CLDE In Action
CLDE champions initiatives that involve all students in civic inquiry and democracy engagement, with equity and inclusion our top priorities.
The CLDE CAMPUS PROFILES you’ll find here either already reach all students, or have been specially designed to help students from underserved communities succeed at higher levels.
We also feature SCALING INITIATIVES led by national organizations, accreditors, and state systems that are working toward CLDE "at scale", meaning that all students will participate, benefit, and contribute.
If you are currently involved in a CLDE initiative that reaches or seeks to reach all students, or that has documented benefits for students from underserved communities, please SEND US A DESCRIPTION OF YOUR WORK and its approach to equity and inclusion. We will add campus profiles to this site as our movement grows.
If you are just getting started, or want to expand your existing civic learning program, we hope you will find the CLDE BY DESIGN, PLANNING, and PERSPECTIVES we've provided here both inspiring and practical.
CLDE By Design
These tools and readings suggest ways of weaving CLDE into general education programs and college majors, while making equity and inclusion top priorities.
The CLDE Framework: The Framework was developed by the CLDE Coalition in consultation with campus leaders and major civic, scholarly, and national organizations. It responds to the question, “What should students gain from civic and democracy engagement in college?”
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A CLDE Sample Guided Pathway with Civic and Problem-Centered Learning: This template shows how thematic course clusters can be keyed to important questions and to students’ own civic and career interests.
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Civic Inquiry and Projects in the Major: This prompt for curriculum mapping suggests ways that program content, learning outcomes, and students’ preparation for work on civic problems and projects can be connected by design.
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Prioritizing Equity and Inclusion: These articles suggest ways to reach students who too often are not included in civic learning: first generation, low-income men, and working adult learners.
Perspectives & Issues
A Crucible Moment: College Learning and Democracy’s Future: This 2012 report helped accelerate the CLDE movement across higher education. See chapters 5 and 6 for an overview of pedagogies and curriculum designs any institution can use.
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Free and Civil Discourse: Challenges and Imperatives: This 2017 issue of AAC&U's archival quarterly, Diversity & Democracy, provides diverse perspectives and resources for fostering civil dialogue about contentious issues.
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The Confounding Promise of Community - Why It Matters More than Ever for Student Success: CLDE recommends that civic learning be designed with equity, inclusion, and increased levels of student success the top priorities. This 2019 issue of AAC&U’s journal, Liberal Education, explores these issues in depth. See also the archival issues of AAC&U’s quarterly, Diversity & Democracy, for both examples and evidence of equity-minded and public-spirited programs on campus.
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Community Colleges For Democracy: This ground-breaking 2020 Campus Compact publication shows how a diverse group of community colleges are making civic learning and engagement integral to their work.
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Universities Are Shunning Their Responsibility to Democracy In this essay for The Atlantic, John Hopkins University President, Ronald J. Daniels, explores how higher education approached democracy learning in the past and proposes a renewed commitment to engaging students with democracy’s histories, principles, and challenges.
The Founders Bequeathed Us Something Radical. In a New York Times opinion piece, Ford Foundation President Darren Walker proposes that, “flawed” vision notwithstanding, the founders gave Americans the tools we need to repair our failures, and “build a multiracial, multiethnic, pluralist democracy that extends the privilege of American identity to all.”
Achieving Equity: An Evaluation of a Multicomponent, Lower-Division Student Success Program that weaves social justice inquiry and action into its guided learning pathways for students.
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Planning
Civic Dialogues: This series of presentations and discussion about civic engagement in higher education is hosted by the California Community College Success Network. The sessions are archived and available to view on YouTube.
Assessing Your Institution’s Civic Strengths and Gaps: This institutional self-study and planning matrix was initially published in A Crucible Moment: College Learning for Democracy’s Future, and has been updated for CLDE.
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Civic Action Plan Development: For its 30th Anniversary, Campus Compact developed a wealth of useful tools for campus planning and action, including Knowledge Hubs linked to specific areas of campus action such as Building Interfaith Cooperation, Civic Engagement and Sustainability Education, and K-12/Higher Education Partnerships.
Civic Prompts: Making Civic Learning Routine Across the Disciplines: Civic Prompts includes in Chapter IV a planning process developed with and for faculty members.
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General Education and Democratic Engagement: Examples of Fostering Civic Capacities Through General Education Requirements
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Civic Learning in the Major By Design: Examples Showing How Different Disciplines Foster Civic Engagement
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Scaling Initiatives
The initiatives featured here each are working to take Civic Learning and Democracy Engagement “to scale.” Collectively, they show the spread of vigorous leadership to make CLDE pervasive and inclusive.
The Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement Action Leaders: From 2012 to 2020, with leadership from AAC&U, the national organizations listed here worked together in an Action Network to spur civic learning and democratic engagement across postsecondary education. Today, each of these organizations continues its own influential work, while also partnering with the CLDE Coalition.
Higher Learning Commission: The Higher Learning Commission (HLC) The nation's largest institutional accreditor with 967 members, HLC in 2020 made civic engagement one of its quality standards for the renewal of accreditation.
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State of Massachusetts: The Massachusetts Department of Education (MDE) In 2014, Massachusetts became the first state to make civic learning one of its expected college outcomes for public higher education.
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State of Virginia: State Council for Higher Education in Virginia (SCHEV). In 2017, SCHEV asked all its member institutions to assess students' civic engagement as a “required competency.”
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State of Maryland: University System of Maryland (USMD) Since 2017, USMD has been working at the system and campus level to advance students' civic engagement and learning across public higher education.”
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Campus Profiles
There are many different ways to make students’ civic learning and democracy engagement (CLDE) both expected and equitable. The selected Campus Profiles show how CLDE can be fostered in general education, students’ majors, career preparation and student success initiatives.
CLDE in Two-Year Institutions:
Allegany College of Maryland
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College of the Canyons
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CUNY-Kingsborough Community College
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Community Colleges for Democracy (Nine Case Studies)
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CLDE and Completion Evidence:
The Metro College Student Success Program at San Francisco State University
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Session Recording: Excellence, Equity Learning, Strong Completion Gains
CLDE in Four-Year Institutions:
California State University Monterey Bay
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Harvard University
General Education Ethics & Civics Requirement
James Madison University
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Portland State University
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Providence College and St. Mary’s College of California
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Salisbury University
General Education Requirements
Southern Methodist University
Civics and Individual Ethics Requirement, Rubrics
Stanford University
A New Era for Citizenship Education at Stanford, Citizenship in the 21st Century Course
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
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University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh
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Worcester Polytechnic Institute
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BTtoP Civic Engagement
Snapshots