The Engaging Communities and Campuses Program is one of many initiatives that CIC campuses are involved in to promote greater civic engagement among students. The Cedar Crest College (PA) Participating in Democracy Project described below is another such effort.
     Cedar Crest is playing the lead role in this nationwide initiative that seeks to promote greater civic engagement among college students. The 3-1/2 year, $1.47 million project was begun in 2001 to combat “the growing problems of civic disengagement and political apathy among young Americans.” The goal of the effort, said Cedar Crest President Dorothy Blaney, is to “increase thoughtful and ethical civic engagement.… [It] involves the development of innovative, high-quality, multimedia, educational modules to be used at liberal arts colleges to encourage students to be good citizens.”
     Cedar Crest and 12 other institutions, including CIC members St. Thomas Aquinas College (NY), Lesley University (MA), Heidelberg College (OH), Pacific Lutheran University (WA), Notre Dame College (OH), Seton Hill University (PA), and College of Notre Dame of Maryland, “are embedding high quality ethics and civics education in curriculum...and multiplying the off-campus, service learning experiences related to courses,” Blaney said. “Ultimately, we expect thousands of students and faculty across the country to have access to the materials we have developed and to reengage in our common life as good citizens,” she noted.
     In fact, an assessment of the Participating in Democracy Project conducted this spring on student learning outcomes provided evidence that the effort is increasing the civic skills of students. “When faculty employ instructional techniques expressly dedicated to the promotion of student engagement, they can have a significant effect on the value and confidence that students express with regard to both civic engagement and participatory democracy,”stated the assessment report. For example, the report found that students who had completed a Democratic Academy course “exhibit statistically significant changes in regard to their attitudes about the value of civic engagement and their ability to serve as agents of social and political change.” In addition, “when it comes to the sense of efficacy that students express in regard to the civic skills essential to the practice of participatory democracy, there are statistically significant differences between students who have completed the course and the general student population,” the report states.
     For more information on the Democracy Project and assessment, visit www.cedarcrest.edu/democracy.

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Last updated: March 2003
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