Learning from the futures you imagine
At CDCE, we are imagining new democratic futures every day by mobilizing the entire UMD community to strengthen democracy. We want to learn from the futures YOU imagine too.
Dear Friends,
Universities are places where we go to imagine different futures.
Universities are places students come to imagine different futures for their lives and careers. Universities are places where scholars have the support they need to discover new knowledge and ideas. And universities are often where people from all walks of life come together to strategize about how we might address the grand challenges of our time.
At the University of Maryland Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement, we are imagining new futures by mobilizing the entire University of Maryland community to strengthen democracy.
We explore new possibilities for our democracy by serving scholars across the university, advancing research through community partnerships, and growing capacity through project based learning. Inspired by the vision of the BSOS Resiliency Research Hub, we worked this spring to advance new thinking about how to cultivate democratic resilience across our society.
We also made major progress in our work with community partners exploring possible futures with a lower voting age, comprehensive support for voters lacking ID, and 100% student voting. Now, as the 2022-2023 academic year comes to a close, we want to hear from YOU about how we can imagine new democratic futures together. We know that the most important breakthroughs emerge when people with different types of knowledge are able to share their ideas, experiences, and perspectives in new ways. Whether you’re a fellow UMD scholar or staff member, a UMD student, or a community partner, we want to learn about how we can serve you better. We want to hear about the dreams you have of new democratic futures and strategize about how to make them come true.
In particular, there are three big questions we want to dive into with CDCE’s network over the summer as we prepare to mobilize the entire University of Maryland community to strengthen democracy during the 2023-2024 academic year.
1) How can we better mobilize talent across the University of Maryland to strengthen democracy?
There are so many incredible students at UMD who are hungry for opportunities to strengthen democracy through their academic work, volunteer work, internships, and the careers and lives they pursue after graduation. Many of the students seeking these opportunities are in the Government and Politics Department, but others are not. We need the full brilliance and energy of all of them for our work together to reach its full potential.
So if you’re a student at UMD and looking for the right opportunity to get involved in the work of strengthening our democracy, please reach out! We’d love to help you find your calling in this work. If you’re a faculty or staff member looking to connect students you work with to opportunities to strengthen democracy, please reach out! We’d love to work together with you to co-create impactful and transformative experiences for your students.
And if you’re a community partner who could benefit from the talent and energy of UMD students, please reach out as well! We’d love to work with you to scope projects that advance your work and the academic journeys of our students.
2) How can we better mobilize knowledge across the University of Maryland to strengthen democracy?
At CDCE, we know that we miss so many important opportunities to strengthen democracy when we leave politics to political scientists alone. Already this year, we’ve benefitted so much from strategic interdisciplinary collaborations. Whether it’s our work with the College of Engineering to study the resilience of election administration infrastructure, our work with the Criminology Department to understand voting rights for eligible voters in pre-trial detention, our work with the College of Education and School of Public Policy to understand what happens when Maryland communities lower the voting age, or our work with the College of Journalism to understand public perceptions of voting infrastructure, we are always learning from our colleagues in different disciplines.
We’d love to hear from scholars across UMD (and beyond!) about how your research and your discipline might contribute to the work of strengthening democracy! We’d love to learn from the questions you’re asking about democracy and work together to figure out how to help you access the funding and support you need to do that work.
And we’d also love to hear from our community partners about the questions you want to answer even if those questions lie outside the domain of political science. The expertise you need to answer your question is likely present somewhere at UMD. We’d love to work with you to recruit the team of scholars you need to answer the questions that matter to your communities.
3) How can we better mobilize the convening power of the University of Maryland to strengthen democracy?
We are particularly excited about the progress we are making in mobilizing the convening power of the University of Maryland to strengthen democracy. This November, we will host the National Student Vote Summit at University of Maryland with our partners at the Students Learn Students Vote Coalition. This summit - which is being held in person for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic - is a crucially important learning and strategy space in the movement for 100% student voting. By hosting it on campus we are able to introduce UMD students and scholars to some the most dynamic leaders and opportunities emerging around student voting nationwide.
The National Student Vote Summit is a great example of how mobilizing the convening power of the University of Maryland can meaningfully advance important work to strengthen democracy. If you’d like to get involved with the work of planning the National Student Vote Summit, please let us know! And if there’s another strategic convening opportunity you are thinking about in your work where UMD could be helpful, please let us know as well.
Mobilizing the convening power of a big university can take many forms! Sometimes this work looks like physically hosting a conference. Other times, it’s just holding a consistent space for people to consider important questions like “What happens when American communities consider lowering the voting age?” or “How many people need voter ID today?” in a structured and ongoing way. No matter the form or scale of the convening you have in mind, if it could strengthen democracy, we want to help! We’d love to hear from both UMD affiliates and community partners about how UMD’s convening power can support your work.
The upshot? Connect with CDCE this summer!
At CDCE, we are always looking to find new ways to serve our partners better. This summer we are particularly focused on getting better at mobilizing talent, knowledge, and convening power at the University of Maryland to contribute to the work of strengthening democracy. We would be so grateful for the opportunity to hear YOUR thoughts and ideas about how to do that in ways that serve your work. Reply to this email if you’d like to start a conversation with us!
Sincerely,
Mike Hanmer, Director, Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement
Sam Novey, Faculty Specialist, Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement