With the election less than six weeks away, opportunities for civic and voter engagement abound on Goucher\u2019s campus\u2014through courses, events, and grants to support those efforts. Many of those opportunities are thanks to two political science faculty members, Bill Harder and Nina Kasniunas, who are opening doors so their students can lead the way.<\/p>\n
This fall, Assistant Professor Harder is teaching a first-year seminar called College in American Society. Project Pericles, a nonprofit association of colleges and universities, awarded Harder a Civic and Voter Engagement Fellowship in the Deliberative Dialogue track to support the class. \u201cDeliberative dialogue\u201d is a method of discussion outlined by Project Pericles that is more about using a framework to find mutual understanding on an issue than trying to solve the issue itself, emphasizing insight over consensus. “We\u2019re not necessarily trying to resolve individual personal disagreements,\u201d said Harder. \u201cInstead, we\u2019re focused on if this is a problem that society must confront. It has a practical edge to it.\u201d<\/p>\n
First-year seminars are small, discussion-based classes intended to introduce college students to academic inquiry and to challenge their views. That makes Harder\u2019s class a fitting one for the grant and for engaging students on the often-partisan topic of the value of college. The students are exploring four areas: student debt and loan forgiveness, the rise of for-profit colleges, prison education and Pell Grants, and academic freedom and free speech, including campus protests.<\/p>\n
Harder says the class discussions are passionate, as these are important issues facing society. But building a framework together as a class, while still holding different beliefs and opinions, resonates with him; it gives students permission to really hear each other out and look for possible avenues toward progress.<\/p>\n
Associate Professor Kasniunas also received support from Project Pericles this semester, through a Back to School for Democracy Collaborative Fellowship mini grant. Over the summer, Kasniunas was meeting with TaChalla Ferris, the instruction and digital strategies librarian at Goucher, and they came up with an idea inspired by NPR\u2019s StoryCorps\u2014a booth where students could go in and record themselves answering a question posed to them about the election. \u201cIt offers them a space to reflect on the election. It could be something that we can archive in the library for future students who might want to do research project,\u201d said Kasniunas. \u201cAnd more importantly, we thought it\u2019d be really cool.\u201d<\/p>\n