Transcript UTM ICE - American Association of State Colleges and

UTM ICE
How the Institute for Civic Engagement at UT-Martin came to
be, what it does and plans for the future.
By
Mike McCullough,UTM ICE Director and Professor of
Management
CharaVanHorn, Assistant Professor of Communications
ADP at UTM
 UTM has been intentionally and systematically promoting
civic engagement since the fall of 2004. At that time, UTM
gave one faculty member (Dr. Mike McCullough) ¼ release
time to head the American Democracy Project on campus, an
AASCU-sponsored program inspired by the Carnegie
Foundation for Teaching publication entitled: Educating
Citizens, by Tom Ehrlich.
Campus Compact
In the fall of 2007, McCullough, already released for ADP,
was asked to assume responsibilities for Campus Compact at
UTM in exchange for ¼ more release time; which involved
working to help create the Charter for the Tennessee Campus
Compact. The charter was signed in Nashville, on March 13,
2008; with McCullough and the Vice Chancellor Affairs from
UTM, Dr. Jerald Ogg, present.
Sources of Funds
In the spring of 2008, the UT system provided $100,000 for
UTM to lead the way among UT system campuses in
working for the success of the new Tennessee Campus
Compact. Around that same time, the UTM advancement
office was able to secure a promise of several hundred
thousand dollars to promote civic engagement at UTM, from
a single, but highly interested and dedicated donor.
VISTA to the Rescue
UTM was awarded an AmeriCorps VISTA member, Jessica
Butkovic, as part of a Corporation for National and
Community Service (CNCS) grant through Tennessee
Campus Compact. Since August 2008 Jessica Butkovic, a
recent summa cum laude graduate of UTM, has worked
effectively to increase the impact of ADP and Campus
Compact efforts at UTM.
ICE Formed in 2009
In the spring of 2009, the Institute for Civic Engagement was
formed at UTM. The formation of this new institute
coincided with the end of Jessica’s year of VISTA service, so
she was hired with TARP funds as program coordinator for
the new Institute for Civic Engagement (ICE). Her former
role is now being performed ably by Katie Noles, also
provided by the Tennessee Campus Compact CNCS grant.
Three other faculty members are now released ¼ time for
ICE.
Raising Awareness
For six years, ADP and now ICE has partnered with the honors program
to bring speakers to campus for Constitution Day, September 17. These
speakers have included Eugenie Scott, noted authority on the teaching
of evolution in schools; Nadine Strossen, then President of the ACLU;
Morris Dees, Civil Rights attorney of the Southern Poverty Law
Center; Julian Bond, former Chair of the NAACP; Harry Boyte,
Civil Rights activist, author and promoter of civic engagement on
University campuses; Louis Freeh, former FBI Chief and Alberto
Gonzalez, former U.S. Attorney General.
Most of these speeches have drawn student crowds of from 500 to 1000.
We have also sponsored well-attended panel discussions/debates on
evolution, the war in Iraq, and gun rights. We are in negotiations for
future constitution day speeches with noted attorney David Boies,
Justice Clarence Thomas and former Justice David Souter.
Earthweek
Also for six years, beginning in the spring of 2005, UTM has celebrated
Earthweek, sponsored by ADP and now ICE as well as UTM Recycles
and other campus initiatives. In 2006 we had Brian Czech, author of
Shoveling Fuel for a Runaway Train – speak to a group of around 100
students on the subject of a steady-state economy, as opposed to a
continuously-growing economy. This spring we had Mireya Mayor,
National Geographic Wildlife Correspondent and TV personality; speak
to an audience of between 250 to 300 enthusiastic students, many of
whom stayed around for an hour or so to talk to the speaker on the
subject of rare and endangered species.
Engagement
Recycling - Student involvement in recycling at UTM has simply
exploded in the last four years, and especially in the last two. Recycle
bins were purchased and placed around campus in 2005 and UTM
opened a recycling facility in 2007 that accepts refuse not only from
campus, but also from the surrounding community. UTM has ranked
high in the annual nationwide recyclemania competition. Student and
faculty volunteers and a few paid staff make sure someone is there most
of the time during weekdays and on many Saturdays until about 2 pm to
accept just about any form of recyclables. Our campus has won several
awards and small grants for recycling, purchasing paper and plastics
compacters and other machinery needed. For the last two years, on the
Saturday at the end of Earthweek, we have held Earthfest, with live
music and art competition using recycled materials; and we plan a 5k
run for future events.
Deliberative Poll
In 2009, UTM participated in an ADP-sponsored deliberative
poll pertaining to how UTM could create a more
environmentally-sustainable campus. This polling exercise,
was conducted according to the protocol laid down by Jim
Fishkin of Stanford and was conducted by Dr. McCullough at
UTM. Scores of students took the survey and a dozen or
gathered to question university administration on our
environmental policies.
Mock Debates and Debate Watches
In the fall of 2008, during the Presidential election; UTM
participated in a live debate watch with UT-K, UT-C, the
University of Memphis and Tennessee State University.
Several hundred people packed our auditorium to watch the
Presidential debate and then to discuss it by live-interactive
video, afterwards. We also had mock presidential debates in
2004 and 2008 that were highly successful and well attended.
Walls of Hate
In the spring of 2004 and fall of 2008, UTM constructed
walls of hate, on which hate speech was written and then
scores of people gathered to tear the walls down. Both
events created a little controversy and a lot of conversation
on campus.
MLK Day
Martin Luther King Day of Service – This past MLK day,
UTM students and faculty picked up litter all over Martin as
a day of service, sending much of it to our recycle center.
