How Can Colleges Protect Student Voting Rights and Support Experiential Learning?

Center for Civic Engagement Staff Present at Annual Campus Compact Conference

Staff members of Bard’s Center for Civic Engagement represented the College at the annual Campus Compact conference in Denver, April 7–10. They presented on the role of colleges in protecting student voting rights and the impact of experiential learning strategies in both domestic and international settings. Campus Compact is the largest and oldest higher education association dedicated to civic and community engagement in colleges and universities in the US. In 2020, Bard was an inaugural winner of Campus Compact’s Richard Guarasci Award, in honor of institutions advancing the public purpose of higher education. 

This year’s conference theme, “Now Is the Moment: Higher Education Civic and Community Engagement as a Way Forward,” brought together faculty, staff, and community partners to identify ways to further civic and community engagement in the curricular and cocurricular space. 

Jonathan Becker, executive vice president for academic affairs and director of Bard’s Center for Civic Engagement, and Erin Cannan, vice president for civic engagement, presented on “Institutions as Citizens: Colleges and Universities as Actors in Defense of Student Voting Rights.” Over the past quarter century, Bard has been a national leader in promoting student voting rights, filing four successful lawsuits to defend student voting and ensure a polling place on the Bard campus, and teaming up with good government groups to mandate polling places on New York State campuses with 300 or more registered voters. Bard was named by the Washington Monthly as one of the “best colleges for student voting” as a part of an honor roll of colleges “schools doing the most to turn students into citizens.” Bard also received the highest ranking of the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge for Most Engaged Campuses for College Student Voting.

Brian Mateo, associate dean of civic engagement and Caitlin O’Donnell MBA ’20, program manager for the OSUN Civic Engagement Initiative, presented on “Strategies to Bridge Classroom and Cocurricular Engagement Through Experiential Learning Practices.” The presentation drew upon the benefits of experiential learning and community engagement as well as showcased the impacts of the OSUN Experiential Learning Institute, which, to date, has trained 84 faculty from 15 institutions. They also addressed the cocurricular aspects of experiential learning by speaking about the successes of Bard’s March Match Program.

“Bard is proud of our participation in Campus Compact,” said Becker, “and we are pleased that we had the opportunity to share our experiences as a civically engaged institution with so many colleagues from across the United States and across the globe.”

Post Date: 04-17-2024