Institute Awarded Campus Compact Democracy Project Grant

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The Institute for Strategic Policy Solutions at SPC has been selected as a winner of a Florida Campus Compact 2014 Campus Democracy Project Mini-Grant. The grant of $1,000 will support four of ISPS’ fall programs centered on student and citizen involvement in the fall elections and key policy issues.

The purpose of the 2014 Campus Democracy Project is “to promote civil discourse and critical inquiry in collegiate non-partisan, issue-based civic dialogue,” according to Florida Campus Compact. Applicants are expected to host a series of one to four non-partisan dialogues during the election cycle that “inspire leadership and civic responsibility for conscientious citizenship in a participatory democracy. . .”

The grant requirements meshed perfectly with the Institute’s fall agenda of election-oriented programs, said David Klement, Executive Director. “Selection for this grant for our fall events validates the work the Institute does year around to promote civic engagement and civil discourse.”

The four events that qualified for the grant are:

The Great Debate. This debate competition among teams on five SPC campuses focuses on policy issues in play in the fall election or in the national conversation. Topics selected for the preliminaries which will be held the week of Oct. 13, by campus: Medical Marijuana (Amendment 2 on the Florida ballot), Seminole; Stand Your Ground Law, Clearwater; and Guns on Campus, Tarpon Springs, Downtown/Midtown, and St. Pete Gibbs. The topic for the final debate competition on Nov. 13 at Seminole is Immigration Reform.
Dealing with Gridlock, a series of debates on the Pinellas County sales tax referendum to support public transit improvements. ISPS has already hosted two debates on the issue, at Seminole and Midtown, and plans a third on Sept. 30 at the Clearwater campus.
Candidate Debates: Candidates for local office will debate the issues in a 3 ½-hour forum sponsored by the Institute on Oct. 2^nd. Candidates include those seeking seats on the Pinellas County Commission, Florida House and Florida Senate. In addition, two proposed amendments to the Florida Constitution will be discussed.
Gubernatorial Debate Watch Party: A facilitated discussion among SPC students of points raised during the Oct. 15 debate by gubernatorial candidates, incumbent Rick Scott and challenger Charlie Crist. Soft drinks and pizza provided, in UP 303 at Seminole.

Florida Campus Compact (FL|CC), part of a national presidential membership organization, is comprised of over 50 college and university presidents who are committed to helping students develop the values and skills of active citizenship through participation in public and community service. FL|CC works with these presidents and their campuses to integrate service with academic study and to provide a collegial experience for intercampus and community collaborations. Its goals are:

To enrich the quality of academic instruction through a broader, more engaged collegiate learning experience.
To strengthen academics and civic engagement through reciprocal campus-community partnerships.
To support communities in Florida through symbiotic campus-community collaboration.
To inspire leadership and civic responsibility for conscientious citizenship in a participatory democracy.
To contribute to the development of a better prepared and more knowledgeable workforce.

Need Help Promoting TurboVote? Go Straight to the Top

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With the window on registering to vote in the Nov. 4 election about to close, TurboVote implementers at St. Petersburg College are scurrying to reach out to students who are not yet aware of the electronic platform that makes registration a matter of a few keystrokes. Through Sam Novey, TurboVote’s Director of Partnerships, they learned of a strategy employed by the University of Florida to engage more Gators in the voting process. The strategy: a letter to all students from President Bernie Machen.

Since good ideas are not patentable, they took the idea up the administrative ladder at St. Petersburg College and asked: Can we do something like this? The answer? Yes.

SPC President Bill Law readily agreed to write a letter to all students, and it was sent out on Sept. 11. Fellow Civics Initiative stakeholders, feel free to take this idea to your president. The text of Dr. Law’s letter follows:

Dear SPC Student,

On Tuesday, Nov. 4, Florida voters will elect new leaders and make decisions about key issues that impact our lives and communities. As president of St. Petersburg College, I urge you to participate in a process that is integral to our democracy and to our nation as a whole. I care a great deal that students participate and educate themselves on key issues. We don’t endorse any candidates but we strongly endorse participation in the process.

If you have not yet registered to vote, I am excited to share with you that SPC is making the process easy for you. We have partnered with TurboVote, a “one-stop-shop” that enables you to quickly register online to vote or request an absentee ballot from your local election authorities.

Once registered, you will receive a completed national voter registration or absentee ballot request form by mail along with a pre-addressed, pre-stamped envelope to your local election authority. TurboVote also will send out email and text reminders to help you remember the approaching election deadlines.

To register, complete the easy steps at https://spcollege.turbovote.org/.

According to the 2011 Florida Civic Health Index, fewer than half of Florida’s millennials were registered to vote in the 2010 midterm elections. Of those who were registered, only one-in-five voted. Be someone who commits to making a difference by voting this election.

For more information, contact David Klement, executive director, Institute for Strategic Policy Solutions at 727-319-7087 or klement.david@spcollege.edu.

Thank you for registering and voting in the general elections on Nov. 4. I’ll look forward to seeing you at the polls!

Sincerely,
Bill Law
President, St. Petersburg College

1 Million Florida Students Reached by TurboVote

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TurboVote is gaining traction across Florida. As the attached article from the Orlando Sentinel recently reported, the voter registration message has reached more than 1 million Florida college students. And as we know, more than two-thirds of them are in the Florida College System.

So it’s thanks to the Civics Initiative’s efforts that TurboVote is reaching the majority of Florida’s college population during this election cycle. Voting is the most basic – and vital – form of civic engagement. And who knows where it may lead from casting a ballot for the first time?

Keep up the civics education advocacy, especially TurboVote before the deadline to register for this fall’s election, which is Oct. 6. And please, send us your Best Practices and/or ideas for expanding civics education.

Read the full article HERE.

–David Klement, Executive Director
Institute for Strategic Policy Solutions
St. Petersburg College

Fall Elections: The Season for Debates

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At St. Petersburg College, two events are being launched this fall to promote student engagement in the civic arena. On October 15, SPC’s Institute for Strategic Policy Solutions is hosting a Watch Party in connection with the televised debate between the candidates for governor of Florida. Students will gather at 6:30 p.m. for free pizza and discussion of the issues likely to be brought up in the debate, which begins at 7 p.m. Afterward, a member of the SPC faculty will facilitate a discussion of debate highlights and take part in a survey on who “won” or “lost”.

The second student event is called The Great Debate. It offers students an opportunity to engage in debate of topical issues outside the classroom and to compete for valuable prizes. By promoting critical thinking, effective communication, independent research and teamwork, The Great Debate fulfills three of SPC’s Strategic Priorities: The Student Success Initiative, Out-of-Class Learning & Experiential Initiative, and College Experience Initiative.

Five SPC campuses will participate in the debate competition: Seminole, Clearwater, Tarpon Springs, Downtown/Midtown, and St. Pete Gibbs. The campus competition will be held the week of October 13-17, and the finals well be held at the Seminole campus on Nov. 13.

Besides fulfilling SPC’s strategic goals, The Great Debate also promotes civic engagement and builds esprit de corps. Students who volunteer for the competition will research an assigned topic, assemble factual data to support their position, and anticipate their opponent’s arguments with facts at hand to refute them. Besides honing research and writing skills, this will open their minds to critical policy issues that affect them, and thus initiate a process of civic engagement.

Instructors who incorporate the debate initiative into their syllabus may use the assigned topics to generate class discussion and create research and writing opportunities for all of their students. Preliminary debates will be held the week of Oct. 13 at each of the five competing campuses: Downtown/Midtown, St. Pete Gibbs, Seminole, Clearwater and Tarpon Springs. The finals will be held Nov. 13 at Seminole.

Is anyone else planning similar events within the Florida College System? Let us hear about it.

David Klement, Executive Director
Institute for Strategic Policy Solutions

The Initiative’s First Project: TurboVote Launching across FCS

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As the Florida College System opens the fall 2014 semester on Aug. 18, Implementation Teams across the system have plans in place for the launch of TurboVote. Twenty-seven of the 28 colleges in the FCS are participating in TurboVote, a non-artisan, non-profit digital platform that makes voter registration – and voting – easy for students. The system is especially helpful to incoming freshmen with no previous voting experience and little if any knowledge of or interest in civic affairs as they enter college for the first time.

Implementation Teams identified at each college are employing a variety of strategies for making students aware of the TurboVote opportunity. These include embedding a link into the online registration process, sending emails to all students, staffing sign-up tables at Welcome Back receptions that typically greet students at the start of a new semester, engaging Student Government Association officers to spread the word, and recruiting faculty members to encourage students to go to the TurboVote link and register.

Participation in TurboVote is being offered free to participating members of the Florida College System. When TurboVote offered FCS a 50 percent discount on the $1,000 per college up-front fee to cover TurboVote’s services, the Institute for Strategic Policy Solutions at St. Petersburg College offered to cover the fees for the entire system for the first year. The additional charge of $1.17 per student registrant, which covers cost of postage to mail absentee ballots, was picked up by TurboVote’s foundation sponsors..

Watch this space for updates after the fall rush winds down, and click here to read more about it.

Read related blog: “FCS is TurboVote’s First System-Wide Partner”

David Klement, Executive Director
Institute for Strategic Policy Solutions

California Task Force Urges New Approach to Civics Education

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Florida isn’t the only state that is proactively working to advance civics literacy and civic engagement. In California, a state task force has called for a revival in civics education, transforming it from “an afterthought” – an undervalued social studies class – to a core element of study and community engagement.

