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State and national conversations offer new ideas, partners for engagement

Throughout the summer, NC Campus Compact staff and network members have taken part in a number of national and state-level conversations exploring new ideas, initiatives, and partners relevant to our civic engagement work  Some highlights…

 

National Conversations

In late June, NC Campus Compact joined a community conversation sponsored by Opportunity Nation in Charlotte, NC. Representatives from three Charlotte-area member campuses – Queens, Central Piedmont Community College (CPCC), and UNCC – also participated, along with leaders and community members from various local non-profits, corporations, and government agencies. Opportunity Nation shared its Opportunity Index and its legislative and policy proposals for enhancing economic opportunity on a national level.

Also in June, three NC Campus Compact member presidents attended the Aspen Institute’s Franklin Project summit on 21st Century national service. Elon University President Leo Lambert, Davidson College President Carol Quillen, and UNCW Chancellor Gary Miller – all three members of the Compact’s Executive Board – were among a group of government, military, corporate, non-profit and education sector leaders seeking to advance the idea of universal national service in America.

National Campus Compact partnered with NASPA to host the association’s first Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement Conference in Philadelphia. (National Campus Compact was a key partner.) Wake Forest University’s Marianne Magjuka, Director of Campus Life, was one of 250 student affairs professionals who attended. Marianne also served on the conference planning committee and presented a workshop on Deliberative Dialogues. She reports being especially impressed by the keynote of AAC&U “assessment guru” Alison Finney. In 2012-13, Wake Forest was part of NASPA’s related LEAD initiative, a network of 50 colleges and universities committed to “encouraging and highlighting the work of student affairs in making civic learning and democratic engagement a part of every student’s college education.” WFU will again be part of the network as a consulting institution in the coming year.

Finally, NC Campus Compact Executive Director Lisa Keyne joined the Kettering Foundation for a Democratic Deliberation Exchange that examined new applications and audiences for the deliberative dialogue tool. During the event, she also participated in testing a new deliberative dialogue framing developed by the National Issues Forum on the topic of the federal budget.

Statewide Conversations

In July, NC Campus Compact joined a gathering of organizations in NC seeking to increase the political engagement of college students. Hosted by the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, the meeting was the first time these organizations – including NCPIRG and NC Central’s Institute for Civic Engagement and Social Change – had been in the same room, giving attendees a chance to understand who was active on which campuses and to explore potential collaborations.

On August 1, Compact staffers attended the NC Chamber’s Conference on Education in Chapel Hill to learn about new standards for career and college readiness. We also shared information about how civic and community engagement can support both economic and student development.

Last week, NC Campus Compact member campuses convened at our summer network meetings. Those gatherings – hosted in the west by Lenoir-Rhyne University in Hickory and in the west by Meredith College in Raleigh – gave campus engagement administrators a chance to share insights into their work and information about new initiatives.

These state and national conversations will help shape the work of NC Campus Compact in the coming year, including the CSNAP student conference this fall and the Civic Engagement Institute in February.

 

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