By Jen Domagal-Goldman, National Manager, American Democracy Project

Our recent 2014 ADP/TDC National Meeting in Louisville, Ky. brought together a collection of faculty, students, administrators, community partners and representatives from our national sponsor and partner organizations committed to advancing civic learning and engagement through public higher education. Collectively, we considered how to advance civic pathways for student success—by identifying existing pathways and forging new ones. We also contemplated the role of social media in our work and the relationship between journalism and our democracy. Together, we celebrated another year of doing hard and important work by sharing stories and strategies for scaling up and focusing our efforts to drive civic learning and engagement into the core of higher education. We committed ourselves to continuing to work to equip all students with the civic knowledge, skills, experiences and dispositions they need to be successful throughout their careers and as citizens.

Highlights of our time together:

By The Numbers

493 participants, representing 156 different campuses and organizations

  • 67 ADP Campuses
  • 44 TDC Campuses
  • 125 Students
  • 8 Sponsors
  • 27 Partner & Friends Organizations

Social Media Use and #ADPTDC14

  • More than 2,500 mentions on both Facebook and Twitter
  • Overall 90% of those posts were positive in sentiment
  • The peak in social media conversation was on Thursday morning during the #Online plenary session
  • Discourse, Dialogue, and Deliberation was the most popular subtopic, accounting for 40% of all social media posts

Selected Tweets:

Program Overview

  • The full program agenda is available for download here (pdf).
  • New this year was a National Community College Organizing day for TDC and a Day of Service at Family Scholar House.
  • After being welcomed to Louisville by Mayor Greg Fischer, national participants considered ways to create and scale-up civic pathways for student success on their campuses and in their communities.

  • During Friday morning’s “#Online: Democracy Gone Digital” plenary session, Suey Park and The Harry Potter Alliance’s Lauren Bird discussed civic participation and activism via social media.

  • The Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting’s Mark Shulte spoke about “Untold Stories of the Connected World: Journalism as an Instrument for Citizenship” and shared two thought-provoking examples of video journalism: Sean Gallagher’s The Toxic Price of Leather and Paul Salopek’s Out of Eden trek from Ethiopia to Patagonia.
  • Four awards for civic learning and engagement were presented during Friday’s awards lunch. Read more about the awards and their recipients here.

  • In our closing plenary session, faculty and students from ADP and TDC campuses reflected with us about the national meeting and challenged us to further advance the roles of civic learning and engagement on our campuses over the course of the next year.

Comments from National Meeting attendees:

  • “This is THE place to network with civic engagement movers and shakers!”
  • “I was so impressed (again) with the depth and quality of the participation of our student members. They give me great hope for the future.”
  • “The tone of this conference is one of the best I have ever encountered.  The blend of faculty, campus leaders and engaged students is terrific.  There’s also a clear sense that everyone is there with common work in mind.”

We hope to see you in New Orleans, Louisiana June 4-6, 2015, for the next ADP/TDC National Meeting where we will continue our important work of preparing informed, engaged citizens for our democracy.

PowerPoints and other handouts from the meeting are available through the meeting’s QuickMobile mobile app for the next year.

Finally, to see more pictures from the meeting, visit theTDC Facebook Page and AASCU homepage; please send any photos you took to [email protected] so that we can upload them to Facebook.

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Posted in #ADPTDC14 Update, TDC Events on Jul 2, 2014