Preparing Students for the 2024 Election: Voter Education & Engagement Workshops for College Teachers

In this edition of The Teacher-Scholar, I want to draw people’s attention to a range of voter education and engagement workshops designed to prepare students for local, state, and national elections. All workshops were recorded and are available for free online allowing instructors to fit this training into their summer schedules. Workshop panelists are eager to hear from instructors nationwide and abroad who wish to ask questions or share ideas. Political Science Education members are encouraged to share these resources with instructors across the discipline, and in other disciplines, who are ready to play their part in preparing students to participate in the fall 2024 election.

Noting that the 2024 election season promises to be one of the most contentious in American history, with the divisions in communities and regions playing out on college campuses, the American Association of State Colleges (AASCU) developed the Practicing American Democracy Series to prepare campuses to become sites of vibrant and healthy democracy where students become informed and engaged citizens who model open debate on difficult issues. The series was part of the long-term work of AASCU’s American Democracy Project¹.

The goal of this non-partisan initiative was to encourage conversation, demonstrate best practices, and provide critical resources so that campuses can build capacity and a campus culture that encourages engagement in building a strong democracy (aascu.org).

The first set of workshops I wish to highlight are the Voter Education and Voter Engagement workshops hosted by AASCU during the Spring 2024 semester.

Voter education is defined as building the knowledge, civic skills, and democratic values required to become engaged in democratic politics, both during and between election cycles. Workshops focused on best practices to build knowledge, skills, and democratic values using informational overviews, resource spotlights, and trainings designed to incorporate civics into curriculum and co-curriculum. Sessions were designed for faculty and staff who wish to incorporate election preparation, information literacy, deliberative dialogues, and issue-based discussions into their courses and campus-wide programming.

Voter engagement encourages and supports peaceful and meaningful participation in elections within our communities. Sessions included strategies for building, implementing, and assessing campus voting plans and understanding legislation about voting on campuses. These workshops were designed for campus leaders who support student and community voting.

February’s workshops, available here², were designed to prepare students for voter engagement and supported information literacy and free speech on campus. This included voter education workshops on “Combating Mis- and Disinformation,” “Gamification of Information Literacy,” and Free Speech on Campus” along with voter engagement workshops on “Strategies for Building a Campus Voter Initiative,” “Funding Voter Initiatives on Campus,” and “Using National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement (NSVLE) Data to Assess Student Engagement in Democracy.”

The workshops in March, available here³, explored ways to cope with political polarization and enhance well-being on campus. These included voter education workshops on “Reducing Political Extremism on Campus,” “How to Incorporate a Political Diagnostic in Your Work,” and “Integrating Civic Awareness across Disciplines” as well as voter engagement workshops entitled “Know Your Ballot,” “Assessing Learning Outcomes for Student Civic Fellowships,” and “Physical and Mental Health During Election Years.”

April’s workshops, available here⁴, focused on building campus-community ties and integrating voter education into the classroom. Voter education workshops included “Exploring the Impact of Political Ideology on Hot Topics,” “Including Deliberative Dialogues in the Classroom,” “Artificial Intelligence and the Election,” and “Ideas for Incorporating Voter Issues into the Classroom.” Voter engagement workshops included “Organizing Community Dialogues,” “Developing Engaged Students,” “Strengthening Campus-Community Voting Initiatives,” and “Maintaining a Positive Campus Climate During the 2024 Elections.”

As a panelist for the march “Know Your Ballot” webinar and the April “Ideas for Incorporating Voter Issues into the Classroom” webinars, I can attest to the wide range of strategies discussed in each webinar, allowing faculty to determine which ideas, tips, and techniques might work best for student on their own campuses. For more information about these workshops, including the speaker lineup and complete recording for each session, visit the AASCU web site⁵. If you are a member of a four-year state college and university, contact AASCU⁶ directly to learn about to get engaged in the American Democracy Project.

The second resource I wish to highlight for faculty from all universities is the American Political Science Association-sponsored webinar entitled “Preparing Students for the 2024 Election: Campus Engagement and Civic Education,” available here⁷. It was a pleasure to join Middle Tennessee State University Professor Sekou Franklin, Piedmont Valley Community College Professor Connie Jorgensen, Howard University Professor Marcus Board Jr., and Menlo College Professor (and Dean) Melissa Michelson as a panelist for this session moderated by University of Akron Professor J. Cherie Strachan.

While sharing a common academic discipline and commitment to student engagement in politics, the panelists represented a wide variety of backgrounds, approaches, and institution types. All panelists noted the importance of engaging students and community partners in get-out-the-vote efforts, and noted ways to integrate voter registration, education, and mobilization work into all aspects of faculty life including teaching, research, and service. Panelists also stressed the importance of helping students understand the connection between elections and the issue they care about most.

Panelists discussed the skills that students need today, including how to advocate for themselves and how to navigate a world in which fake news travels faster than accurate news and conspiracy theories go viral. They further discussed the importance of understanding that the language of “civic engagement” and “civil dialogue” might alienate some students interested in political activism and direct action–and the more general importance of recognizing that each campus has different students and operates in a different political context, legal framework, and community, necessitating unique approaches to voter outreach that students can help craft. Finally, panelists stressed the importance of providing faculty with resources and recognition for their work and suggested ways that campuses and professional associations like the American Political Science Association can support this work.

AMONG THE HIGHLIGHTS:

• • Elizabeth Bennion noted that work-study and for-credit student internships were at the heart of Indiana University South Bend’s robust and comprehensive semester-long voter registration, education, and mobilization activities. This includes staffed and unstaffed voter registration tables, class presentations, announcements on social media and Canvas, campus-wide emails, debate watch parties, parades to the polls, issue-based pizza and politics sessions, live candidate forums and a non-partisan online voter guide completed in partnership with the local League of Women Voters and South Bend Tribune.

• • Marcus Borg noted his work with The Political Science Society–a student organizations representing over 1,000 political science majors on their get-out-the-vote network. Howard University also hired Stacey Abrams as an endowed chair of race and politics, allowing her to draw upon her national experience with voter mobilization when hosting events for students. The campus also partners with community groups, including Black Girls Vote, compiles a Black Voter Report, and uses Howard University TV to broadcast a Before You Vote program.

• • Sekou Franklin also stressed the importance of community groups for Middle Tennessee State University, noting his work with Free to Vote Coalition and NAACP, focused on voting rights and voter restoration. He also noted the importance of integrating election work into teaching and research, noting the work his courses and students have done with voter registration, voter protection, and voting rights, and some research and writing he is doing on the impact of the vote on Black Americans, with focus on rules and regulations in the American bureaucracy.

• • Connie Jorgenson stressed the importance of their campus voter guide, created by political science and journalism students as an active learning project. She noted the active involvement of the Honors Society and Student Government Association in planning get-out-the-vote parties and other election-related programming, attended by students, candidates, and local elected officials.

• • Melissa Michelson highlighted the importance of context in determining what work is needed on a particular campus. Menlo College is in California where state laws make it easy for students to register and vote. Students have an early voting and Election Day polling place on campus and no pre-registration is required. The major goal of get-out-the-vote champions at Menlo College is getting students to want to vote and convincing them that it is important. They do this by helping students connect the issues they care about with local, state, and national races on the ballot.

This APSA webinar is part of a larger series of essays designed to prepare students for the 2024 election and for active constructive engagement in American democracy⁸. Political scientists at all types of institutions can also learn more about the resources necessary to support campus-specific voter education and engagement programming by exploring the resources linked to each online webinar⁹ or contacting me directly at ebennion@iu.edu. ■