Agent of Democracy - Society for College and University Planning

The New England Center for Civic Life
pause and take stock of our successes,” said Doherty, “and to tell
others what we have done and learned.”
The goal to publish and present the center’s work is part of affirming
its identity as an academic institute as well as recognizing
and accepting that the center is increasingly being asked by other
colleges and universities to help strengthen their institutional efforts
in diversity and civic education. Some of the institutions that have
sought our consultation and training have included the University
of New Hampshire, the University of Massachusetts-Boston, Bates
College, Champlain College, Middlebury College, Woodbury College,
and the State University of New York at Geneseo, among others. A
book that highlights our best practices will be particularly useful
for the center’s growing role as consultants within higher education.
The new emphasis on publishing our work is taking another form
currently in a new College Issues Forums series of issue books. These
are modeled after the NIF booklets, but are discussion guides that
have been developed at Franklin Pierce, which have grown out of
our workshops and courses. They are written and illustrated in a
style that has appeal to college-age students, and, in many cases, are
focused on topics that are relevant to their lives in more immediate
ways, such as the one entitled Sex, Alcohol and a Million Decisions. Other
issue books that are currently being produced for this series are on
topics such as gender, same-sex partners, socioeconomic class, religion
and public life, and a discussion guide for teaching history on
the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854.
The newly produced guide entitled God and the Commons: Does
Religion Matter? will be used in spring 2007 in a statewide series of community
forums which are part of a larger public engagement project on
religion and public life, sponsored by the New Hampshire Humanities
Council. In addition to providing a key discussion guide, the center
has served as a consulting partner in this Humanities Council project.
Making a Place for Public Scholarship
So it seems that the New England Center for Civic Life is in a
period of ripening and bearing the fruit of its first decade of work.
This “fruit,” in the form of a variety of publications, presentations,
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