An Aug. 7 report on Ed Source by John Fensterwald (http://edsource.org/2014/task-force-urges-remake-of-civics-education/66060#.U-T1rYKFlCM) reviewed details of the final report of the The California Task Force on K-12 Civic Learning. The task force, commissioned by State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson and California Supreme Court Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, urges a new approach to civic learning, which it defines as “cultivating the qualities that will enable all students to mature and participate in our democracy.” The 23-member task force’s recommendations include:

Rewriting the state’s 15-year-old history and social studies standards to incorporate civic learning in every grade;
Involving students in school governance and decision-making to create a school culture that “embodies democratic values and principles;”
Creating a “best-practices clearinghouse” and training opportunities for teachers;
Reaching out to government, businesses, the courts and nonprofit organizations to create projects and internships for students involving government and community issues that interest them.

The report states that only 13 percent of California high school seniors showed a solid understanding of U.S. history and less than half viewed active involvement in state and local issues as their responsibility.

According to Fensterwald’s article, student disengagement is partly the product of years of tighter budgets, added academic requirements and a shift in focus under test-driven accountability. “It’s different for this generation of students, for the landscape of teaching and learning has changed so much,” said David Gordon, Sacramento County superintendent of schools. “Things that used to be in the curriculum have been driven out.”

But the timing for change may be right, the report says, with the adoption of broader criteria for measuring student learning under the state’s new school financing system and the adoption of the Common Core State Standards.

The entire report is on the website of the California Department of Education.

FCS Is TurboVote’s First System-Wide Partner

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I wanted to share some big news I’ve written about in more detail on the Democracy Fund blog.

The Florida College System (FCS) is bringing civic engagement to over 850,000 students by partnering with TurboVote at 27 state and community colleges. This is the first system-wide project of the FCS Civic Literacy Initiative, and made possible by the Institute for Strategic Policy Solutions at St. Petersburg College.

It’s a big deal. FCS is how most Floridians access higher education—65 percent of the state’s high school graduates begin their postsecondary education at one of the system’s colleges.

And this is no summer fling. When TurboVote partners with a school, we provide them with their own custom website and work with administrators to institutionalize voter engagement into their student services for the long-term by integrating TurboVote with class registration, freshman orientation, and other school-wide student experiences.

As schools across Florida come together to bring TurboVote to their campuses, they’re not only introducing the next generation to our democracy, they’re also serving as a model for the rest of the country.

Yours,
Seth Flaxman of the TurboVote team

Closing the Gap: Blog of the FCS Civics Initiative

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Welcome to the inaugural edition of the Civics Initiative newsletter. We have given it a temporary name, but want to hear suggestions from you, the stakeholders, for a more appropriate permanent name. Send us your ideas. Think 21st century.

The Initiative officially launched at the October 9-10, 2013, “Closing the Gap” workshop at St. Petersburg College Seminole. We are up and running, ready to engage with the stakeholders at all 28 members of the Florida College System. Those who attended the workshop last fall are familiar with the Initiative and the issues on the agenda. For those who did not attend, please check the Background/Mission tab to catch up on what the project is about.

Welcome to the Civics Initiative website. This is your website, maintained by the Institute to connect you, the stakeholders in Civics Education, with one another and with the resources available to help achieve our shared mission of closing the gap in civics knowledge among the current and future generations of students in the Florida College System.

We want to hear from you, especially about your Best Practices and ideas for civics-related projects you are considering for Fall 2014. To join the conversation, go to the Blog tab. By clicking Submit a Post you are able to input your Best Practice or Best Idea. The Institute staff will distill the best and post them on a regular basis. The purpose of this site is to share information so we aren’t individually reinventing the wheel. It a civics project worked well for you, perhaps it can be adapted by many others. We want this to be a very collaborative site with useful content to help FCS be a model of civics engagement.

David Klement, Executive Director
Institute for Strategic Policy Solutions

The Initiative’s First Project: TurboVote Is Coming

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There is great news to kick off this website and newsletter debut: TurboVote is coming to the Florida College System this fall – just in time for the 2014 elections! TurboVote is a non-partisan, non-profit digital platform that makes voter registration – and voting – easy for students, especially incoming freshmen with no previous voting experience and little if any knowledge of or interest in civic affairs as they enter college for the first time. Because higher education is required by amendments to the Higher Education Act to make a good-faith effort to distribute voter registration forms to each enrolled student, an online service like TurboVote makes it relatively simple for the 28 colleges in FCS to fulfill that mandate.

And more great news: Participation in TurboVote will be offered free to participating members of the Florida College System. Normally, there is a $1,000 per college fee up-front to cover TurboVote’s services, plus a charge of $1.17 per student who registers to vote. This fee covers cost of postage to mail absentee ballots.

However, TurboVote has offered FCS a package deal: a 50 % discount for enrolling the entire system. The FCS Council of Presidents has accepted the offer. Thus a $28,000 up-front enrollment fee of $1,000 each for 28 colleges was reduced to $14,000. And that was reduced to zero when this Institute agreed to cover this cost as part of its statewide mission. At the same time, TurboVote agreed to use part of its grant from the Knight Foundation to cover the postage costs.

So, TurboVote is available to all 28 colleges in the FCS at no cost! We are rolling out this project as we speak, so continue to watch this space for updates and click here to read more about it.

David Klement, Executive Director
Institute for Strategic Policy Solutions