The Ginsberg Center works with students, faculty, and staff across campus to advance knowledge, skills, and commitment to socially responsible civic engagement, which is a fundamental part of being community members and leaders in an increasingly complex world.
Encouraging students to engage in the US democratic process is a non-partisan activity.
This post shares highlights from the resources we have curated for faculty and staff to not only encourage voter engagement, but also to support the development of students’ habits of democracy before and after the upcoming election. Regardless of citizenship status, domestic and international students benefit from understanding how democracy works.
Increase voter registration and turnout by encouraging students to vote
Studies show that encouragement from faculty, staff, and other students makes a significant difference to student registration and turnout (Bennion and Nickerson, 2016; DellaVigna, List, Malmendier & Rao, 2016; Gerber and Rogers, 2009). Here are some simple ways you can encourage students to vote in your class:
- Share your own voting plan about when and where you will vote.
- Utilize pre-made slides created by the student organization Turn Up Turnout for a brief classroom presentation on the importance of voting.
- Share the govote.umich.edu website, which provides voter registration assistance and FAQs to students, regardless of where they hail from.
- Encourage students to be informed voters.
- Explore more ideas here.
Connect your discipline and course content to policy issues
Helping students draw connections between policy or legislation and course content, disciplinary questions, and field-related priorities is critical for educating students about the role we all play in shaping the communities we live in, both while at University of Michigan and in the future.
- Explore our curated collection of Civic Learning activities, which offer considerations for adapting the exercises to both in-person and virtual classroom contexts, such as:
- Use this virtual Dialogue Deck of curated images, co-designed by the Ginsberg Center and UMMA for the 2020 Dewey Lecture, to support a discussion around civic issues.
- Explore these Campus Election Engagement Project resources designed to help students understand the connections between your field and the broader context of the election and policy issues.
- Explore more ideas here.
Encourage students to explore different pathways to civic engagement
- The Pathways to Civic Engagement and Community Change describes multiple, intersecting ways students can engage in and contribute to communities to further U-M’s mission and exercise their own power to create a better world.
- For faculty and staff looking to support these pathways, we offer this complementary guide for academic partners.
Ginsberg staff would be glad to work with you to implement these resources or address any questions you may have. To schedule a consultation, fill out our support request form or contact us at [email protected].