Civic Honors

The civic honors call to action

Every individual within the community has a voice to spread the word about the civic honors program. From talking to a neighbor to writing a letter individuals have the power to call attention to issues within the community. If the message of the civic honors program can be spread through individuals within the community the potential to engage the community increases. Every time a active civic honors advocate writes a letter to the media, a politician, or a university it has the potential to not only inform individuals within the community but it sends a bigger message that the community is interested in ideas that have the potential for benefit. Motivating the community around the idea that change is possible and ever individual within the community has the potential to help the community move in the right direction builds a truly empowering sense of community.

The civic honors program needs to have strong advocates within the community that are interested in seeing action. Being able to get the message out is part of starting any movement within the community. Having a positive message that can be spread by anyone within the community is a vibrant part of civic honors. It is more than a message however it is a call to action asking anyone who cares about the community to work to benefit the community. Communicating the message about the potential for benefiting the community can take on many forms but the form that will have the largest potential for benefiting the community is if community advocates become the driving force for creating a civic honors program.

Journal Article: Civic Honors Program at Johnson County Community College

The 4th Issue of the Journal for Civic Commitment is now available online. Check out the, "Civic Honors Program at Johnson County Community College," article about the implementation of Graduation with Civic Honors. In the introduction the article a definition is provided, "Graduation with Civic Honors is a simple idea: At the culmination of an academic career, a student receives recognition for academic development, service learning, and civic engagement within the community." Saving a copy of this historical article is easy, because it has been made available online in printer friendly Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF).

American Psychological Association (APA) Format Citation

Carlsen, C. J., Lindahl, N, & Lindahl, S. (2004). Civic Honors Program at Johnson County Community College. Journal for Civic Commitment, 4th Issue, 1-9. Retrieved November 30, 2004 from http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/other/engagement/Journal/, Civic Honors Program at Johnson County Community College: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/other/engagement/Journal/Issue4/CivicHonorsProgram.pdf.

Starting a Foundation

The Civic Honors Project is currently in the process of putting together the necessary forms and support to start a Civic Honors Foundation. In an effort to help other organizations and interested individuals understand the foundation creation process the Civic Honors Project will document all of the necessary parts of the process. Several great books detail the process about where foundations and community organizations come from, but they have not discussed the challenges of online advocacy.

Spotlight: The Journal for Civic Commitment

The Journal for Civic Commitment is an up and coming online journal that is published twice a year. The journal is dedicated to service-learning and civic engagement and is currently about to release its 4th issue. According to the journal webpage, "The Journal for Civic Commitment offers research and theories, strategies, and tips and techniques to readers. It is dedicated to disseminating research-based and practical information to service-learning practitioners, coordinators, and administrators." This journal encourages the free and open exchange of information and provides a forum for the discussion of practical solutions to increasing civic engagement.

Good News!

Hopefully, the Civic Honors Project will be able to release some very good news at the end of the week. The content has slowed down in the last two months, but silence does not mean inactivity!

Delivering Online Content

Design is starting to facilitate content and interaction. The Civic Honors Project has been working on a webpage redesign for the last couple of months. Building a comprehensive system that is able to deliver online content that is dynamic and innovative takes time. Taking issue advocacy digital requires providing a degree of privacy protection for potential participants while allowing any potential participant to interact at anytime.

Connecting advocates used to require massive organization and caused a certain degree of information asymmetry. Currently, anyone interested in learning about an issue, cause, or movement simply has to know the name to enter in an internet search engine. That is the main structural program with digital advocacy, how do you get the world out, so that people know what name to enter in an internet search engine.

Remember the Weblog Directories

This is post is a reminder to webmasters. When the design changes went into effect, the weblog directories were removed from the page to streamline the content. This contribution to simplicity turned out to have negative effects on search engines and directory listings. To fix this problem several links are going to be placed at the bottom of this index page. Right now, the major directories have been added including Technorati, Blogshares, Blogstreet, and Blogwise. Later today and tomorrow, the rest will be added. Webmasters have to remember to keep updating the background search engine information for pages, because as the popularity of organizations having web pages increase the visibility of all web pages decreases.

Photograph of civic virtue assignment

Ideas like civil society, civic engagement, and civility all have definitive meaning in academic literature. Each of these ideas might have somewhat different meanings depending on which author is describing them. One of the most common questions the Civic Honors Project sounds like, “How do you take pictures of people helping other people in the community.”

Being able to get out a camera and take a photograph of civic virtue is actually a very difficult task. Next time you are talking to an academic about civil society, civic engagement, or civility suggest a class assignment for students to describe what the perfect photograph would look like. Some students will have no problem describing what civil society, civic engagement, or civility looks like, while other students will find the assignment very difficult.

One example of a potential photograph is of Graduation with Civic Honors. Next may when the first class graduates with civic honors from Johnson County Community College is an example of a perfect opportunity to take a picture. All of the students who received civic honors will have spent time throughout the last working to increase the level of civic engagement they are capable of while using reflective thought to define the current state of civility.

Taking a picture of civic virtue is a very challenging assignment for students of civil society, civic engagement, or civility. Describing what a photograph of civic virtue would look like is probably a more reasonable assignment for academics. The important part of this assignment is providing the lesson to students of what it is like to try to visual the ideas of civil society, civic engagement, or civility in a very real concrete way. Application of ideas to society is the most important way to make sure academics discussion lives up to a certain degree of validity.

Election Politics: What about Civic Engagement?

The history of debate and discussion about civic engagement is rich with academic fervor and insightful observations. Part of advocating for the increase of civic engagement in society is paying attention to popular media discussion. Every four years the news cycles get shorter and the media focuses on the major issues of the day. Where is the discussion about civic engagement during this election? In general, the popular consensus is that the issue is not political. Either political party at anytime can reference civic engagement, civil society, or graduation with civic honors.

Advocates who use online public forms for interactive dialogue and discussion have to recognize that to achieve lasting change keeping the issue active is important. These same advocates can expect that structurally every four years election politics will generate a significant degree of media attention. Organizations exist that are interested in studying, promoting, or facilitating dialogue to increase civic engagement. This dialogue has to focus on the practical application of real world solutions. Graduation with civic honors is an example of how to energize, mobilize, and provide recognition for a new generation of society.

Modern media is not going to change style or focus in the near future. Politicians are not going to be campaigning on the virtues of civility. Politicians focus on programs that resonate with voters. Fortunately, building stronger communities and helping increase civic engagement in society are positive issues with voters.

The debate about civic engagement has to transition form being a dialogue driven discussion of civil society. Dialogue is important to helping promote understanding. Thinking about election politics as providing a possibility for action is a positive step forward. Right now to strengthen the social fabric, advocates have to focus on legislative solutions that can resonate with politicians during periods of election politics. Debating the virtues of civility does not fund implementation of programs to increase civic engagement.

New Webpage Design

The Civic Honors Project online presence has changed again. This is the new color scheme that the project will be using. Changing the focus to content and driving information to the people about the graduation with civic honors project. Change is a part of working toward the future.

Rough Draft Update

A new draft of the Nels Lindahl original book, “Civic Honors: The Possibilities of Community,” will be available shortly. A rough draft will be made available in the form of an Adobe PDF file to preserve formatting. It has been over a year since the first online publication and several new and interesting ideas have been added to the chapters. The goral is to eventually have an interactive version of the book online to facilitate encouraging civic engagement while providing background information on why civil society is important to building a stronger social fabric for the future of society.

The Civic Honors Project

Right now things are changing for the Civic Honors Project. If you have been following along you know that Johnson County Community College is currently starting a pilot program to introduce graduation with civic honors to the state of Kansas. This is good news and will provide first hand accounts of what graduation with civic honors means to people. Over the course of the next academic year the Civic Honors Project will be working to achieve several measurable results.

1. Develop and implement an online civic attitudes test.
2. Interview actual graduation with civic honors participants.
3. Interview members of the general public about graduation with civic honors.
4. Interview academics about the future potential directions online civic engagement advocacy could take.

Implementing these simply measures will help define how graduation with civic honors is perceived by the public mind. This is the first step in providing a template for broad online advocacy of civic engagement through discourse and public discussion.

new webpage design

The Civic Honors Project is proud to have a new webpage design. Using some new technology provided by Movable Type the comment spam problem should now be over. The new design focuses on interviews and will now provide a larger degree of functionality to the end user. If you have, any comments or suggestions feel free to contribute.

For those of you who depend on links from the Civic Honors Project this is the last redesign that will change the location of content. This is the first instance of link rot or page shifting from the Civic Honors Project. The new initiatives are going well this year and hopefully good news is around the corner.

Future Project Direction

The Civic Honors Project team is putting together a new set of survey materials. Hopefully, the new survey will be ready to mail out in a couple of weeks. Part of the message exposed by the Civic Honors Project is an ethic of bringing people together in the spirit of building community. A central focus area of creating a mindset in the community of brining people together through civic engagement is higher education. Programs that help students focus on civic engagement are a key part of raising awareness while rewarding achievement.

Individual participants within the social fabric of the community need to be rewarded through more than individual congratulations. Participants need some form of institutional recognition. Johnson County Community College has a pilot program in the works that will provide institutional recognition in the form of graduation with civic honors. The future is bright with potential case studies, external survey�s, and enthusiasm growing everyday..

From Idea to Reality

The Civic Honors Project is very proud to see an official Graduation with Civic Honors program coming into existence at Johnson County Community College. (JCCC) What exactly is going on at Johnson County Community College? Well a new Graduation with Civic Honors pilot program for students graduating May 2005 has the green light and is officially in the catalog of courses. If you know anything about academia, then you know that being in the course catalog is the most official stamp of approval.

JCCC academic Support Services wrote in the Catalog of Courses Fall 2004, official college, Student Handbook section for Services and Activities for Students that a new Academic Support Service is now available. �Civic Honors Program - The civic honors program combines coursework, training, organizational activities, community service and reflection. Students who meet the qualifications will be able to graduate with civic honors, recognizing their efforts and achievements within the community. Civic Honors students will receive special recognition at the commencement ceremony. Refer to the Service Learning website at http://www.jccc.net/home/depts.php/3317.� The Graduation with Civic Honors program is pat of a new strategy to encourage civic engagement and provide benefits to students.

A glossy pamphlet published by JCCC says, �JCCC�s Civic Honors Award Program at JCCC, community is more than just part of our name. It reflects our commitment to community service. During the 2004-2005 school year, Johnson County Community College will be piloting a new program, Civic Honors Award. Students who meet the qualifications will be able to graduate with civic honors, recognizing their efforts and achievements within the community. Civic Honors Awards students will receive special recognition at the commencement ceremony in May 2005.� The Civic Honors program is putting together an evaluation of the requirements being used by JCCC, which should be completed shortly.