UMBC’s Division of Student Affairs has announced the launch of the Center for Democracy and Civic Life, led by Director David Hoffman and Assistant Director Romy Hübler. In collaboration with on- and off-campus partners, the center will help students develop knowledge, skills, and approaches for deep and effective community work.

“The Center for Democracy and Civic Life’s launch comes at a critical time for our nation, when our divisions and challenges dominate the news and hope for democracy’s future can seem elusive,” said Nancy Young, vice president for Student Affairs, in a campus message earlier today. She described how the center “will generate, inspire, and share innovations in civic and democratic engagement, and support collaborative activity that helps to build thriving civic cultures at UMBC and in communities involved in the center’s work.”

“Our work builds from the idea that civic life is everywhere: not just in elections or community service opportunities, but in our everyday interactions in nearly every space in which we live and work,” explains Hübler ‘09, modern languages and linguistics, M.A. ‘11, intercultural communication, Ph.D. ‘15, language, literacy and culture.

“That’s a very empowering idea, because it suggests that meaningful social progress is within our reach,” adds Hoffman, Ph.D. ’13, language, literacy, and culture.

Hoffman came to UMBC in 2003. In the past 15 years he has guided student leadership, engagement, and government work, and has led the development and implementation of UMBC’s BreakingGround initiative. Beyond UMBC, Hoffman serves as a national thought leader on democratic engagement and higher education. Hoffman was named an inaugural American Democracy Project Civic Fellow and is a member of the Steering Committee for the American Democracy Project and the National Advisory Board for Imagining America.

Hübler joined the UMBC staff in 2016 as coordinator of campus life for student organizations. She has focused on creating programs to support students’ development as leaders with a meaningful impact on their communities. She has also served as a key strategist for BreakingGround, and has held fellowships with Campus Compact, the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, and Imagining America.

The scholarship and strategies around civic engagement that Hoffman, Hübler, and their colleagues are developing are already impacting national conversations. Just a few days ago, Bennington College President Mariko Silver highlighted UMBC in Forbes as a model for how universities can align their practices with civic ideals, such as creating democratic classrooms, fostering humane relationships, welcoming dissent, and making engagement with external communities a campus priority.

Democracy scholar Harry Boyte also highlights UMBC as a national model in his new book Awakening Democracy Through Public Work: Pedagogies of Empowerment.

Through the new Center for Democracy and Civic Life, and the partnerships it will help grow, says Hoffman, “We can develop the knowledge, skills, and resourcefulness to work across differences and address challenges together, and to build thriving civic communities. UMBC is the perfect setting for that kind of learning, with so many people and programs already contributing to a vibrant civic culture.”

Featured image: Romy Hübler and David Hoffman in front of The Commons at UMBC. All photos by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

The Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement Meeting (CLDE17) held in Baltimore this month offered an opportunity for students, faculty, and staff from colleges and universities across the nation to discuss forward-looking community-building and civic engagement strategies. UMBC participants played a major role in organizing and presenting numerous sessions, tours, and special events held during the meeting, which was cosponsored by the American Democracy Project (ADP), The Democracy Commitment, and the student affairs administrators group NASPA. Additionally, UMBC’s Craig Berger, coordinator of student life for campus and civic engagement, served as the chair of the ADP’s own annual meeting, held as part of the larger gathering.

During that annual meeting, the ADP honored Philip Rous, UMBC’s provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, with the William M. Plater Award for Leadership in Civic Engagement. This meaningful award recognizes the commitment of a provost to advancing civic engagement on their campus.

Michael Vaughan, provost at Weber State University, presented Rous with the award in recognition of his support for creating new courses at UMBC that foster civic engagement and help students rethink their power to envision and enact change in the world. Vaughan mentioned, for example, a mechanical engineering class that partnered with Baltimore City to identify failing water pipes and a class on race, poverty, and gender where UMBC students helped local refugee high school students prepare for the college admissions process.

