Welcome to the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement!

I took over as Director of CDCE in Fall of 2022. I'm so grateful for the foundation I'm building on and can't wait to take the next step together.

Welcome to CDCE!

Dear Friends,

At the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement, we’re committed to mobilizing the entire University of Maryland community to strengthen democracy. Whether you’re an old friend from the Center for American Politics and Citizenship or just learning about our center, we’re so glad you’re here! We can’t wait to learn and grow together with you. I’m so grateful to my predecessors Stella Rouse and Paul Herrnson for laying such an incredible foundation for the work we plan to do at CDCE in 2023 and beyond.

I’m so excited to share my vision for CDCE with you. My team and I are working relentlessly to pursue three core strategies to achieve our goal of mobilizing the entire UMD community to strengthen democracy.

1. Serving scholars across the University

CDCE is using capacities around public engagement and citizen voice to serve scholars across the University. By supporting scholars from diverse fields in understanding public opinion related to their areas of expertise and helping them find audiences for their scholarship among policy makers in state government, CDCE can play a key role in enabling public impact for research happening across the entire University. CDCE’s ongoing collaborations with The Washington Post, state government, and local governments are critical assets in this work.

2. Advancing research with new knowledge from community partnerships

CDCE is at the forefront of a movement in political science to formally bring community partners into the research process as knowledge producers rather than just research subjects. In 2022, we launched the Vote 16 Research Network and the Student Vote Research Network which have quickly become important national and global hubs for learning about lowering the voting age and college student voting. In 2023, we plan to expand this work by establishing a Voter ID Research Network, a Sports and Voting Research Consortium, and growing the Student Vote Research Network to serve educators in high schools in addition to higher education

3. Growing capacity through project based learning

Every single partnership that CDCE is cultivating requires ongoing maintenance and stewardship in order to blossom into cutting edge knowledge about how to strengthen our democracy. That maintenance and stewardship work creates invaluable project based learning opportunities for UMD students to get hands-on experience connecting the work of scholars with the work of policy makers and community partners. CDCE piloted a project based learning program with the Vote 16 Research Network in 2022 and there are opportunities to replicate this work across the Center’s portfolio.

Join us!

It has been such an honor for me to connect with so many of you over the past few months since I began as Director of CDCE in September. Whether we’ve been collaborating for years or we’ve just met, I’m excited to learn more about your work and ways we might strengthen democracy together. I hope you enjoy these updates! Please reach out to me at mhanmer@umd.edu if you have any suggestions or ideas for how we might bring this vision for CDCE to life.

Sincerely,

Mike Hanmer

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Professor, Government and Politics

Director, Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement

College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, University of Maryland