Taking a Closer Look at Campus Civic Health: Are We Measuring Dutiful or Actualized Citizenship on Campus?
Adam Van Liere, Jeremy Arney, and Jo Arney
University of Wisconsin-La Crosse
Author Note
Adam Van Liere, Department of Political Science and Public Administration, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse; Jeremy Arney, Department of Political Science and Public Administration, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse; Jo Arney, Department of Political Science and Public Administration, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.
Correspondence regarding this article should be addressed to Adam Van Liere, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science and Public Administration, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, 423A W. Carl Wimberly Hall, 1725 State Street, La Crosse, WI 54601. Phone: (608) 785-6956. Email: avanliere@uwlax.edu.
Abstract
As participants in the Campus and Community Civic Health Initiative, the authors used National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC) measures to gauge civic health on their campus. By embedding their research study in a capstone class, they were able to interview representatives of student organizations, faculty, and campus offices regarding activities in the areas covered by the indicators. These indicators include activities such as volunteering, group membership and participation, using the Internet to educate about community issues, serving as a liaison with the community, to name a few. The study uncovered a strong civic campus culture, but the results were seemingly inconsistent with those of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) for the same campus. Turning to the literature on dutiful and actualized forms of citizenship, and using the gathered data as a case study, the authors argue that the NCoC and NSSE measures of civic health capture different aspects of civic health and citizenship.
Keywords: civic engagement, civic health, citizenship
Measuring the civic health of a campus or community is no small task, especially as groups work to reevaluate how to best define civic health. As participants in the Campus and Community Health Initiative of the American Democracy Project (ADP), political science and public administration capstone students collected civic-health data as part of course-embedded research on civic engagement. Through this work, we found evidence that the civic health of our mid-sized comprehensive university in the Midwest is strong when we used National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC) indicators, which include such items as volunteering, group or organizational involvement, public work, use of online resources, civic knowledge and agency, social trust, and political engagement. However, these same findings stood in contrast to our campus’s results on the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), which measures items such as the extent to which an institution contributes to knowledge, skills, and personal development in areas like voting in local, state, and national elections.
We believe these contrasting results highlight differences in how each of these measures defines civic engagement—differences best understood as those between measuring dutiful and actualizing citizenship. Dutiful citizens “vote, pay taxes, serve on juries, join the military when called, and obey the law” (Lachelier, 2011, p. 2); they are more conventional and may respond to a public issue by contacting a local official via traditional means (e.g., by letter) or voting to support a candidate who shares their stance on an issue. Lachelier (2011) referred to actualizing citizens as “engaged citizens” who often “vote less, but participate in less conventional politics like boycotts, public demonstrations, and email petitions to politicians” (p. 2).
The data collected as part of our campus-focused study only serve to reinforce the dramatic difference that can exist between participation in dutiful versus actualizing forms of engagement. In the interviews, we asked representatives of student organizations, faculty, and campus offices to identify activities they participated in that also related to the NCoC civic-health indicators. The interviews also gathered basic facts about campus civic health—for instance, number of volunteer hours and number of students involved. Additionally, the student researchers captured information about other, more actualizing activities in which the subjects were engaged, like informing citizens about opportunities in the local community via different Internet platforms (Biddix, 2010).
In total, the student researchers identified approximately 695 campus- related projects involving over 60,000 student hours during the 2012-2013 academic year. These results revealed significant emphasis, across all three groups of subjects, on activities like attending meetings and providing access to information; however, there were very few instances (only 17) in which representatives of student organizations or faculty reported activities tied explicitly to political engagement (e.g., encouraging people to vote). Thus, although the initial goal of our project was to measure campus civic health, the results also strongly suggest that in large part the NCoC indicators measure actualizing activities, such as volunteering, while the NSSE focuses more on dutiful forms of civic engagement. This article explores the differences between actualizing and dutiful forms of citizenship, describes how we conducted the research with our capstone students, outlines the results of the data they collected, and discusses the implications of the findings in relation to measures of campus civic health like the NCoC indicators and NSSE.
