This practical and insightful three-part webcast series, moderated by Harry Boyte, seeks to spark discussion and action on the role of higher education as an architect and agent of thriving democratic societies.

Response to the webcast series has been enthusiastic. As one participant said about An Empowering Heritage, “This was wonderful. I learned a lot and the content has provided a lot of food for thought. I look forward to the next webcast in the series. I particularly look forward to extending participation on my campus to others outside of my department.”

Our third and final webcast on April 29th, Preparing for Citizenship or a Career – a False Choice, challenges the all too common “false choice” between preparing students for careers and preparing them for lives of meaningful citizenship. A recent AAC&U study found that today’s employers are demanding skills in future employees such as the ability to communicate effectively orally and in writing, teamwork skills, and the ability to analyze and solve complex problems. Yet these are not simply career skills: they are precisely the civic skills needed to build thriving, healthy, and inclusive communities. Explicitly integrating civic skill development into career preparation offers multiple opportunities for greater skill development, career preparation, and citizenship development.

Preparing for Citizenship or a Career will explore practical strategies and approaches that campuses can use to develop these career/civic skills. In this webcast, Harry Boyte talks with Caryn McTighe Musil, noted for spearheading AAC&U’s civic agenda, Mary Kirlin, a leading national expert in the area of civic skills, and Miguel Vasquez, an anthropologist from Northern Arizona University who has worked extensively with the Mexican American community and has been a champion in the Public Achievement movement.

This webcast completes this year’s inaugural program, Agents and Architects of Democracy, a series of three provocative webcasts. Our first webcast, The Democracy Mission of Higher Education asked, “How can higher education reverse the disturbing trends we see occurring: pressures for higher education to become increasingly a private good with students as customers, institutions as industries, and competitive success measured by how many are refused admission?” In our second webcast, An Empowering Heritage – Democracy Colleges and Freedom Struggles, Harry Boyte interviewed two noted scholars, Scott Peters and Herman Blake, to examine the largely forgotten roles of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in the civic rights movement, and the role of the land grant colleges in the development of American democracy.

We hope you will join us as we explore civic skills and discuss the theory and practice of empowerment as an organizing theme for higher education.

This webcast will answer the following questions:

• How might educators and communities create an institutional focus on the creation of 21st Century Skills?
• How do students best acquire these types of important skills?
• What are employers looking for in college graduates and how might these needs be met?

• Those involved in community engagement work in higher education (service-learning leaders, participatory action research groups, etc).
• Engaged teaching/student as collaborator networks, and groups like AAC&U which have made this a major area of emphasis
• Those interested in questions of public scholarship – Imagining America institutions, leaders in disciplines (sociology, history, geography MLA, political science, Social Science Research Council, etc.) who have been pushing for "public sociology," "public history," etc.
• Those concerned about the trends toward higher education becoming a private good, not a public good