15

Student Government Association Minutes

October 21, 2014

I.  ROLL CALL: Mikayla Culley, Caitlin Macauley and Marlon Bryan, were absent. Tyrel Wood sent and alternate.

II.  APPROVAL OF MINUTES FROM October 14, 2014: Minutes were approved.

III.  PRESIDENT’S REPORT: Rebecca DiVico

A.  Tonight our first speaker is Brian Conz to discuss Civic Engagement.

1.  Brian Conz: Hello everyone. Thank you for taking the time out to do what you do here in Student Government. This is the first time I have attended and SGA meeting and I was busy emailing and calling different people last year to get to talk to you all. I was happy to meet with Olivia Dumas this semester and to get the chance to talk to you all about the important work that I have been doing.

2.  I am here tonight to talk to you all about the civic learning and democratic engagement that has been going on here at Westfield for the past few years. I became involved in it last year. I am hoping to maybe inspire a little bit of dialogue because this initiative is about students and getting students involved in civic learning and democratic engagement. In order to do that, I need to provide a little bit of background on the definitions for these terms and hopefully get a little bit of feedback. I would also like to tell you what we have been doing with the money that we have received for this initiative. I would also like to get a sense from you all about how we could potentially make this part of what we do here, at the University moving forward. We have had some ideas that we have batted around, in regards to what the best way to do that might be. Those are the three things that I want to talk to you about.

3.  A little bit of background on the initiative: what we are doing with the funds that we have received and how we want to move forward from here, if we feel it is worthwhile? Again, my name is Brian Conz; I am a faculty member in Geography and Regional Planning department. Last year, I took on the role of faculty director of Civic Engagement. This has involved a budget that I inherited from a three year grant to fulfill one of the clauses or outcomes of the Vision Project, which is basically a way of naming key goals of Higher Education in Massachusetts. One of these goals is preparing citizens.

4.  This term citizenship is linked to civic learning and democratic engagement, to service learning, to getting students in classes out into the community or more involved in the campus community. Part of me feels like I don’t need to tell all of you about that because you are here working in Student Government. The intention of this initiative, though, is to get more of that happening on-campus and off-campus, in the community are large, and even internationally.

5.  I’ve used a few different terms here. Civic learning is the process of learning the skills that inform our democracy of that way our government makes decisions, participation in democratic processes and other things like this. Civic engagement or community engagement or democratic engagement has a little bit more of a sense that we are getting students involved in the community, partnering with organizations or agencies, and the like. Service learning entails this idea of providing some sort of service to the community. All of these things are kind of lumped together and used interchangeably so part of the challenge, that I have run into and been confronted with, along with the advisory committee on civic learning and democratic engagement, which is made up of faculty, administrators and students.

6.  How many have you participated in classes that were officially noted as civic engagement classes? What are some of those departments that these classes fell under?

a.  Joshua Frank: Communications Department and the class was Advanced Public Relations.

b.  Ryan Losco: Political Science Department and the class was Law, Courts and Politics.

7.  Great. I know that Geography and Regional Planning and English offer some of these courses as well. So, these courses are out there and identified in the course catalog in the same way as honors courses are. It kind of has a quasi-official nature to it and this is kind of a Segway into the next piece which is what we have been doing with the funding that we received.

8.  One of the key strategies that we have been employing to make Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement more prominent is creating these courses. So, we funded through the Vision Project grant, the creation of 20 new or substantially revised courses that offer a civic engagement component. What we have encouraged faculty to do in this process is to identify civic learning and other types of learning as key outcomes of the course and to do some assessment in the form of exams or writing assignments or service learning projects that will help to facilitate the development of these values and such. So, that is a key part of what we have been doing. We are putting together a final call for proposals and this will enable us to create these kinds of courses across the departments that don’t offer civic engagement courses. We have about a dozen or so that currently do. We are seeking to do that through the curriculum.

9.  Some of the other things that we have been doing are building our relationships with public schools in the area. As a huge education school, we have students out in schools as part of their student teaching. We are trying to reinforce that work by partnering with local public schools in order to get students out into the community doing different kinds of work.

10.  Another thing that we are doing is supporting the Study Abroad program. Many of these are very specific programs where you go and build a school or something similar. We are helping offer financial assistance for these courses to help reinforce those partnerships so that it is not just a one-time thing. So, you don’t just build a school, leave and feel good about yourself. You return to the same community and keep in touch and have a partnership with that community. We are really trying to reinforce those relationships and establish multi-year partnerships with these communities.