Literature Review
In his article “The Civil Citizen,” Lachelier (2011) tied in earlier works (Dalton, 2008; Zukin et al., 2006) separating more traditional and “dutiful” forms of civil participation from what he termed more “engaged” participation (e.g., volunteering, boycotting/buycotting, and utilizing social media). Duty-based participation includes traditional norms of citizenship such as voting in elections, serving on a jury, serving in the military, obeying the law, and reporting a crime (Dalton, 2007; Kittilson & Dalton, 2011). Lachelier made the case that while younger generations may be less “politically engaged,” they are more “civically engaged” via their volunteer work; indeed, younger generations value community volunteerism more than political engagement. Sitaraman and Warren’s (2003) national survey of undergraduate students, conducted by the Harvard Institute of Politics in 2000, found further evidence of this preference on the part of young people: 85% of respondents believed that “community volunteerism is better than political engagement for addressing issues facing the community” (p. 17).
Kittilson and Dalton (2011) asserted that participation in voluntary organizations is evidence of the more recent trend of engaging civic activities outside of traditional voting, and may represent the new frontier of social capital building. Their research examined the ways in which interpersonal social group activity and virtual activity contribute to two dimensions of social capital: citizen norms and political involvement. Their findings suggest that social group activity and virtual interactions both foster many of the same positive aspects of social capital. For instance, the more frequently a person is involved in voluntary organizations, the greater their tendency toward generalized social trust and engagement in politics (Howard & Gilbert, 2008). In addition, experimental evidence supports the positive role of the Internet in facilitating civic discussion, suggesting that individuals may feel more comfortable expressing their opinions in an online format rather than in person (Ho & McLeod, 2008).
Kittilson and Dalton (2011) examined 2005 data from the Citizenship Involved in Democracy (CID) survey (administered by the Center for Democracy and Civil Society at Georgetown University). In a previous analysis of these data, Dalton (2007) argued that the items in the CID cluster along two dimensions of citizenship: duty-based and engaged citizenship. In contrast to duty-based citizenship, “engaged citizenship reflects a more participatory, elite-challenging view of citizenship, forming one’s own opinion, supporting those who are worse off, being active in politics and in voluntary groups” (p. 635). Furthermore, the Internet has made it easier to establish virtual “weak ties” between acquaintances via online social networks in a manner that harkens back to Granovetter’s (1973) claim that weak ties are the most valuable aspects of social networks. Kittilson and Dalton (2011) extended that notion by advocating that participation in voluntary groups that utilize online interactions helps current generations move further from duty-based types of engagement toward more actualized and engaged forms of citizenship.
Bennett, Wells, and Freelon (2011) made a useful distinction between the two “contrasting models of citizenship” among younger adults on the Internet: dutiful citizenship (DC) versus actualizing citizenship (AC). According to their article, “younger generations are embracing more expressive styles of actualizing citizenship defined around peer content sharing and social media, in contrast to earlier models of dutiful citizenship based on one-way communication managed by authorities” (p. 835). Furthermore, younger citizens (ages 18-29) are significantly more likely than their elders to watch political video clips online, use social networking sites such as Facebook for political purposes, and express their opinions in online forums (Hargittai & Hinnant, 2008; Smith & Rainie, 2008). According to Bennett et al. (2011), the DC model has traditionally represented people participating “in civic life through organized groups, from civic clubs to political parties, while becoming informed via the news (now Twitter), and generally engaging in public life out of a sense of personal duty” (p. 838). Like Putnam (2000), Bennett et al. (2011) claimed that the “defining DC characteristics are notably in decline among younger generations in the U.S.” (p. 838). Hence the rise of the AC model of “looser personal engagement with peer networks that pool (crowd source) information and organize civic action using social technologies that maximize individual expression” (p. 839).
Two widely known resources that Bennett et al. (2011) utilized include the Civic Mission of Schools report, released in 2003 by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) and the Carnegie Corporation (Gibson & Levine 2003), and the Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools (CCMS). The scholars compiled a set of 40 “civic competencies” necessary for effective citizenship, sorted into four categories. One of these categories was “civic knowledge” since the historical conceptualization of civics is most similar to civic knowledge. As stated in A Crucible Moment (2012), “citizens of communities need to know the cultural and global contexts in which a community exists, understand the historical and sociological relevance of important social movements, have exposure to multiple cultural and religious traditions, and understand how their political system works in the 21st century” (Reason & Hemer, 2015, p. 6). According to Bennett et al. (2011), civic knowledge in most conventional DC models is defined variously to encompass the following: information about history, the Constitution, the Founding Fathers, wars, and other events (CIRCLE, 2006; Niemi & Chapman, 1998); an understanding of how government and democracy work (CIRCLE, 2006; Gibson, 2001); and an identification of specific officeholders (McDevitt & Kiousis 2004; Syvertsen et al., 2007) and candidates, and their positions on specific issues (Pasek et al., 2008).
Drawing on the previously mentioned literature, students in our political science and public administration capstone classes have traditionally engaged in work that explores various issues (e.g., frac sand mining) and reflects upon the methods used by others to “mobilize hundreds of community members at key public meetings” (Pearson, 2013, p. 34). Yet, through our participation in the Campus and Community Health Initiative, we also provided our students with an opportunity to explore the mobilization methods used by student organizations, faculty, and campus offices.
Methods
The American Democracy Project created the Campus and Community Health Initiative to serve as the signature program of its 10th-anniversary year, and participating campuses were asked to measure campus and community civic health (“Civic Health Initiative,” n.d.). During the first year of our study, we opted to measure campus civic health using the NCoC civic-health indicators. Specifically, we utilized a course-embedded undergraduate research project to conduct semi-structured interviews with representatives of student organizations, faculty, and selected campus offices. The central purposes of this research was to identify the ways in which the subjects engaged in activities related to different indicators of civic health, such as volunteering, group or organizational involvement, public work, use of online resources, civic knowledge and agency, social trust, and political engagement.
All of the interviewees had agreed previously to participate in the study. For example, faculty participants were asked to volunteer at college meetings held prior to the start of the academic year, and representatives of student organizations and campus offices were asked if they would be willing to participate in this study on behalf of their respective groups. Additionally, it should be noted that in choosing to focus on student organizations as one of our units rather than individual students, we acknowledge that the sample was not random and may not have reflected the entire student population. The diversity of the organizations that responded, however, suggests that the results reflected a diversity of student interests on campus.
The student researchers were prepared for this project—and its emphasis on an exploration of civic engagement—through the capstone course, which included the assignment of 20 contemporary academic journal articles on the topic as part of the course readings. During the first several weeks of class, one student led a discussion about each article; this activity comprised an oral literature review to prepare students to think about both the meaning of civic engagement and how to measure it. During this period, the instructor also assigned the student researchers to their interview subjects so they could begin scheduling the semi-structured interviews for the middle of the semester.
Once the capstone class moved into the data-collection phase, student researchers administered a common, semi-structured interview instrument to all groups. (See Appendix A for a copy of the instrument.) As part of these interviews, the student researchers asked about how often each group, individual, or office engaged in civic activities included in the NCoC measures during the 2012-2013 academic year. (See Appendix B for a full list of NCoC indicators.) Student researchers also asked how many students were involved in each activity and approximately for how long (in hours). The instructor directed the student researchers to utilize these semi-structured interviews as a means to capture both basic, factual information and rich data, and to increase the response rate. Each student researcher in the capstone class was assigned 10 to 15 interviews, and their results were pooled for the larger study.
Results
A total of 108 student organizations, 42 faculty members, and 18 campus offices participated in the study. The 108 participating student organizations represented approximately 69 percent of the student organizations on campus at the time of the study. (See Appendix C for a full list of those interviewed.) Student researchers met with one to five representatives from each organization and asked each to describe the activities he or she engaged in related to the civic- health indicators. As noted earlier, student researchers also collected data regarding the number of students involved in each activity and the number of student hours devoted of each activity.
The result of these interviews showed that during the 2012-2013 academic year student organizations engaged in a total of 1,622 activities that could be linked to NCoC civic-health indicators. These activities involved 6,565 students who logged over 47,568 hours. Table 1 presents the types of activities student groups reported being involved in most often. Attending meetings of groups or organizations was the single most common activity listed; the second most reported was providing access to information. The least common activity mentioned by student organizations was encouraging other students to vote.
Table 1 – Civic Activities Reported by Students
|
Civic Activity |
# of Instances Reported |
|
Volunteer
|
44 |
|
Groups
|
429 |
|
Public Work
|
33 |
|
Online
|
41 |
|
Civic Knowledge and Agency
|
88 |
|
Social Trust
|
51 |
|
Political Engagement
|
10 |
Civic activities ranged from promoting mental health awareness to collecting canned goods to cleaning cages at the humane society. Those student organizations with some of the highest numbers of participants or student hours self-identified as “a school group, neighborhood, or community association,” and/or “a sports or recreation organization such as a soccer or tennis club.” In these cases, the interviewees included the time students spent preparing for an event or performance, and the time associated with participating in the event or performance itself. For example, one student organization, which identified itself as a musical organization, included 80 student participants working 9,600 student hours preparing for and performing during pre-game and half-time shows, and pep music during college athletic events.
In addition to interviewing members of student organizations, student researchers also interviewed a total of 42 faculty members representing 19 academic departments and units. (See Appendix D for a full list of departments.) The faculty members reported specifically on civic activities they engaged in related to their work such as teaching, scholarship and research, or institutional and community service. Among the 157 projects mentioned by the faculty, approximately 370 students were involved for a total of 7,886 hours. The faculty also indicated that they themselves contributed approximately 3,575 hours toward these activities.
Among the top civic activities reported by the 42 participating faculty members (see Table 2), attending organizational meetings was one of their most common activities. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given their role as instructors, faculty also reported that providing access to information was an equally common civic activity. The least common civic indicator was, again, political engagement, with only seven faculty members reporting that their work included encouraging others to vote.
Table 2 – Civic Activities Reported by Faculty
|
Civic Activity |
# of Instances Reported |
|
Volunteer
|
52 |
|
Groups
|
91 |
|
Public Work
|
18 |
|
Online
|
30 |
|
Civic Knowledge and Agency
|
90 |
|
Social Trust
|
67 |
|
Political Engagement
|
7 |
Some of the activities reported by faculty included working with student volunteers, sitting on the boards of nonprofit organizations, and fundraising for community organizations. As with the student organizations, faculty reported the largest number of hours, number of students and student hours for activities associated with “a school group, neighborhood, or community association;” however, they were more likely to report that they and/or these groups “serve as a liaison between groups and community,” “engage in or facilitate educational conversations out of the classroom,” and/or “provide access to information.” Again, some of these activities may seem unsurprising, given the instructional role of faculty—for example, working with others to bring groups of parents and students to campus to family learning opportunities, or setting up weekly events at the local children’s museum.
Finally, in addition to the student organizations and faculty, student researchers also interviewed 18 different offices across campus (see Appendix E). The interviews indicated that these offices engaged in 58 activities that included a total of 4,756 students contributing approximately 5,292 student hours. The offices themselves contributed an additional 8,941 hours toward these activities. Table 3 presents the top civic activities reported by the offices. Unlike the student organizations and faculty, the campus offices reported that working with other individuals, offices, and groups on campus in order to build relationships and trust within the campus community was their top activity overall. They also reported that serving as a liaison and providing access to information were other common civic activities. No campus offices reported any instances of political engagement.
Table 3 – Civic Activities Reported by Campus Offices
|
Civic Activity |
# of Instances Reported |
|
Volunteer
|
5 5 |
|
Groups
|
17 16 |
|
Public Work
|
4 |
|
Online
|
4 |
|
Civic Knowledge and Agency
|
20 26 |
|
Social Trust
|
58 |
Some activities of campus offices included providing financial literacy programs for students, leading summer service programs, and participating in skits about social justice issues. For example, the largest number of hours reported by an office was 2,211 hours for tutoring-related services that did not include any student hours, while the offices reaching the largest number of students did so through informational panels or speakers and videos. In some instances, the office itself reported very few hours or students involved but highlighted their role in bringing together large numbers of campus and community organizations to network and interact with one another, or working to provide access and information about the university to members of the community.
Analysis and Discussion
Overall, the civic health of our campus appears quite strong, especially considering that students engaged in approximately 60,000 hours of work related to civic activities associated with the NCoC civic-health indicators during the 2012-2013 academic year. This participation might have been through a student organization, in conjunction with the work of a faculty member, or with a campus office. As noted previously, this number does not necessarily capture the civic activities of all students, such as those who seek volunteer opportunities on their own. It also does not necessarily capture what impact, if any, all of this activity has on the local community. That includes both the student hours and the approximately 12,515 hours that faculty and campus offices themselves spend on the civic activities in which they are also engaged—not necessarily with student help.