Upon accepting the award, Rous shared with the crowd a story from his days as a student at Cambridge University, to explain his approach as UMBC provost. He noted that the entrance of Cambridge University is a very large wooden door, which itself contains a smaller wooden door, and said, “As you step through that door, it is as if you step into a completely different world.” On one side of the door he found the world was quiet, beautiful, and secluded, and on the other side it was the opposite, creating the immediate effect of excluding the broader city from the Cambridge experience and isolating the university from the dynamism of the city. As a university leader, Rous reflected, he wanted to challenge such barriers.

President Freeman Hrabowski delivered the opening remarks during the CLDE17 plenary session, discussing the importance of involving everyone on campus in shaping community. “Any institution that is truly about ethos, inquiry, and looking at agency and action will want the entire institution to be involved,” said Hrabowski. “To make a difference in communities, it is so important to have faculty, staff, students, and academic and student affairs all on the same page and understanding that we are in this together.”

David Hoffman, assistant director of student life for civic agency, facilitated the session “Our Stories Can Light the Way Forward,” focused on collecting and documenting stories from community engagement efforts to empower participants. Collin Sullivan ‘19, information systems; Manisha Vepa ‘19, fine arts; and Berger led the roundtable discussion “Ethos Matters: Creating Empowering Messages and Environments.”

Romy Hübler ‘09, modern languages and linguistics, M.A. ‘11, intercultural communication, and Ph.D. ‘15, language, literacy and culture, who now serves as UMBC’s coordinator of student life for student organizations and involvement, worked with Jason Loviglio, associate professor of media and communication studies, to lead Tell Me What Collective Action Looks Like. This discussion session focused on how educators can help students feel inspired to take action as engaged citizens.

Emily Melluso ‘17, biological sciences, shared her experiences during the session “Cultivating College Campus Leaders: A Story of Collaboration with U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and Citizen University.” Corinne Janet, coordinator of student life for leadership; Simon Stacey, interim vice provost and dean of undergraduate education; Berger; Hoffman; and Hübler facilitated the methods-focused session “Congruent Democratic Pedagogies: Teaching Democracy as a Way of Life.”

In addition to kicking off the meeting, UMBC community members also brought it to a productive conclusion, with Hoffman and Vepa presenting for the closing plenary session “The Theory of Our Work, Today and Tomorrow; What’s Next?”

UMBC is a leading member of the ADP, which was founded in 2003 through a collaboration between the American Association of State Colleges and Universities and The New York Times. Through innovative initiatives, ADP member institutions work to provide students with the skills and opportunities needed to put their ideas into action, on and off campus.

Banner image: Dr. Rous accepting the William M. Plater Award for Leadership in Civic Engagement at the 2017 Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement Meeting in Baltimore. All photos by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

The Baltimore Sun’s new education section focuses on the impact of UMBC programs that enable students to apply their knowledge from the classroom to action in communities on issues that matter to them. Highlighted programs include the newly launched Grand Challenge Scholars Program, the Center for Women in Technology Scholars Program, BreakingGround, and Prove It!, an initiative of UMBC’s Student Government Association.

The Grand Challenge Scholars Program (GCSP), featured in a large, full-color cover photo, encourages students to look at the world broadly and work collaboratively across disciplines to address issues of global concern. The first cohort, announced this fall, includes 17 students from across all three UMBC colleges, who work together to explore 14 areas of concern noted by the National Academy of Engineering, from sustainability and security to public health.

Toluwanimi Bello ‘17, chemical engineering, a GCSP student, became interested in the program because of the problems he saw in Nigeria, where he is from. “There aren’t many people thinking about alternative energy sources or recycling in Nigeria,” he said. “Things like that inspired me to join the program to make changes in the world.”

The program is structured in a way that encourages students to pursue their passions. “Each student gets to tailor the program to his or her own interest,” explains Marie desJardins, associate dean in the College of Engineering and Information Technology (COEIT), professor of computer science, and director of the GCSP. Initially, Bello chose to focus on the environmental sustainability, but is also working on the personalized medicine challenge because of his interested in developing a cure for diabetes.

The GCSP “embodies what the university is all about,” says desJardins.

The Center for Women in Technology focuses on cultivating a supportive peer group committed to the success of women in computing, engineering, and other tech-oriented careers, where they remain notably underrepresented. “At its heart it’s a community of women in computing and engineering,” explained Penny Rheingans, professor of computer science, and director of CWIT.