The following Wednesday a student was asked to give a
reenactment of MLK's "I have a dream" speech in an open
plaza that many students walk through during the lunch hour.
He was beautifully prepared and delivered the speech a
couple of times that day. That evening, we all met for a
special service at the local African American Baptist Church
and then marched about 50 strong, about a mile, from the
church to our campus auditorium, to watch a segment of
“Eyes on the Prize.”
Times Talk
Weekly lunch sessions are conducted by a faculty member or
student(s) leading the discussion of a NY Times (ICE supplies
free copies of the NY Times across campus) article of
interest, such as: the natural environment, the war,
elections, journalism, politics, civic engagement, taxes, and
the like. These sessions have been increasingly well attended,
with the average attendance this year around 25. The
discussions are often lively and always interesting.
Community Service
First-Year-Initiative - This past fall, 2009, all first-year students taking a
course on how to prepare for college were asked to complete an act of
community service. It was organized across fifty or so sections of the course
by having faculty mentors and student pep leaders sign up to lead the sessions
requiring students to participate in and then report their hours and reflect on
it in writing. The total reported hours served for first-year initiative FYI for
the fall semester was 1161.75, which is an average of 2.46 hours per student.
A total of 38 community partners were served, most locally with a few
extending the experience back to a student’s hometown. Thirty of those were
“new” in the sense that ICE had never sent volunteers to the organization. The
credit for this can most certainly be given to the students who found their
own organizations to volunteer with, based on individual interests. With a
little over 1,000 freshmen students enrolled in FYI, there was about a 47%
participation rate, but that was only the ones who reported the hours. The
actual rate could have been higher, but not lower
Service Learning
Service-learning courses – Twice, ADP and now ICE have offered minigrants from $500 to $1000 to faculty members as incentives to put
service learning into one of their courses. Eight faculty members have
done so, in addition to the ten or so already engaged. We had 10
faculty members participate in a service-learning workshop offered inhouse and taught by Dr. Mike McCullough and Dr. Cherry Watts,
which will result in another large group of courses incorporating
service learning. The sociology department just received approval to
designate their social problems class in the catalog as a SL course, and
the plan is to so designate a number of other courses in the next couple
of years.
SL courses, examples
A sampling of successful service-learning projects over the last
several years include: an engineering class that made a device to
allow a child with no mobility to be able to move around in the
house or driveway; an agriculture class that raised a community
garden; an MBA class that has had students organize golf
tournaments for St. Jude Hospital and other charities, collect toys
for the Carl Perkins Center for the Prevention of Child Abuse; an
English student-teaching class that worked with a high school
English class to collect stories of community heroes in a nearby
town; a biology class that has students visit a retirement village to
interact with the residents and to study the aging process. These
are just a few of the many SL courses being conducted at UTM,
many funded by ICE.
Data and Assessment
Community Service - Number of students, community
partners being served, and hours served per student are all
being reported and collected from community partners and
faculty members on UTM students. This is, at times,
inconsistent and we are moving forward with plans to
maintain a continuous level of cooperation on data sharing
from community partners and other student organizations on
campus. In the future we hope to administer surveys to all
community partner to assess the effectiveness of student
volunteers in their organization.
SL Courses
Service Learning - The number of service-learning courses, students in those
courses, hours served per student and number of community partners being
served is information being collected on service learning by a faculty servicelearning survey. It is our goal to have this survey required of all faculty
members in order to have a consistent campus wide data collection of servicelearning activities. A SL survey for students have been issued in some SL
classes. It measures pre and post attitudes towards service learning and
community involvement. The results of this survey were presented at the
Southeastern Psychological Association Conference in Chattanooga, TN in
March, 2010 by Dr. Angie MacKewn, an ICE faculty representative. We hope
to establish a protocol for all service-learning classes in which faculty are
required to participate in a data collection survey and attitude assessment,
students are required to participate in pre and post attitude assessments, and
community partners being served by the course take a survey measuring the
effectiveness of the service.
Release Time For Faculty
We provided release time for three faculty members this past
Spring to give them time to work on Institute for Civic
Engagement (ICE) projects. This was paid for out of the
academic affairs budget.
Vision Summits
Each March, we plan to have a ICE-Sculpting Summit, to
reflect on the past year’s accomplishments and plan the
future. This creates costs associated with awards to faculty
and perhaps students, as well as lunch and perhaps the
expense of speakers, although to date; the speakers have been
free (Gordon and Culvahouse).
ICE Office
The ICE will need to be funded with personnel: faculty
released from teaching, coordinator (currently taken from
stimulus funds), an administrative assistant; as well as the
usual expenses of running an office, such as fax, phone,
computers, and such. I only list this here because we will
need to figure out how this will be paid for in the future.
Reading Initiative and Debate Team
Several of us have discussed the possibility of either all
Freshman students, all students, or indeed; all members of
the campus community (ala the way some cities do it), to
read the same book; discuss it and invite the author (as is
possible) to campus to speak. We could check with other
campuses to identify the expenses such a program would
entail, whether it meant defraying book-purchase costs or
actually buying the books, etc.
We are strongly considering creating a debate team, starting
on campus and eventually making it an intercollegiate
endeavor.
Leadership Program
 Students who sign on to being first, second, third or fourth-level
(bronze, silver, gold or platinum?) ICE scholars will be asked to
create and carry out community-service projects regionally, at the
state level, at the national level or internationally? They may need
financial support to carry out these projects.
 Students who are leadership minors or serve as leaders on the
campus in some capacity will be eligible to serve in this program.
The final details of this program will be worked out between the
offices of academic affairs and those of student affairs