University of Northern Iowa to launch civic education center with Iowa Board of Regents approval

The University of Northern Iowa has developed a center for civic education under the directive of the Iowa Board of Regents. (Photo by Brooklyn Draisey/Iowa Capital Dispatch)

After the Iowa Board of Regents directed state universities to develop potential initiatives for civic education and research last fall, the University of Northern Iowa saw its proposal for a civic education center approved this week.

UNI’s Center for Civic Education will offer professional development, training, events, research opportunities and educational resources both to campus and the public with the goal of growing civic engagement across all areas of campus, said Jennifer McNabb, UNI history department head and professor.

“The center’s ultimate goal is to help our community develop the civic knowledge skills and dispositions required for understanding and application of the values of free speech, civic leadership, public service and citizenship,” McNabb said.

Scott Peters, head of the university’s political science department and a professor, said during the meeting that UNI has worked for years to make civic education an institutional priority, starting in 2020 when he met with other institutional heads to discuss bolstering civic education in general education curriculum.

The university used a 2022 National Endowment for Humanities grant and internal grant to bring leaders across campus together and create new civic education curriculum, which Peters said has been implemented and they’re now beginning to assess results. This, alongside other programs, created a foundation for the new center.

More than 10% of UNI students are involved in civic or free speech education, McNabb said.

While the majority of research into civic education has been devoted to voting, McNabb said the Center for Civic Education will provide opportunities for research into other areas of civic education, free speech and more. Those hoping to study history, politics and public service will also have access to UNI’s archival collections, including papers donated by Sen. Charles Grassley.

Peters said civic education curriculum efforts have mainly been geared toward education students so far, but in the future the center will work to develop ways to advance civic education curriculum for other areas of study, from nursing and public health to business.

Civic education will also spread to community colleges and K-12 schools in Iowa, McNabb said, with educational resources, support materials and traveling exhibits developed by pre-service teachers and public history students going to in-service teachers working in classrooms across Iowa and other education and civic spaces.

Even elementary students can benefit from civic education, McNabb said, in part by learning how to talk to people they disagree with and working together to achieve common goals.

The center will also host events and invite guest speakers for both campus and the public. Peters said the initiatives that could be bolstered by the center will include the Panthers Vote program and Congress to Campus, where two former members of Congress, one Democrat and one Republican, come to campus for a visit.

UNI will also host an annual conference at the center about civic education and free speech, McNabb said.

“We view the center as being able to coordinate and better publicize and raise the profile of a very strong set of civic engagement activities that we have for students and available to the public as well,” Peters said.

McNabb said they are “eager” to find a full-time director for the center, which a news release stated a national search will be conducted for during the 2025-26 school year.

Regent David Barker thanked the university for developing the center, saying it falls in line with the diversity, equity and inclusion directives put into place by the board last year. It’s even better that the university had been thinking about civic education and different ways of implementing it before the directives were put into place, he said.

“It really is exactly the sort of thing we were thinking about in directive number nine of the DEI committee,” Barker said.

According to a board document, the ninth of 10 DEI directives is to have state universities “explore a proposal, including cost, to establish a widespread initiative that includes opportunities for education and research on free speech and civic education.”

Another of the directives touches on looking into potential recruiting strategies for encouraging “diversity of intellectual and philosophical perspective” in applicants to faculty and staff positions, according to the document. McNabb said during the meeting that the center will put a focus on creating training for faculty, staff and students on having productive conversations across differences.

“We are committed to developing curriculum and classroom strategies to create an educational environment welcoming to students of diverse perspectives,” McNabb said.