Below is an overview of some campus activities:

Academic Freedom Institute
Stetson participated by invitation in the inaugural Academic Freedom Institute at the University of Chicago in June 2024. Participating universities were asked to present a preliminary self-report on structures for academic freedom and freedom of expression at their campus, and develop a plan for institutional implementation following the workshop.

Stetson University’s Center for Public Opinion Research
Stetson University’s Center for Public Opinion Research (CPOR), a nonpartisan research organization, conducted public opinion polls during the 2024 election season, capturing how Floridians viewed the presidential race and ballot measures. Another poll with a national sample explored key societal issues.

What sets CPOR apart is the involvement of our students through one of Stetson’s immersive learning experiences. Students engage in every step of the process—from conducting background research and designing surveys to analyzing the data and crafting press releases. They even run an online social media campaign to share the results, giving them hands-on experience in real-world polling and public relations. This initiative not only provides valuable insights for the state but also highlights Stetson’s commitment to relationship-rich learning.

Stetson’s Civic Mission
Central to our institution’s civic mission is a commitment to engaging our entire community in promoting the civic habits and skills necessary for our students to solve the most pressing challenges facing the world. To do that, we’ve developed a growing ecosystem of (a) dialogue-based programs to help students talk about difficult subjects with people who are different than them, and (b) civic action programs to help students know how to build and use power to make social change.

“Many Voices, One Stetson” dialogue-based programs
Our slate of dialogue-based programs, known as “Many Voices, One Stetson”, include a variety of options to engage students across different comfort levels and interest areas so that every Stetson student has an appropriate entry point for developing these skills. These programs engaged 2,151 students (duplicated) in 2023-2024. Our programs include:

• Things We Don’t Talk About At Dinner: lightly facilitated small-group conversations over a meal where students learn how to talk about controversial topics, such as politics, race, and religion
• Great Minds Who Don’t Think Alike: lightly facilitated dialogue between two or three well-informed individuals (typically faculty) who disagree about a controversial topic, effectively role-modeling what healthy discourse can look like for assembled students
• Ask Big Questions: low-stakes discussions about an approachable topic, such as “What is friendship?” or “What is community?”
• Flash Panels: discussions about a timely topic in the news that is affecting our students (such as the war in Gaza), featuring a panel of experts/stakeholders who share their views and answer audience questions
• Deliberative Dialogues: highly facilitated dialogues to inform students about an issue and position them to collaboratively identify potential solutions to that issue

“Changemaker” Civic Action Programs
Our civic action programs, known as “Changemaker” programs, engage students across different experience levels and interest areas so that every Stetson student has an appropriate entry point for developing these skills. These programs engaged 43 students (unduplicated) in our pilot year of 2023-2024 and will dramatically expand this year. Our programs include:

• Changemakers Academy: four-day summer camp for up to 25 Florida high school students who want to learn to organize and take action on issues they care about; participants gain automatic consideration for our Bonner Program upon completing the Academy
• Changemakers Institute: monthly workshop series for current Stetson students to learn about social action through development and implementation of a project on an issue they care about
• Phoenix Generation Conference: annual conference for about 400 high school and college students across Central Florida focused on training students how to take action on issues they care about (funded by the Ginsburg Family Foundation and hosted by Stetson starting in 2025)

Student-led Stetson Votes team
Stetson has been a national leader in nonpartisan student voter registration, voter education, and voter turnout initiatives. To prepare for this election cycle, our student-led Stetson Votes team organized many events, including voter registration drives, candidate forums, straw polls, debate watch parties, voter education workshops, and even a naturalization ceremony and a concert. Further, the team hired six part-time student outreach coordinators to personally contact every Stetson student (who is eligible to vote) to get them registered, enrolled in vote-by-mail, educated about issues on the ballot, and out to vote through early voting or rides to the polls on election day, all in an effort to exceed our 2020 turnout rate of 73.8%. We reviewed campus policies for political activities and protests in order to ensure that students have effective guidelines for participation that enhance rather than detract from their overall Stetson education.

New Associate Director for Dialogue and Civic Action
The work described above has been supported through grant funds, most notably a $300,000 gift from the Ginsburg Family Foundation to fund dialogue and civic action programming and a new Associate Director for Dialogue and Civic Action for three years. It is our goal to position Stetson for a major gift to permanently endow this work by 2027 – with the vision of making Stetson University the most recognizable institution of higher education focused on dialogue and civic action (for high school and college students) in the Southern United States.