Activation Plan

Below is an overview of some campus activities:

• First Year Seminar: Feeding the World
  This interdisciplinary, community-engaged course uses a human-centered design approach to examine and address food insecurity, with a focus on feeding difficulties related to autism, oral impairments, and allergies. The course culminates in a community dinner co-hosted with partner organizations and members of the Landis Center’s Food Sovereignty community of practice.
• Interdisciplinary 223: Social Entrepreneurship
  Taught by a local non-profit leader, this course engages students in collaborative partnerships with community organizations to explore strategies for addressing persistent challenges that might hinder an organization’s ability to fulfill its mission. The course emphasizes work with local organizations, with the broader goal of contributing to existing community development initiatives at the city level.
• English 357: Writing and Community Engagement
  This course explores the role of writing, research, teaching, and activism in building cultural communities and advancing social change across diverse contexts. In collaboration with the Landis Center, students support the writing and communication needs of community organizations.
• Gov Lab
  Gov Lab is a student-directed social science lab that offers Lafayette students the opportunity to design and carry out research projects in a collaborative, team-based environment. This academic year, Gov Lab is supporting several initiatives, including data collection, aggregation, analysis, and visualization for the City of Easton’s Economic Vitality Committee, as well as a campus-based study of barriers to political engagement among college students.
• Hanson Center
  Restorative Practices for STEM Students: This student-initiated pilot project is designed to help facilitate conversations about equity and inclusion in STEM at Lafayette. The goal of this pilot program is to bring together students to discuss their perspectives and brainstorm solutions to any challenges they may have experienced. We seek to build an even stronger STEM community—one that is not afraid to have difficult discussions and listens with respect to everyone.

Highlights:

1. Lafayette seeks to be a national leader in research and teaching related to promoting democracy and civic preparedness in higher education. “Responsible Citizenship” is one of five core institutional values, emphasized in the College’s 2024 mission statement.
2. The College’s Strategic Plan includes a project area on “Democracy and Its Technologies,” reflecting its commitment to educating for engaged global citizenship.
3. Recognized as a Carnegie Classified campus in Community Engagement in 2020, this national designation affirms Lafayette’s deep and ongoing commitment to public purpose, civic participation, and community engagement. In 2024, the College appointed its first Executive Director of Community Engagement and launched the Easton Area Community Impact Committee to advance K-12 education, housing and preservation, and economic development.
4. The College was selected to host the 2024 national Vice Presidential Debate and, despite its cancellation, demonstrated its capacity for large-scale events.
5. Lafayette Votes! is a campus-wide effort that achieved nearly 83 percent student voter turnout in 2020 and continues to lead through voter registration innovation, national partnerships, and nonpartisan educational programming.
6. Faculty and staff were invited to participate in national civic engagement efforts—including a White House panel on the future of campus civic engagement and the Higher Education Democracy Inventory Design Team, an initiative led by the American Association of Colleges and Universities and Campus Compact. Lafayette contributed a case study in 2024-2025 on its own campus-wide efforts, authored by Design Team members Chelsea Morrese, executive director of community engagement, and Prof. Caroline Lee, faculty director of the Landis Center.
7. President Nicole Hurd was selected by the Easton branch of the NAACP to deliver the keynote address at their annual Freedom Fund banquet on October 12, 2025.