Activation Plan

Below is an overview of some campus activities:  

At the University of Montana, our Vision is to be a Flagship for the Future, fostering inclusive prosperity and democracy while creating new knowledge and ways of learning. For UM, “prosperity” is characterized not just by an individual’s ability to engage in meaningful work. Prosperity – or building a ‘good life’ – is also marked by healthy relationships, lifelong curiosity and learning, and a deep sense of civic responsibility to one’s community. This responsibility includes the virtues and habits of character required to engage productively as a member (and for many, a leader) of their community. 

Fostering democracy, civic preparedness, and free inquiry animate UM’s efforts across the curriculum and co-curricular experiences, and it is why, for the last three years (2022, 2023, 2024), UM has been ranked #1 by Washington Monthly for public service. 

We have memorialized our commitment to fostering democracy and community engagement in our annually updated UM Playbook. One of the University of Montana’s five Priorities for Action – Partner with Place – and two of our enduring eight institutional objectives express a public promise to engage our community and be responsive to local and statewide needs. And for the past two years, one of our priority institutional projects has been to “Develop a cross-campus effort to model civil dialogue and practice civic and democratic engagement.” 

These institutional commitments are translated into a broad swath of campus programs and activities intend to buoy civic preparedness, in our students, faculty, and staff: 

• Playbook Project: Effort focuses building an inventory of efforts, bringing together potential collaborators, hosting dialogues, planning an annual Democracy Summit, and developing a way to articulate UM’s distinction in this area

• Develop a cross-campus effort to model civil dialogue and practice civic and democratic engagement. 

• Teagle Grant: Grant funds a pilot first-year course “The Challenges of Citizenship.” The long-range goal is to build a set of similar courses into the General Education curriculum. Course focuses on “transformative texts” and civil dialogue. 

• Mellon Grant:  
  • Grant funds democracy-focused curriculum: 

• • • Establishment of a Democracy Studies Program with interdisciplinary major and minor in Democracy Studies and a Certificate in Civic Knowledge. 
    • Program will also house a new First-Year Civics Initiative (FYCI), which will embed civics education in the University’s General Education curriculum with two new gateway humanities courses that offer incoming students across the university the opportunity to learn the fundamentals of good citizenship and study the history of American democracy. 

• • Grant also funds democracy-focused research: 
    • Pluralistic public culture, tolerance for dissent and protest, commitment to liberal arts education, and pursuit of the common good. 

• Democracy Studies Program: Democracy Studies minor is a collection of courses offered through the History Department, Political Science Department, and Mansfield Center. Work is underway to expand the minor to a certificate and an interdisciplinary major.  

• Mansfield Center: External facing center focuses on fostering democracy and leaders of integrity, and offers high-profile lectures, dialogues, exchanges, high-school student engagement, and democracy forums. 

• Educating Character Initiative Capacity-Building Grant Proposal: Proposal aims to support students in developing dispositions (“virtues”) that foster individual and communal flourishing and in avoiding bad dispositions (“vices”) that inhibit flourishing. Focuses in particular on nurturing students’ sense of purpose and virtues of compassion, courage, gratitude, honesty, hope, humility, integrity, justice, kindness, resilience, temperance, and wisdom, among others. 

• Annual Democracy Summit: Annual Summit brings the campus community and the public together for annual conversations and convenings focused on democracy, civil dialogue, civic participation, and civic leadership. 

• Civic and Voter Engagement Committee: Campus committee of students, faculty, and staff promotes civic and voter engagement. 

• Co-Lab for Civic Imagination: Co-Lab brings faculty and staff together with the public to discuss and explore topics that matter to our collective good as Montanans, e.g., mental health.

• More Perfect Union Collaboration: Collaboration between UM’s Co-Lab and MPU aims to unite the country and strengthen communities through social connection, service and civic engagement. 

• President’s Lecture Series: President’s annual series of invited speakers is designed to engage the community in conversations that matter and to foster civil dialogue. Recent speakers include Daniel Allen, Kenneth Stern, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Robert Putnam, etc. 

• Honors College: Davidson Honors College curriculum includes a first-year course on leadership and service. 

• Listening Workshops: Co-Lab and College of Arts and Media offer a course and workshops on listening as vital to advancing civil dialogue. 

• Global Leadership Initiative: GLI curriculum includes required second/third year leadership course; defined leadership outcomes; occasional first-year GLI seminar on democracy. 

• Civic Engagement Project in Environmental Philosophy: MA-level project focuses on applied philosophy and civic engagement. 

• DiverseU: Annual day of dialogue promotes conversations across difference among campus and community. 

• Orientation/Big Sky Experience: Free speech module integrated into orientation. Big Sky Experience also embeds new students into community organizations to learn about public service and social responsibility. 

Planned Future Initiatives: 

We are in the planning and fundraising phases to create a Center for Civic Leadership and Character. 

This center will create a visible hub that establishes UM as Montana’s home for students and faculty to study, understand, and promote civic leadership and virtue, character education, and democracy studies. This hub will foster inquiry into key content areas and development of core competencies in our students: 

• Civic knowledge 
• Civic virtue 
• Civic dialogue 
• Civic leadership 
• Civic imagination 
• Character education 
• Democracy studies 

Activities will include:  

1. Integration of character education and civic virtue into disciplines across campus
2. Teach capacity for democracy and civics academic programming
3. Faculty research
4. Co-curricular planning
5. Leadership education