-Visioning and Co-Creating Community Engagement

Due to long-term partnerships that have continued to evolve, during the pandemic Dominican’s Service-Learning program was able to work intensively with partners to support their programming and co-developed new programs to address ongoing equity gaps exacerbated by the pandemic. Most crucially, the pivots and collaborations are grounded in a mutual aid and critical consciousness approach–that acknowledges both trauma and the strengths of collectivist cultures and communities. Innovative programming includes: Leyendo Juntos–a virtual reading pod for K-3rd grade students at a Latino immigrant serving school, and the Digital Literacy and Bilingual Support program with our cohort of heritage Spanish speaking Dominican students that now collaborates with multiple partners. We also created and collaborated on modules and presentations for students and the broader campus community such as the modules based on Cultural Humility principles (Tarvelon & Murray-Garcia, 1998). We will share our effective applications of Appreciative Inquiry, Cultural Humility principles and framing, and asset-based critical community engagement.

Speakers:

• Jocelyn Gomez – Dominican University of CA
• Julia van der Ryn – Dominican University of CA
• Emily Wu – Dominican University of CA

From Pandemic to Paradigm Shift: How we are adapting to meet the evolving needs of our campuses and communities

When a crisis hits, albeit a hurricane or an international pandemic, students want to immediately respond. However, good intentions do not always present themselves as meaningful actions. A large group of untrained volunteers descending upon a community in crisis often creates more harm than good. It is our role to step into these spaces and bridge the gap between community partners and student volunteers. We must help guide our students in finding opportunities that allow them to safely engage, while providing meaningful support to our partners. Come learn from colleagues at Brandeis University’s Department of Community Service and the ways we pivoted our operations to continue providing necessary support to our community and campus amidst a public health crisis. In this session, we will share examples of both new and adapted programs and risk management policies, challenges and successes of remote engagement, takeaways from the shift from direct service to advocacy, and lessons we learned that will change our work long after the pandemic. We will also share the ways our definitions of service and community evolved, leading us to adapt our current models and university resources to provide relevant and sustainable community support. We hope you will walk away from this session with a new perspective on community and action items to help your team not only be proactive in preparing for the next crisis, but perhaps make lasting changes to your current model of engagement.

Speakers:

• Samantha de Melim – Brandeis University
• Lucas Malo – Brandeis University
• Colby Sim – Brandeis University

Building Thriving Partnerships between Colleges & Local Government

As our nation struggles with a pandemic, housing and food insecurity, a strained social safety net, police brutality, unemployment, natural disasters, and racial discrimination, colleges and universities must play a critical role in engaging students with these issues through intentional projects that are designed in partnership with local municipalities. Representatives from two of California Campus Compact urban institutions with extensive experience partnering with or working for city government, along with one current local government representative, will share their reflections, recommendations, and lessons learned on how colleges can effectively partner and engage college students with local government. Presenters will share their perspectives on how to build thriving partnerships with local governments that reflect values of equity, justice, and inclusion.

Speakers:

• Derick Brown – Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good, University of San Francisco
• Anthony Tirado Chase – Young Initiative on the Global Political Economy; Diplomacy & World Affairs, Occidental College
• Maribel Martinez – County of Santa Clara, The Office of LGBTQ Affairs

Building Ethical and Collaborative Relationships with Community Partners: A focus on white saviorism, how it shows up in community engagement, and how to address it

In this webinar we will discuss best practices of community engagement for curricular and co-curricular activities. Specifically, we will review how to engage with communities in ways that are authentic and mutually-beneficial, and what it means to build sustainable relationships with community partners that are truly reciprocal. We will discuss white saviorism, and how white saviorism shows up with community engagement efforts. This webinar will involve participants reflecting on their own community engagement activities and how they may have done harm (even if unintended), and will encourage participants to strategize how they can commit to actions that build ethical and collaborative partnerships with community partners. The two learning objectives for this webinar include: (1) to advance anti-racist community building, and (2) to build webinar participants’ confidence in being changemakers committed to actions that promote equity building and relationship healing in our communities.