Notably, the types of activities that student organizations, faculty, and campus offices engage in vary, but they also tend to reflect a more actualizing version of civic engagement. Whereas the student organizations and faculty seem to share an emphasis on attending meetings and providing information, the campus offices emphasize developing trust in institutions. This variation appears to align with the expected roles that these different groups play on campus. Student organizations bring together students who share common interests, similar to the way in which faculty and students engaged in faculty-led civic activities may share common interests; however, none of this has anything to do necessarily with the university itself. Campus offices, on the other hand, were created by the university to serve a purpose that the institution deems important;
consequently, it seems reasonable that these campus offices would seek to promote trust in institutions.
When the results of the study are viewed from the perspective of dutiful civic engagement, perhaps the biggest surprise is the small proportion of the approximately 695 identified projects that involve political engagement (e.g. encouraging members to vote). This is particularly striking when one considers that these data covered a period during which a U.S. presidential election occurred. Instead, the data seem to show that students and faculty on our campus were more prone to actualize their civic health duties by volunteering and pursuing online social media campaigns than engage in dutiful forms of civic participation. Similarly, authors have hypothesized that because of social media young people may be abandoning traditional modes of dutiful citizen participation (e.g. voting or joining a political party) for a more personalized politics of self- actualization through digital networking, volunteering, and consumer activism (Bang, 2005; Bennett et al., 2009, 2011; Dalton, 2008; Davies et al., 2012: Xenos & Bennett, 2007).
Of course, some of these results may be due in part to the semantics guiding the student researchers as they conducted the study. For example, with respect to category of online civic activities, representatives of student organizations and faculty stated that they used the Internet to “express,” “educate,” and “stay in contact with others.” In terms of educating, the interviewees actually labelled this activity as providing “civic knowledge” to others, which aligns more closely with the dutiful type of citizenship described in the literature than the actualizing citizenship model. Consequently, our findings suggest that, while providing civic knowledge to others is more traditionally duty- based, student organizations and faculty utilize more actualizing techniques. Both student organizations and faculty accounted for 236 instances of either “facilitating educational conversations outside the classroom” (61), “providing access to information” (143), and “distribut[ing] civic knowledge” (32) during the period covered by this study. Ultimately, this observation supports the need to continually reevaluate the definition of civic health.
The results of our campus civic health study appear even more striking when considered alongside our campus’s results on what have been termed the “civic” measures of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). “NSSE measures student engagement—measured by the amount of time students put into their studies and other educationally purposeful activities and how institutions deploy resources and organize the curriculum and other learning opportunities” (Reason & Hemer, 2015, p. 20). A study by Kuh and Umbach (2004) utilized NSSE data from over 500 institutions to examine four different dimensions of civic character development, including civic responsibility and the likelihood a student voted in local, state, and national elections. Drawing upon our own NSSE data, one could be left with the impression that our students are not very “civically” engaged when measured against more dutiful forms of civic engagement. Indeed, only 19% of students indicated they felt very knowledgeable about voting in local, state, and national elections.
Similarly, these results may be unsurprising given that none of the campus offices mentioned, for example, encouraging members to vote as part of their civic activities. However, when we consider civic activity more broadly, it is difficult to reconcile the perception that the campus is doing little to foster engaged citizenship with the fact that our students spent approximately 60,000 hours engaged in civic activities during a single academic year. Indeed, the same set of NSSE results for our university reported that 36 percent of students had volunteered for an organization on campus or in the community and another 52 percent intended to do so. As such, the results of our study along with the volunteer data from NSSE support the literature’s suggestion that today’s college students seem to embrace a more actualizing conception of civic engagement.
Conclusion
Our participation in ADP’s Campus and Community Health Initiative provided us with an opportunity to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the civic health of our campus. Our approach to this study allowed us to offer capstone students in political science and public administration a unique opportunity to learn about the process of conducing social science research. Throughout the process, we all marveled at the sheer number of hours that our students spend engaging in civic activities, while reflecting upon how this number squares with evidence that the institution is not doing enough to encourage more dutiful forms of civic engagement and citizenship, like voting.