CWIT scholar Sara Masoudi ‘18, computer science, explained how CWIT serves as a support system for her. “CWIT has…eased my concerns time after time. Its support—both academically and mentally—is extremely important during the volatile college years,” she said.

“CWIT is unique” even among similar support programs for students, said Rheingans. “I have not seen anything like it. Programs [elsewhere] seem ad hoc or like a club. But CWIT is a program created with intentionality and pieces that fit together. During the last eight years, we have built structure, activities and seminars at touch points.”

Without CWIT, Masoudi is not sure she would have had the great opportunities to expand her skills and work with industry leaders. “CWIT has changed my life. Without it, I wouldn’t be attending UMBC. I wouldn’t have spent my summer interning at Microsoft. It’s an A-plus community to lean on. CWIT truly teaching us how to success.”

UMBC is a “hub of diversity and commitment,” said David Hoffman, assistant director of student life for civic agency. “We are preparing students to change the world for the better by teaching them to think critically and envision themselves a co-creators of community. That starts with the campus community.”

BreakingGround is one major initiative Hoffman is passionate about—a campus-wide movement to support this kind of empowerment and make more visible existing civic engagement efforts. One example of an existing project now seen as a model for how community co-creation can work is UMBC’s Prove It! competition, which enables students to compete for significant funding for innovative ideas on how to better the UMBC community through a project of articulating and clearly planning out how those ideas would be executed with campus partners.

“Being actively involved and trying to get others to be involved aligns with the university’s vision to encourage students to practice social responsibility and civic engagement,” said Bentley Corbett-Wilson ‘17, music education, president of the Student Government Association at UMBC.

“Serving this community as a student leader inspires me to want to serve whatever community I will be a part of in the future, in addition to whatever career I may be in, which is hopefully being a teacher,” he told the Sun. “I will use my passion for engagement to try to inspire my students to be engaged in their communities, so that they can be further prepared to be engaged citizens once they matriculate into the workforce as well.”

Read the full articles “Students Taking the Initiative,” “Unique Student Groups Make the Grade,” and “Life Skills” in The Baltimore Sun.

Image: The Commons. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

Craig Berger, coordinator of student life for campus and civic engagement, has been named chair of the American Democracy Project (ADP) Steering Committee for 2016-17. The multi-campus ADP initiative of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) is focused on higher education’s role in preparing the next generation of highly informed and civically-engaged students.

As steering committee chair, Berger will preside over meetings throughout the year and work closely with the ADP national manager to craft the organization’s strategic plan and to coordinate the annual awards and upcoming Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement (CLDE) leadership meeting in Baltimore.

“I’m really honored by this selection,” shares Berger. “I wholeheartedly agree with and support the mission of ADP, which is to view institutions of higher education as venues and forums for young adults to think about and experiment with being empowered in solving shared public problems.”

Berger previously served as chair-elect of the steering committee last year. He explains that his involvement with the American Democracy Project has been rewarding and has helped him in his daily work as a staff member in the Office of Student Life at UMBC.

“So much of what ADP does is something that UMBC prides itself on…being creative and entrepreneurial. I owe being named chair-elect last year and now chair of the ADP steering committee to the tradition and culture that I’ve grown in professionally in the last five years at UMBC.”

During his time at the university, Berger has been heavily involved with BreakingGround, an initiative that aligns closely with the American Democracy Project mission by fostering connections across campus and beyond to demonstrate the power of individuals and group collaboration in creating meaningful change. Last year, Berger helped organize the 2015 Imagining America Conference, which brought leaders together from around the country to emphasize the power of many voices coming together to envision our nation’s future, engaging with topics like race, inequality, and community-based approaches to spur collective action.

In his new leadership position, Berger says that he will largely benefit from the lessons he’s learned so far at UMBC.

“My experience at UMBC has taught me…that democratic engagement work is not just an activity that we do at institutions…it is a part of the campus identity.”

The 2017 CLDE National Meeting will be held June 7-10, 2017 in Baltimore. For more information, visit the ADP website.