Speakers:

• Jessica Hodge – University of St. Thomas
• Theresa Ricke-Kiely – University of St. Thomas
• Kelly Sardon-Garrity – University of St. Thomas

Teaching Social Action: An Introduction

In social action courses, students develop and enact campaigns to change a policy, which provides them with first-hand experience with power and democracy. There is no better response by Higher Education to the growing anti-democratic forces than social action since it is designed to do democracy. Currently, Bobby Hackett and Dr. Scott Myers-Lipton are training 25 faculty, staff and students (for student-led courses) in a 9-month social action course development webinar series. Our vision is to teach 100 more folks in the next couple of years, and we are putting together a “support structure” for people who want to teach a course using social action. Here is what we plan to offer: a student guide: CHANGE! A Student Guide to Social Action (Routledge, 2018), a teaching guide: CHANGE! A Guide to Teaching Social Action (Routledge, January 2022), $2,500 for development grants for teachers who create a course using social action (working on this grant now), access to a Social Action Course Development Webinar Series, or watch videos asynchronously, a community of practitioners of social action, which meets quarterly online.

Speakers:

• Bobby Hackett – Bonner Foundation
• Scott Myers-Lipton – San Jose State University

Exploring Core Commitments and Building Blocks of Civic Identity: A Conversation

The concept of “civic identity” is perhaps intuitive, particularly for people who attend Campus Compact gatherings, but it is not well explored or understood. Colleges and universities are often places where students critically examine and develop greater understanding around a wide range of identities: race, ethnicity, gender, spiritual, political, nationality, and many others. We develop courses, programs and support networks that allow students to experiment, explore, and develop greater understanding of how individual identities, and how systems of oppression and power and privilege afforded certain identities, impact our society. But we rarely take time to define and explore what “civic identity” is, how it is formed, and how it intersects with our identities.

Speakers:

• Lauren Etchells – Stanford University/Haas Center for Public Service
• Alexandra Koch – Stanford University/ Haas Center for Public Service
• Thomas Schnaubelt – Stanford University/ Haas Center for Public Service

Creating ImpACT Through Global Citizenship Education

According to UNESCO, “Global Citizenship Education (GCE) aims to empower learners of all ages to assume active roles, both locally and globally, in building more peaceful, tolerant, inclusive and secure societies.” GCE is a form of civic learning that aims to provide students with the ability to respond to global challenges and to contribute to a more inclusive and peaceful world. By integrating key components of global citizenship into curriculum across disciplines, students develop skills that prepare them for an increasingly interconnected world, and as a result, we create more fully engaged and compassionate communities. In this webinar, participants will gain tools and resources to integrate GCE and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into curriculum to help learners of all ages develop core competencies such as collaboration, critical thinking, effective communication and empathy to be equipped to respond to global challenges. Participation as the action dimension of global citizenship will be the focus of the presentation, providing participants with strategies to incorporate project-based learning into curriculum by applying global citizenship and SDGs frameworks to help students develop global competencies, explore global issues in their local context and feel empowered to transfer ideas into action. Participants will acquire knowledge of how the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) can be used as a roadmap and innovative teaching method to deepen student learning experiences, empowering students to engage in collaborative changemaking.

Speakers:

• Anna Durfey – Roger Williams University
• Mary Ellen Lynch – Roger Williams University
• SenMuthiya Mani – Roger Williams University

Beyond a Spirit of Altruism: Reimagining “Community Service” for Full Participation

In this webinar, we discuss the ways Brandeis University has historically defined and rewarded service and how such policies are shifting to increase the accessibility of community engagement experiences for all students. A primary objective of this webinar is to hold space for colleagues to engage in conversation about the implicit and explicit definitions of community service on their campuses and how they may prohibit or deter full participation for underrepresented students. Through an interactive and discussion-based presentation, we will share our approach and assessment strategies for embarking on a journey to implement policies and practices that exemplify a more inclusive definition of service and spark a cultural shift on our campus. Key takeaways will include important findings, challenges, and limitations we discovered throughout this process and how you can engage in this conversation at your own institution.

Speakers:

• Samantha de Melim – Brandeis University
• Moira King – Brandeis University

Applying Deliberative Polling: A Course for Students to Study and Enact Deliberative Democracy

This webinar will discuss how higher education institutions can build virtual and in-person deliberative democracy into student life. It will focus on COMM 138/238 Applying Deliberative Polling, a practicum course for students at Stanford. In COMM 138/238, students study deliberative democracy and then design and implement their own Deliberative Poll, an experiment and educational event where participants are surveyed about their opinions on policy after moderated, small-group deliberation. In May 2021, the practicum cohort organized Shaping Our Future, a national Deliberative Poll that engaged over 600 young people in virtual discussion on policy topics spanning electoral reform to national service. This historic, virtual experiment not only generated fascinating results among participants, but was a unique, hands-on civic engagement opportunity for young people across the country.

Speakers:

• Megha Parwani – Stanford University
• Alice Siu – Center for Deliberative Democracy, Stanford University
• Luke Terra – Haas Center for Public Service, Stanford University