Agent of Democracy - Society for College and University Planning

The New England Center for Civic Life
After a particularly rough period a few years ago when faculty
and administrative communication reached a crisis, the faculty realized
that parliamentary procedure isn’t always the best way to talk
about controversial institutional defining issues, so they instituted
a “deliberative” session as a standard part of the monthly faculty
meetings. This choice to use deliberative dialogue as a form of
communication when needed was clearly the result of NECCL’s
presence on campus. Also, FPU’s new graduate program in leadership
has sought to include the center in discussions of its curricular
program and internships, and a certificate program that makes use
of the community dialogue processes taught at the center is currently
being discussed.
But, most telling of all, perhaps, was the recent decision of the
university’s board of trustees and president to ensure the future
sustainability of the center by guaranteeing baseline funding for it
out of the operational budget of the university. This means that the
center’s existence is no longer entirely dependent on the “soft”
money of grants and contracts it secures. And additionally, the
provost recently made the NECCL director’s job a full-time administrative
position.
Narrowing the Gap between the World It Is and the World It
Should Be
With that as the case, we can look forward to even greater
achievements in the future from the New England Center for
Civic Life—this little school of democratic citizenship that is now
stitched into the fabric of this university and this local community.
The students who pass through our university and come into contact
with the center and its programs are given a taste of this new
connecting culture that will hopefully become a stronger part of
political life in America, replacing the old, dysfunctional control
culture, which dominates so much of the social landscape now.
The contrast of these two cultures reminds me of what one of
NECCL’s first student Civic Scholars said to me a year after she had
graduated in 1999 and was working as a staffer in the U. S. Senate
Majority Leader’s office. She said that working with the center
203