11.  A big part of the conversation that we are having is the concern and idea that we are only out there doing charity work, because we are not. We need not to reinforce this idea that we in Higher Education are privileged experts that can bestow learning and expertise to these communities. First of all, we recognize that the winners in these encounters are our own students. We’re the ones who are going into these communities and having the opportunity to see what it is like to apply what we are learning in a real world context. Or, in the case of many of these international programs, that we are going abroad and experiencing what life is like in another country. They, in fact, are hosting us and doing us a favor. Oftentimes, the encounters that we have inherently reinforce this idea that we are privileged and that we are providing service to these external communities. So, this kind of reinforces a negative “us” and “them” mentality. Our concern is that we need not do that. This is not about charity. It is about coproducing knowledge with community members. It is just as much learning from them as it is about perhaps teaching them. In order to do that, we are trying to provide support in terms of professional development and training to folks who are going out into the community. So, we spent some of the money on training for students and faculty/administrators. We funded a week-long retreat for faculty members involved in this last June. So, that is a big piece of where our money has gone. Are there any questions thus far?

a)  Shannon Cullinane: You mentioned that you are giving financial assistance to the Study Abroad program. Are you helping out more of the J-Term programs or the semester-abroad programs?

b)  Brian Conz: That is a great question. It is almost exclusively for J-Term programs and other short-term courses during spring break and such. They are service learning courses normally. Don’t get the idea that this is the favored way of studying abroad, though. If you can go abroad for a full semester or full-year, you should do it. But, our funds are focused on those courses that we are hosting as a University where our faculty are the ones teaching and developing those partnerships and hopefully we are supporting the long-term abroad programs in other ways.

c)  Shannon Cullinane: Readdress. How would one go about applying for this financial assistance for short-term courses?

d)  Brian Conz: For this round of courses that are going, we have just released word to the faculty members running it that we were able to support them. Each of seven courses that have identified civic learning goals in their curriculum, have been given the chance for a certain amount of funds for students. We are giving the faculty members the decision to either use those funds to aid students in expenditures or use the money to pay for the actual service learning project itself. So, that is at the discretion of the faculty member running the course at this point.

e)  Jon Cubetus: Once the grant funds are exhausted, how do you see the program changing?

f.  Brian Conz: That is the last point I want to tackle. Maybe we should hold off on the rest of the questions because that is the last point that I want to get some feedback and thoughts from you all on. We are at a point where we need to get this all through governance. People are starting to pay attention to this. Campuses across the country are starting to pay attention to this. If and when funding for this extra push dries up, what happens? Do we just go back to a place where we don’t need to coordinate the effort? That wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world but I would like to speak to where we would be if that makes sense.

12.  Brian Conz: There are a few things that we are looking at here. One of the major ideas is to have an office on Civic Engagement here on campus. It would be staffed by a full-time person that can help to coordinate partnerships that faculty members and administrators are interested in building. It would be kind of a central clearing for civic engagement and civic learning opportunities. We are not entirely sure what that all is going to look like. There are different models on different campuses all around the region that sometimes manage internships. We have so many great programs with internships here that are governed by other folks. It is not clear at this point if these programs would be involved in this new office. It would definitely have some oversight working with courses, faculty and administrators on what our face looks like in the community. It would also help provide training and professional development opportunities. Perhaps, managing a required one credit course for folks managing civic engagement. The office of civic engagement is one way that folks have kind of figured would keep the ball rolling with this once the funds are exhausted.

13.  The second idea, deals with making the courses official civic engagement courses. Courses would go through governance to be officially recognized and attributes as civic engagement courses, much like honors courses. This is something that we are currently working on and going to be putting forward.

14.  One of the other things that we are looking at is having a required civic engagement course within the major. So, each major has at least one course that involves civic learning, which does not insist that students go out and do volunteer work. There would just be a minimum of one course in each major that teaches civic values and participation in democracy in each respected field. It could be something different than just applied work. It would have to deal with values and competencies. So, the idea of having a required civic engagement course in each major is something we are talking about.

15.  There has been some conversation about a potential common core course requirement to be added that is civic engagement. Again, this is something that the majors would put forward. But, maybe it is not necessary every major to have a core course under this particular heading, much like not every major has a class under the diversity requirement or US government requirement. So, that is kind of the direction we have been heading and this is kind of the dialogue we have been having over several different options in terms of enshrining civic engagement here at Westfield State.

a.  Dana Kilby: Have you thought about maybe making a core, that was civic engagement, that could also count for other core classes that are not major restricted?

  1. Brian Conz: I am interested in how folks feel about that. It seems to be something that some people are afraid of. Creating a whole new category for common core classes scares some people. However, at the state level, they adopted a policy that said that civic learning would be one of the outcomes that they would like to see the State Universities assessing. So, at some point, they are going to be asking us how we are assessing civic learning at our institution. So, it would make sense to go as far as making a new core requirement, which of course, would mean you all would have to take at least one more class to fulfill your common core requirements. It seems like a big bomb to drop. It would be a lot of work to get through curriculum and other governance, but maybe it does make sense. One might argue that what we are teaching when talking about civic learning is in the rest of the core. So, oftentimes there is discussion in civic learning about awareness of the US democratic system and other cultures around the globe. That is very much present in our core. That is one of the counter-arguments that I think we would definitely run into if we went down that route.

c.  Victoria Landry: I don’t know if it would be necessary to create a whole new part of the core. What I would personally like to see is having courses that are already offered being designated as civic engagement, whether or not they would need to adjust their curriculum a bit, and then in the course booklet, having a star or some designation to say that the course is in fact civic engagement.