Imagining America Participates in National Effort to Promote Education’s Civic Mission

By Timothy K. Eatman, Director of Research, Imagining America, and Assistant Professor, School of Education, Syracuse University

Imagining America is part of the American Commonwealth Partnership, which in January 2012 is initiating a year of advocacy and activity under the banner, “For Democracy’s Future – Reclaiming Our Civic Mission.” In collaboration with the White House Office of Public Engagement, U.S. Department of Education, and Association of American Colleges and Universities, the American Commonwealth Partnership is a broad alliance of numerous higher education, civic, and business groups. Syracuse University Chancellor and President Nancy Cantor is co-chair of the American Commonwealth Partnership’s Presidential Council. Other participants include American Democracy Project, The Democracy Commitment, NERCHE, National Conference on Citizenship, Campus Compact, Anchor Institutions Task Force, and more. The effort is coordinated by Harry Boyte, director of Augsburg’s Center for Democracy and Citizenship and senior fellow at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute.

The upcoming 150^th anniversary of the Morrill Act signed by President Lincoln in 1862 provides the historic occasion to convene the American Commonwealth Partnership. The Morrill Act established the first group of land-grant colleges and universities in order to, as the Association of Public and Land Grant Universities describes, “teach agriculture, military tactics, and the mechanic arts as well as classical studies so that members of the working classes could obtain a liberal, practical education.” By the Great Depression, land-grant institutions came to be known as “democracy colleges.” Building upon this legacy, the American Commonwealth Partnership hopes to inspire a broad range of educational institutions – such as community colleges, liberal arts colleges, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and others – to embrace a civic mission.

The American Commonwealth Partnership builds on multiplying efforts across higher education to reclaim education’s public purposes. It recognizes the many public engagement organizations that give momentum to educational change, and the numerous extant strands of activity, such as civic learning and education, college and university contributions to communities as “stewards of place” and “anchor institutions,” and public scholarship that addresses pressing public problems.

Imagining America leaders are contributing the consortium’s unique perspective to the American Commonwealth Partnership. Humanities, arts, and design-based public scholarship and practice animate and strengthen the civic life of communities and campuses. As the University of Michigan’s Arts of Citizenship program articulates on its website:

U-M’s many public scholars in the arts, humanities, and design enrich civic life by creating public cultural goods that preserve our past, tell stories of who we are, imagine our future, and provide public space for connecting with each other. The public scholar’s collaborative work is also a rich source of research material that can advance theory in the faculty member’s particular field, provide the basis for creative work, and raise problems or dissonances that lead to new research questions.

Furthermore, Imagining America’s Tenure Team Initiative on Public Scholarship recommendations for changing institutional policies to cultivate publicly engaged academic work are a means for a college or university to embrace its civic mission. For an essay that links arts and culture to agriculture and the historic mission of land-grants, see the Imagining America position paper, “Changing the Story About Higher Education’s Public Purposes and Work: Land-Grants, Liberty, and the Little Country Theater,” by Cornell University’s Scott Peters.

Finally, we are especially excited that the American Commonwealth Partnership is aligned with an effort of the federal government. As some will remember, Imagining America was conceived in 1999 during a yearlong effort of the White House Millennium Council to encourage civic participation, themed, “Honor the Past – Imagine the Future.”

Activities of the American Commonwealth Partnership being planned for 2012 include:

• an event at the White House on January 10, 2012;
• an extensive social media campaign with blogs, stories, videos, and a competition of videos that profile civic initiatives, building from “DemocracyU,” an American Commonwealth Partnership website that will go live on December 7, 2011;
• a dialogue series; and
• a curricular and co-curricular development project that combines STEM, humanities,  and civic agency education.

For more detail about the American Commonwealth Partnership’s history and upcoming activities, see Harry Boyte’s guest blog post on the American Democracy Project.

Note: The image is of Boyte discussing the American Commonwealth Partnership at Imagining America’s September conference in the Twin Cities.