To our minds, these results point to at least two important conclusions. First, the results of our own campus civic health study reinforce the NSSE results insofar as there is very little evidence that significant efforts are being made to encourage political engagement in more dutiful ways. Second, and perhaps more importantly, these results make it clear that more work is needed to measure and evaluate the nature of both dutiful and actualizing citizenship as it relates to campus civic health. Again, with additional research, it may be possible to document a clear shift in the way college students become civically engaged today; however, even in the absence of this additional work, our results demonstrate that there is a large amount of engagement on our campus that more closely resembles actualized forms of civic engagement. At the very least, the NCoC civic health measures appear to do a better job of capturing this change than the NSSE’s civic measures.
References
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Bennett, W. L., Wells, C., & Rank, A. (2009). Young citizens and civic learning: Two paradigms of citizenship in the digital age. Citizenship Studies, 13(2), 105-120.
Bennett, W. L., Wells, C., & Freelon, D. (2011). Communicating civic engagement: Contrasting models of citizenship in the youth web sphere. Journal of Communication, 61, 835-856.
Biddix, J. P. (2010). Technology uses in campus activism from 2000-2008: Implications for civic learning. Journal of College Student Development, 51(6), 679-693.
Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. (2006). Civic education: What students are learning. Retrieved from http://www.civicyouth.org/index.php?s=iea
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Dalton, R. J. (2008). The good citizen: How a younger generation is reshaping American politics. Washington, DC: CQ Press.
Davies, I., Bennett, L. W., Loader, B., Mellor, S., Vromen, A., Coleman, S., & Xenos, M. (2012). Four questions about the educational potential of social media for promoting civic engagement. Citizenship Teaching & Learning, 7(3), 293-306.
Gibson, C. (2001). From inspiration to participation: A review of perspectives on youth civic engagement. Retrieved from http://www.pacefunders.org/publications/pubs/Moving%20%20report%20 REV3.pdf
Gibson, C., & Levine, P. (2003). Civic mission of schools. New York: Carnegie Corporation of New York and CIRCLE. Retrieved from http://www.civicmissionofschools.org/site/campaign/cms_report.html
Granovetter, M. (1973). The strength of weak ties. American Journal of Sociology, 78(6), 1360-1380.
Ho, S. S., & McLeod, D. M. (2008). Social-psychological influences on opinion expression in face-to-face and computer-mediated communication. Communication Research, 35(2), 190-207.
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Kittilson, M. C., & Dalton, R. J. (2011). Virtual civil society: The new frontier of social capital. Political Behavior, 33, 625-644.
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Lachelier, P. (2012). The civil citizen. eJournal of Public Affairs, 1(1), 1-28.
McDevitt, M., & Kiousis, S. (2004). Education for deliberative democracy: The long-term influence of Kids Voting USA. CIRCLE Working Paper Series. Retrieved from http://www.civicyouth.org/PopUps/WorkingPapers/WP22McDevitt.pdf
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Niemi, R. G., & Chapman, C. (1998). The civic development of 9th– through 12th– grade students in the United States: 1996. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Educational Statistics.
Pasek, J., Feldman, L., Romer, D., & Jamieson, K. H. (2008). Schools as incubators of democratic participation: Building long-term political efficacy with civic education. Applied Developmental Science, 12(1), 26- 37.
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Appendix A
Data Collection Form
Name of interviewee Department/Office/Organization
Review the long sheet with descriptions of each category. Ask what projects, if any, the faculty member, student organization, or office engages in related to these categories.
