CUMU Conference 2019

“How can we be civically engaged every day?”

This query, posed by the Greater Portland Immigrant Welcome Center’s Executive Director, stewards the aspirations of the interdisciplinary community-engagement project, Democracy and Diversity, conducted by the University of Southern Maine, in collaboration with several local community partners.  As ideological tensions mount to the point of crisis, the role of contextually and culturally aware community-engagement becomes increasingly vital and restorative. In Maine, like many Northern states experiencing a “demographic winter,” community-university collaborations provide a sustainable way forward in ameliorating tensions and building cross-polarity alliances.

Our workshop will discuss the first stages of the Democracy and Diversity project, contextualized in the social and cultural history of Maine and USM. We will scaffold our presentation with core questions to guide participants' own consideration of possible projects, as well as ground in sociological theory and community engagement scholarship and best practices. Design of,and prelimlinary results from, a sruvey used with our classes to assess the particular impact of this community engagement on diverse students and the differential potential for perseverence,student success and civic engagement will also be explored.