Enhancing Civic Engagement in Higher Education

1. Jill Lane Kristin Distelhorst Karen Stuhldreher Essential Learning Outcomes Civic Engagement March 22-23, 2010 North Seattle Community College

2. Jill Lane Political Science Every quarter I require my students in American Government to write a letter to one of the US Senators in the states they are from. Normally I get an 80% return letter to the students.

3. Even for those who do not get a return, there is value in that assignment. Civic engagement can be difficult, and you have to really be committed to it.

4. This quarter, of course, I got about a 35% return. Health care was being debated in Congress. Often times when there is a big issue the returns are a bit lower.

5. I used one of the Civic Engagement rubric items, “civic action and reflection”. To assess it I added a capstone project at the end of the quarter. I asked them to write a paper about what was happening legislatively on the bureaucratic front with an issue.

6. Then they were to tell me what interest groups, political parties or individuals are doing to influence that issue and then convey what their experience was like writing to a member of Congress.

7. The question was whether having a personal experience would have an impact on whether they engaged civically again.

8. Kristin Distelhorst Nursing Assisting ESL I took “diversity of communities and cultures”, because a third of students in my class are ESL students, a third in Adult Basic Education, and third at various levels of Work Force Development.

9. It is quite a diverse class, and most of them do not know each other. I wanted to know what their attitudes were about interacting with people from other cultures.

10. I developed a rough survey with answers yes, no, sometimes, and never. I gave it on the first day of the communication unit we teach.

11. In addition I asked them to write, “Did anything change for you?” It was a bit much for some people who did not quite understand what I was asking.

12. Then they go through the whole course. At the end of the quarter, after they have been mixed together in the laboratory, mixed in the class, and mixed in their clinical, I gave them the same questions again.

13. I certainly would do it differently next time. It was a good experience for me to put my toe in the water, so to speak.

14. Karen Stuhldreher Interdisciplinary Women Studies I addressed “civic identity and commitment”. Our course focused on social movements through history.

15. Our goal was to instill a sense that people can actually get involved in their communities through volunteering or some kind of social service work. It was a bit ambitious, I think, to choose that one.

16. We included a question on a mid-term and on an end-of-term reflection: How has the learning in the course helped you to think about the role you play in cultivating more democratic and more just communities where you work and live?

17. So we relied on their self-assessment. I evaluated their responses according to the benchmarks and the capstone to look at how they moved through the quarter.

18. I was amazed to see the concrete ways that many students had moved along the benchmarks.

19. They moved from just doing things because they were in a class to providing evidence of how they were gaining a sense of their own civic identity. It was exciting to see.

20. On the very last day, each of them shared their thoughts about this question. I documented the things that they said and the ways they are getting involved, such as signing up for campaigns.

21. We brought in a number of speakers over the quarter. The students talked about the effect of hearing these people and seeing the concrete ways that people make a difference inspired them to take small steps forward.

22. I would like us to address the next two questions: what did you learn and what did your students learn?

23. I was surprised that out of the 25 students who completed this survey, 7 said that they now thought more carefully about what one could learn from other cultures.

24. When they started all had said that they did not spend any time with people from other cultures, they did not know anyone from other cultures, and they didn’t care about anything from other cultures.

25. I think the experience in the lab and the clinical made them look at things in a wider perspective.

26. The next time I do this I would boil this down even further to a very easy couple of questions and do more work specifically on those questions in the class.

27. I feel empowered as an instructor by this civic engagement outcome. I teach gender and women’s studies, so much of what I teach has to do with social justice and social change.

28. In the academic setting I have always played that down. I find that I kind of step back from the action point. I am giving them information how the scholars think about it.

29. This was an opportunity to say to students, “We here at North Seattle Community College, as well as the AAC&U, value civic engagement.

30. “We value that you volunteer, want to make a difference, and create social change. We care about how to be an effective citizen in a democracy and how to work with others democratically.”

31. Encouraging students to go learn about social change and social justice organizations moves them along the levels of this rubric.

32. I also learned, as others have said, that it is important to give the students the rubric and let them see what is number 1 and what is number 4.

33. It is so important to communicate that we value civic engagement in academia. As well as being empowering to the students it is empowering to me to not step back from the work I believe in.

34. Jill Lane Kristin Distelhorst Karen Stuhldreher Essential Learning Outcomes Civic Engagement March 2010 North Seattle Community College