Image: Craig Berger. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC. 

Ganesh Mysore
Plans: Working in biotech while applying to graduate schools
B.S., Chemical Engineering; B.A., Political Science
Cum Laude
Hometown: Clarksville, Maryland

The opportunities I had, and the guidance I received, at UMBC have shaped me into an engaged citizen, and not just a capable engineer.

Ganesh Mysore isn’t earning a degree this spring; he’s actually earning two degrees in very different fields and he’s passionate about them both. Through advanced coursework in both chemical engineering and political science, Mysore has developed a unique skill set and approach to solving challenging problems, he says.

Mysore is a member of the Honors College and Pi Sigma Alpha, the national honor society for political science, and recipient of the Premier Award Scholarship. Beyond his achievements in the classroom, he has also been a highly engaged campus leader, serving as president of UMBC’s Student Government Association as a junior and as a member the working group for BreakingGround, UMBC’s nationally recognized civic engagement initiative.

Mysore credits UMBC mentors with helping him understand the importance of creating positive change through taking action in his community, whether that is a community of students or, in the future, engineering professionals.

Portrait by Marlayna Demond ‘11 for UMBC.

Educators, cultural leaders, and activists from across the country will convene in Baltimore this week for the Imagining America National Conference, hosted by UMBC. This groundbreaking four-day gathering asks how, in the wake of the Baltimore Uprising, the arts, humanities, and design can help our city heal and grow.

At its core, Imagining America emphasizes the power of many voices coming together to envision our nation’s future, engaging with topics like race, inequality, and community-based approaches to spur collective action. UMBC was selected as host thanks to a track record of powerful civic work and commitment to fostering innovative, engaged scholarship, where excellence and inclusion go hand-in-hand.

The Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and Morgan State University are co-sponsoring the conference. Dozens of arts, culture, and community organizations have also been immersed in the planning process from the beginning. Unlike traditional academic conferences, many events will engage local residents, and partnerships formed through the event are expected to continue far into the future.

“The process of planning the conference has been deeply collaborative, reflecting a UMBC culture that embraces diversity and authentic connections,” shares David Hoffman, assistant director of student life for civic agency.

Much of the conference will take place in the heart of downtown Baltimore with sessions hosted by community organizations involved in creative social justice work.

“At their core, the arts, humanities, and design allow for ambiguity, and deal with human culture and the way human beings interact with their world and one another,” reflects Lee Boot, associate research professor and associate director of the Imaging Research Center. “Because at this time in our history, the challenges we face can also be traced to those interactions, those disciplines have elevated promise, if their practitioners rise to the occasion.”

Imagining America is designed to be deeply interactive, with a strong emphasis on workshops, collaboration, and relationship-building.

“Public universities have a responsibility to foster honest, open conversations about the tough issues,” explains Scott Casper, dean of UMBC’s College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences. “We have an ability and opportunity to convene people broadly, perhaps more than many smaller organizations can. So we contribute by convening and participating in the conversations, and by lending our expertise and experience, while also listening to and learning from the expertise and experiences of others at the table.”

Conference highlights include an opening plenary session with UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski; Scott Casper; Joe Jones ’06, social work, founder and CEO of the Center for Urban Families; and Rebecca Alban Hoffberger, founder and director of American Visionary Art Museum (AVAM), to address innovative approaches to significant challenges facing the country. UMBC student Manisha Vepa ’18, financial economics, will lead a closing plenary session discussing final reflections and thoughts on sustaining meaningful partnerships.

Site-specific workshops on October 1 and 2 are the result of almost a year of organizing meetings around the city that engaged more than 150 community members, many representing local groups. With Imagining America recognizing the essential contributions of these community members and the importance of having these conversations in a public forum, the workshops are free and open to the public.

“I think we’re going to be dazzled by the collaborative civic work that will emerge in the months to come,” says Hoffman.

A complete conference schedule with details on each session is available on the Imagining America website.

Image: Baltimore skyline. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11.

