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Individual Responding : Patricia Lundberg and Daniel Lowery, Co-Directors, ADP
- Please tell us the current status of the American Democracy Project at your campus?
We have a team of about 18 faculty, staff, and administrators, meeting monthly since November 2003. We feel the group is working extremely well together. They are: Co-Director Daniel Lowery, Executive Director of the Center for Sustainable Regional Vitality and Assistant Professor of Public Administration; Co-Director Patricia Lundberg, Executive Director of the Center for Cultural Discovery and Learning and Associate Professor of English and Women’s Studies; Linda Anderson, Director of Student Life; Robin Hass Birky, Associate Professor of English and Women’s Studies; Edward Charbonneau, Director of the Northwest Indiana Local Government Academy; Karen Evans, Associate Professor of Public and Environmental Affairs; Mary Ann Fischer, Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and Associate Professor of Psychology; Charles Gallmeier, Associate Professor and Chair of Sociology; Richard Hug, Interim Dean, SPEA; Thandabantu Iverson, Lecturer in Labor Studies; Earl Jones, Associate Professor of African-American Studies and adjunct in SPEA; Lou Ann Karabel, Coordinator of Service-Learning and Senior Lecturer in English; Keith Kirkpatrick, Director of the Leadership Institute; Henrietta Moore, Director of Multicultural Affairs; Scooter Pegram, Assistant Professor of French and adjunct in Minority Studies; Anna Rominger, Dean of Business and Economics; Geoff Schultz, Professor of Education; Marilyn Vasquez, Interim Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Vice Chancellor for Fiscal and Administrative Affairs.
- Did you hold campus conversations about the American Democracy Project?
- If so, who was involved? The Students sponsored a weekly current-events forum in spring 04. Other conversations will begin in AY 04-05.
- What kinds of questions and issues were/are being discussed? Whatever struck participants as critical from the daily New York Times; these were very informal.
- What common reading materials did you use for the conversations? NYT.
- What resources have helped you with the project?
- Books, readings, other written materials: We have closely followed Erlich and Colby’s Educating Citizens, and urged all American Democracy Team members to read it, also provided summaries and study guides.
- Speakers. None yet.
4. Have you involved students in the project? If so, how? Student Life initiated the first two projects: having faculty use the NYT in classes and encouraging students to sponsor the weekly current-events conversations.
- What linkages have you created to others beyond the campus ( i.e. Community, business, other campuses, system, other)? None yet.
- What specific activities and projects have you started since you joined the American Democracy Project? We have designed 6 projects, the first two of which are underway and the other 4 to begin in summer 04: A) Using the New York Times in Academic Work (in class) (Linda Anderson, leader); B) Student-sponsored Current Events Discussions (Linda Anderson, leader); C) Voting Initiative (Scooter Pegram, Linda Anderson, Keith Kirkpatrick, and Student Government, leaders) (Welcome Days, August 2004 voter registration and Rock the Vote events); D) A Yearlong Conversation on Service Learning (Lou Ann Karabel, leader); E) A Yearlong Conversation on How Well our General Education Outcomes From 1995 Prepare Students for Citizenship and How We Can Improve Them (in partnership with FACET; Geoff Schultz, Dan Lowery, and Robin Hass Birky, Leaders; F) A Yearlong Conversation on Race Relations and Diversity (Dan Lowery, Ken Coopwood, Ruth Needleman, in partnership with Northwest Indiana Race Relations Council, J. Allen Johnson, leaders).
- What activities, projects, and meetings are you planning for the coming school year 2004-05? See 6.
- Do you have a dedicated ADP section on your campus website? No. We do not have funds to employ a web-master for ADP. We will link to the academic affairs page.
- What activities and materials have you used to publicize the American Democracy Project on campus, as well as in your community, region, and state? We use email widely but have no funds for this.
- What are you struggling with? Funding and staffing and web-making skills.
- What are some unanticipated outcomes of your work? The ability to partner with FACET on conversations about the general education outcomes vis a vis their focus on civic awareness and responsibility.
- Are there ways we can be of help? Funding, especially for website and speakers during our conversations.
- Finally, what has been the impact of the project on your campus? On the team the impact has been important and good: we are energized to increase moral and civic learning on campus and working well together to create the spaces for conversations with a goal to improving student learning on civic issues and preparing our students for good citizenship.
Are there any other things you would like to tell us that we didn’t ask? We were not able to begin our work until after the Kokomo conference, and the team was appointed in November. We are still adding to our team for diversity and expertise, and are just now ready to announce our “conversations” to the campus community. Please see our long “ Indiana University Northwest Audit of Civic Engagement for the American Democracy Project, dated May 2004 , for an understanding or our work here.
Please email, fax or send your report to:
Mary-Kathryn McKenna, Project Coordinator, ADP
1307 New York Ave, NW, 5th Floor, Washington, DC 20005-4701
Phone 202/478-7833, Fax 202/296-5819 mckennam@aascu.org |
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