Institute for Democracy & Higher Education
In 2015, using data from the National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement, IDHE undertook a study designed to identify common attributes of campuses with highly politically engaged students. We also collected data through focus groups, interviews, and examinations of websites, news reports, and other public documents.
We discovered surprising consistency across campuses, regardless of mission, institutional type, geography, and student populations. We found that engagement in democracy reflects “what’s in the water” on a campus year-round (hence “Politics 365”). There are no quick fixes.
A strong and well-publicized institutional commitment to student well-being, sense of belonging, and shared responsibility for each other, their learning, the campus community, and the surrounding community, region, nation, and globe; support for students’ basic needs and for emergencies.
Multidisciplinary curricular and cocurricular programming, social justice education, and area and multicultural disciplines; pervasive and accessible support systems, dedicated physical spaces or centers and programming for affinity groups and multicultural engagement, empathy, compassion, and nimble and supportive responses to external events or crises.
Skilled discussions in classes, disciplinary societies and clubs, dining facilities, commuter lounges, first-year experiences, decision-making processes, community engagement experiences, and institutional responses to crises or current events; evident institutional support for academic freedom and balanced approach to free speech and inclusion; commitment to truth and evidence-based viewpoints.
Historical activist groups; stories, norms, and traditions of political engagement passed down by generations of students and faculty; dynamic political and civic engagement in the immediate surrounding community; centers, institutes, and clubs with traditions and history of political engagement.
Motivating and supporting student voice in campus decision making and activism around public policies, training programs in collaborative leadership, community organizing, and nonviolent activism. institutional leaders or faculty advocates for student involvement in institutional and local engagement, especially disenfranchised students.
Embedding diversity into regular institutionalized practices; providing centers or physical empowering spaces for discussions of issues related to marginalized identities such as race, ethnicity, and gender; commitment to increasing the diversity of the student body and faculty; implementing policies and practices that uniquely recognize the needs of students based on their marginalized and or vulnerable identities.
A “buzz” around elections; faculty and institutional leaders champion electoral engagement; efforts made to reduce barriers to student voting; intentional efforts to measure and close equity gaps in voting; coalitions of students, faculty, staff, and institutional leaders in using elections as opportunities to test and implement permanent, year-round engagement.
Book Chapter
A review of findings from a qualitative study of institutional climates for political learning and engagement in democracy, and the essential role of faculty members in fostering a robust climate for learning for democracy.
Book Chapter
Drawing from five qualitative case studies, a look at discussion-based teaching as a pedagogical approach for faculty members to create political learning opportunities for their students across disciplines.
Magazine Article
This Change magazine article provides a digestible look at the findings from IDHE’s early qualitative case studies of engagement campuses.
Special Issue
This special issue of Diversity & Democracy focuses on practices that advance political learning and on the roles students, faculty, and administrators can play in creating a politically engaged and socially just democracy.
Journal Article
This article presents a theoretical framework for understanding and gauging how an institution’s climate can promote or dissuade student political learning and participation.
Journal Article
A review of a pilot approach that tested the efficacy of employing internal and external researchers, the benefits of a multi-campus effort, and the importance of communities of practice.
Research Brief
This Scholars Strategy Network “Key Findings” brief examines student registration and voting rates, factors that inhibit and encourage student voting, and what colleges and universities can do to remove barriers to voting.
Blog Post
Throughout the 2018 election season, NASPA talked with administrators, faculty, and students about the opportunities and challenges it presented, and developed this set of reflection questions.
Op-Ed
IDHE’s Nancy Thomas on the good and bad news about what college-student voting could mean for higher education.
Contact us at [email protected] to learn how you can conduct a study of your campus climate for political learning and engagement in democracy.