When the American Democracy Project met in New Orleans last month, founder George Mehaffy described some early civic engagement efforts as “marginal, episodic, and celebratory.” David Hoffman, assistant director of student life for civic agency, responded to Mehaffy’s comments by suggesting language to describe positive attributes of civic learning and democratic engagement efforts.

“We need equally clear and concise language to describe the positive attributes of profoundly valuable and impactful civic learning and democratic engagement efforts,” Hoffman wrote on the American Democracy Project’s website. He proposed four attributes that should describe civic engagement efforts, including integral, relational, organic, and generative.

“Our civic learning and democratic engagement efforts are strongest when they embody all four of these attributes,” Hoffman said. “To the extent that one or more of them is missing, we risk teaching and learning lessons we do not intend about the intractability of our problems, the rigidity of our roles and relationships, and the limits of human agency and democracy itself.”

Read “Describing Transformative Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement Practices” on American Democracy Project.

Zocalo Public Square, a non-profit website specializing in humanities journalism, recently invited scholars to describe the ideal 21st century university. David Hoffman, assistant director of student life for civic agency, responded with an article emphasizing the need for universities to become spaces for discourse and action in order to remain relevant in society.

In the article, Hoffman discussed UMBC’s response to the Baltimore protests in the wake of Freddie Gray’s death, noting that the campus teach-in focused on sharing knowledge to support construction action in a way that respected everyone’s stories and abilities to contribute. “That spirit of mutual respect and creativity belies the dichotomies common to conventional thinking about higher education: distinctions between teacher and learner, scholar and citizen, research and action, university and community,” he wrote.

Hoffman also mentioned the national push for civic engagement through networks such as Imagining America. UMBC faculty, staff and students have participated in Imagining America’s work in the past through BreakingGround and our campus will host Imagining America’s 2015 National Conference in October.

Click here to read “Take action, and leave the ivory tower stereotype behind” on Zocalo Public Square. The article was also re-printed in TIME.

Beverly Bickel, associate director of Language, Literacy and Culture doctoral program, Craig Berger, and David Hoffman, Student Life, were published in the latest edition of Diversity & Democracy, a publication by the Association of American Colleges and Universities.

In the article, Bickel, Berger and Hoffman write about the democratic strands in UMBC’s history and how BreakingGround initiatives are fostering civic engagement and imaginative thinking. They describe how transparency and authenticity created spaces for positive contributions, saying “[BreakingGround’s] philosophy emphasized that individuals and collaborative groups are powerful agents of meaningful change, and that students deserve genuine respect as agents in their own lives and as partners in building community.”

Another article in the issue written by Timothy Eatman and Scott Peters, co-directors of Imagining America, praises the initiatives fostered by BreakingGround. “UMBC is suggesting answers to the questions… about what should be done—not just for relatively new public institutions, but across all of higher education,” they write.

Click here to read “Democratic Agency and the Visionary’s Dilemma” by Beverly Bickel, Craig Berger and David Hoffman.

David Hoffman, assistant director of student life for civic agency, wrote a chapter in the recently published Democracy’s Education: Public Work, Citizenship and the Future of Colleges and Universities. The book challenges educators to rethink the meaning of citizenship and education.

Hoffman’s chapter, entitled “Fostering Civic Agency by Making Education (and Ourselves) ‘Real,'” describes the philosophy of BreakingGround, a collaborative approach to innovative campus and community engagement at UMBC. Hoffman draws on his research and experience at UMBC, focusing on students who gained civic agency by causing meaningful change on campus through launching new organizations and engaging in purposeful conversations. The chapter also mentions work done by President Hrabowski, Provost Rous, the Shriver Center and The Retriever Project.

Hoffman writes, “The process at BreakingGround’s heart is a series of real conversations. There is strategy and design behind them: the initiative’s organizers have sought out people on campus who have seemed to embrace or demonstrate civic agency, or who have been in a position to help support its promotion on campus. But the conversations have been essentially free of maneuvering and salesmanship. Mostly we have asked students, faculty, and staff about their own experiences with civic agency (though typically not in those words) and have sought to make the road to BreakingGround’s objectives by walking it with them.”

Click here to learn more about BreakingGround. Learn more about Democracy’s Education here.