| Abstrakt: |
A key goal of higher education is to graduate citizens who are actively engaged in the process of democracy. Yet, it is a challenge to build a curriculum with this in mind. Herein, we describe a multi-year process of creating and supporting a movement to centralize undergraduates' civic identity development across the curriculum. The result is a new model that names specific developmental stages for students. During this process, we worked on defining civic identity for our campus. In A Framework for Understanding Student Engagement and Outcomes, Schnaubelt et al. ask whether it's important to have a definition of civic identity, and what that definition might be. Our answer is that while a clear definition is critical, the term "civic identity" does not need to be explicit in that definition. Rather, civic identity can be the lens that focuses discussion: What does civic identity mean in the context of our ethos? At our institution, it means "fostering a just, equitable, and sustainable world." This work gave rise to an update to the college's Mission Statement, revisions to General Education requirements, and a common writing prompt across First-Year Seminars. In turn, our model lent itself to assessment: How do we measure a student's capacity to engage across differences, and their development of democratic knowledge, habit, and skills? With foundational pieces built into First-Year Seminars, students engage with civic learning in their first semester, and the common writing prompt became a useful tool for assessment. In this article, we present data collected over four years of this work. This article provides a map as well as lessons learned to support other colleges' work to live into the call from A Crucible Moment (2012) to make civic learning an integral part of a college education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
