BTtoP National Civic Seminar:
Report to the Nation Calls for Renewing the Civic Mission of Higher Education
By Donald W. Harward, Director, Bringing Theory to Practice
At the January 25, 2012, Annual Meeting of AAC&U, A Crucible Moment: College Learning and Democracy’s Future will be presented and promulgated. It is the product of a year-long study and collaborative effort by AAC&U, the Department of Education, and the Global Perspective Institute, as well as many educational associations and sponsors of civic engagement. The primary authorship of the report has been achieved by Caryn McTighe Musil and Larry A. Braskamp.
Bringing Theory to Practice has been represented, among many others, in the creation of the report by its director, Don Harward; by BTtoP Board members David Scobey, Carol Geary Schneider, Ashley Finley, and Caryn McTighe Musil; by BTtoP Leadership Coalition presidents Richard Guarasci, Theodore Long, and Kenneth Ruscio; and by BTtoP Civic Seminar participants Richard Battistoni, Robert Bringle, Ira Harkavy, Peter Levine, John Saltmarsh, and Brian Murphy.
The Task Force on Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement, on which both I and AAC&U President Carol Geary Schneider served, consulted with many educational leaders and practitioners and staff members from the Department of Education for more than a full year prior to the release of A Crucible Moment. Those meetings resulted in the report’s recommendations, which are designed to re-center civic learning within higher education’s overall mission and catalyze strategic actions to make civic learning a key part of every college student’s educational experience.
The production and dissemination of the report and its strategic recommendations for actions in 2012 are being made possible by a grant from the BTtoP Project to AAC&U under the Project’s support for civic learning initiatives. This support is part of multiple steps of action and support that will be developed by BTtoP in collaboration with the national civic seminar participating institutions and associations during the period of 2012-2014. These initiatives are occurring as a result of generous grants from the Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation and the S. Engelhard Center.
The first of these initiatives will be the publication of a monograph this spring consisting of twelve “provocations” regarding the civic and civic learning. The brief provocations, written by leading scholars and civic educators who attended the BTtoP national Civic Seminar, November 3-5, 2011, stimulate deeper consideration of multiple aspects of the complexities surrounding civic engagement, and the civic mission of higher education in an open and democratic society. Brief summaries (and the framing questions they used to structure the seminars) from the nineteen civic seminars that occurred on campuses in the United States and Europe during 2011 are also included. Together, the provocations and summaries serve as effective companions to the conversations and dialogues which will be generated on numerous campuses by the Crucible report—and they will point to directions for the positive consequences the report may have.
The provocations composing the monograph were originally presented to stimulate discussion and deeper analysis of the civic during the national Civic Seminar held at the Aspen Wye River Conference, November 3-5, 2011.
- “Why Now (Consider) the Civic? ... Because This Is a ‘Copernican’ Moment”—David Scobey, The New School
- “Why Now (Consider) the Civic? ... Because of the Relevant Evidence and What Follows if We Fail to Act Now”—Carol G. Schneider, AAC&U
- “Why Now (Consider) the Civic? ... Because the Civic Is at the Core of the Very Meaning of Learning”—D.W. Harward, BTtoP
- “Civic Learning”—Barry Checkoway, University of Michigan
- “Civic Research”—Michelle Fine, City University of New York, Graduate Center
- “Civic Studies as an Academic Discipline”—Peter Levine, CIRCLE at Tufts University
- “Creating the Democratically Engaged University”—Matthew Hartley, University of Pennsylvania
- “Civility and Discourse”—Daniel Shea, Allegheny College
- “Is the Civic a Culturally Dependent Concept? Are Democratic Practices?”—Richard Detweiler, the Great Lakes Colleges Association
- “A Report to the Nation: A Crucible Moment—The Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement National Task Force Report”—Caryn McTighe Musil, AAC&U
- “Diversity and Demographic Engagement”—Matthew Countryman, University of Michigan
- “What of the Civic Should Be Exported? What Should Be Imported?”—Samuel Abraham, Bratislava International School of Liberal Arts, Slovakia
- “The Eudaemonic and the Civic”—Corey Keyes, Emory University
The provocation essays are brief, accessible, and stimulate discussion and consideration of the current attention to civic learning, the encouragement of diverse forms of civic engagement, and the greater realization of the civic mission of our individual institutions and of higher education more broadly understood.
“Provocations in Support of Civic Learning and the Civic Mission of Higher Education: A Monograph,” is to be published Spring 2012 by the Bringing Theory to Practice Project.
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