- Project 1 (Name and Description):
For Faculty: please indicate whether this is related to:
-
- Teaching
- Research
- Service
Number of hours spent (per semester)
Number of students involved
Number of Student Hours
Expenditures
Please indicate which category the interviewee says is relevant:
|
Political Engagement (e.g., voter registration and turnout, contacting elected officials, discussing politics) |
|
Public Work (e.g., attending meetings and working with neighbors to solve community problems) |
|
Volunteering & Giving (e.g., frequency of volunteering and types of activities) |
|
Group Participation (e.g., participation in religious groups, sports and recreation, civics and service) |
|
Online Engagement (e.g., discussing politics online, communicating with friends online) |
|
Social Trust (e.g., trust of neighbors, confidence in institutions) |
|
Civic Knowledge and Agency (e.g. civics content knowledge, access to information) |
Complete the same for each project the faculty member/office/student organization engages in (e.g.. Project 2 Name and Description)
Appendix B
NCoC Civic Health Indicators
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Volunteer |
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Groups |
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Public Work
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Online
|
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Civic Knowledge and Agency |
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Social Trust |
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Political Engagement |
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Appendix C
Student Organizations Interviewed
Below is the full list of the 108 student groups interviewed:
Active Minds, Advocates for Children, Aikido Club, Alpha Sigma Phi, Alpha Xi Delta, American Chemical Society Student Affiliate, American Marketing Association, American Society for Microbiology, Angell Hall Council, Asian Latina African Native, American Women, Athletic Training Association, Biology Club, Campus Activities Board, Campus Crusade for Christ, Ceramics Club, Chi-Phi, Christian Collegians, Coate Hall Council, Coate Neighborhood Council, College Democrats, College of Business Administration Student Advisory Council, Colleges Against Cancer, Collegiate Entrepreneurs’ Organization, Common Ground Campus Ministry, Communications Club, Competitive Ballroom Dance Team, Cross Country Ski Team, Delta Sigma Phi, Diamond Way Buddhist Club, Dining Services Committee, Drake Hall Council, Eagle Gray Hall Council, Eagle Women’s Hockey Club, English Club, Environmental Council, Gamma Sigma Sigma, Geography Club, Habitat for Humanity, Hutch Hall Council, Intercultural Organization Promoting Awareness, Interfraternity Council, International Student Organization, Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, Iota Tau Alpha, Kappa Delta Pi-Beta Tau, La Crosse Environmental Activities Federation, La Crosse Hip Hop Dance Team, La Crosse International Friendship Exchange, La Crosse Secular Society, Lambda Pi Eta, Latin American Student Organization, Le Cercle Francais, Lutheran Campus Ministry, Mathematics and Statistics Club, Men United Against Sexual Assault, Men’s La Crosse, Men’s Soccer Club, National Residence Hall Honorary, Newman Center, Optimist Club, Panhellinic Council, Phy Ed Majors Club, Physical Therapy Club, Physician Assistant Student Society, Pi Sigma Alpha, Political Science and Public Administration Association, Pre-Chiropractic club, Pre-Dentistry club, Pre-Med Club, Pre-Occupational Therapy Club, Pre-Optometry, Pre-Pharmacy club, Pre- Vet Club, Pro-Life students of La Crosse, Psi Chi, Psych Club, Radiation Therapy Club, Rainbow Unity, Residence Hall Association Council, ROTC, Rugby Club Team, Sanford Hall Council, School Psychology Student Society, Screaming Eagles Band, Sig Tau Fraternity, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, Sigma Delta Pi-Epsilon Theta Chapter, Sigma Tau Delta, Ski and Snowboard Club, Society for Human Resources Management, Sociology Club, Spanish Club, SPILL, Sports Management Association, Student Alumni Ambassadors, Student Association, Student Nutrition Association, Student Occupational Therapy Association, Students Advocating for Potential Ability, Students for a Free Tibet, Students Today Leaders Forever, The Racquet, Wentz Hall Council, Women’s La Crosse Club, Women’s Rugby Club, Women’s Soccer Club, and Women’s Volleyball Club.
Appendix D
Faculty Interviewed
Below is the full list of academic departments and units for the faculty interviewed:
Athletic Training, Biology, Communication Studies, Economics, Education Studies, Finance, History, Management, Marketing, Math, Microbiology, Physical Education, Physics, Political Science and Public Administration, Psychology, Recreation Management, Small Business Development, Theatre, Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies
Appendix E
Campus Offices Interviewed
Below is the full list of 18 campus offices interviewed:
Academic Advising Center, Alumni Center, Campus Climate, Continuing Education, Disability Resources Center, Financial Aid Office, Institutional Research, Leadership and Involvement Center, McNair Scholars Program, Murphy Library, Office of Admissions, Office of Student Life, Pride Center, Records and Registration, Student Support Services, Upward Bound, University Athletics, and the University Foundation
Author Biographies
Adam Van Liere is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. His main areas of teaching and research interest focus on global learning and global governance.
Jeremy Arney is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. His main areas of teaching and research interest focus on public policy and policy arenas and venues.
Jo Arney is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. Her main areas of teaching and research interest focus on civic engagement and environmental policy.
