Center Initiatives
Florida Joint Center for Citizenship
The Lou Frey Institute of Politics and Government at the University of Central Florida and the Bob Graham Center for Public Service at the University of Florida have created the Florida Joint Center for Citizenship. The role of the Joint Center is to promote civic learning and engagement among Florida’s citizens, especially young citizens.
The role of the Florida Joint Center for Citizenship is to:
- Work in collaboration with the Florida Department of Education, colleges and universities, school districts and other public and private organizations to improve civic learning and engagement.
- Serve as an information resource and clearinghouse on civic learning and engagement.
- Offer and support programs that encourage civic and political engagement and leadership.
- Undertake research on civic learning and engagement.
Florida Joint Center for Citizenship Programs
With support from the Helios Education Foundation, the Florida Joint Center for Citizenship and FLREA will offer a week long professional development program for middle school civics teachers during the summer of 2008. This is the second year that the Graham Center will host this program.
The program will be offered in Gainesville during the week of July 21-25, 2008. The four day workshops bring middle and high school teachers from across north central Florida to learn creative methods for teaching their students about the Constitution, the judiciary, and public policy. This program will cover the “We the People: the Citizen and the Constitution and Project Citizen” curricula from the Center for Civic Education.
For more information you can go to www.civiced.org.The online brochure and other information can be accessed by going to www.floridacitizen.org. If you have any questions or wish to participate in the workshop, please contact Elizabeth Yeager Washington at ewashington@coe.ufl.edu
Collaboration with the Institute of Politics at Harvard
During the Florida presidential primary in January of
2008, a group of students from the Harvard Institute of Politics came to
the University of Florida to work on the Campus Voices project. Harvard and UF
students traveled all over UF’s campus, creating video blogs that
captured the election through the eyes of college students. The
video blogs are available at www.novotenovoice.com.
Two of the students who worked with the group from Harvard
attended the National Conference on Civic Education in Cambridge,
MA, April 12-13, 2008. Conference participants focused
on unique ways to promote voter registration on campus.
Graham Center students will continue to work on the Campus Voices project with the Institute of Politics throughout the fall semester. The Graham Center has created a website which gives information to students about registering to vote. Furthermore, Graham Center students will continue to add to the UF portion of the “No Vote, No Voice” website. Throughout the fall semester, students will add articles, photos, and video blogs, documenting the 2008 presidential campaign at the University of Florida.
Leadership Summit
In February of 2008, the Graham Center convened its first Leadership Summit. The goal of the Summit was to bring together all of the different entities on campus that work on leadership development, find common ground, and collaborate. In attendance at the Summit were a range of campus organizations that work with students, faculty and staff, and public and private sector employees on leadership development.
The first Leadership Summit was successful and resulted in the creation of a leadership website that will act as a resource for students and faculty at UF; identifying leadership opportunities that fit the needs of the website’s visitors. The leadership website will be available in early august of 2008. The Summit also resulted in a call for additional collaboration from all the groups present. A second Leadership Summit will be held this fall.
The Graham Center also plans to host a Leadership Fair in fall of 2008. The Leadership Fair would allow campus leadership organizations to showcase their programs for interested students, staff, and faculty.
