In anticipation of increased student interest and engagement during the 2020-2021 academic year, the Columbia Political Union has been exploring ways to maximize our impact in the Columbia community and beyond. Our mission is to enhance the quality and prevalence of political dialogue within our community, and we seek to leverage our members’ talents in the most efficient ways possible to fulfill this mission.

As such, we have identified an important opportunity for growth. The Columbia Political Union’s mission is to enhance political dialogue and civic engagement. While our role on campus is well known and recognized, we do not currently perform any degree of outreach to the broader community surrounding Columbia.

We hope to share the talent and human capital of the university with our surrounding neighborhoods through our own program: a volunteer fellowship which would assign Columbia/Barnard undergraduates to lead workshops on civic engagement with students from underserved high schools in the community. Civics remains one of the most significant gaps in the American secondary school curriculum. Despite being an integral area of knowledge for success in adult life, civics remains a sideline topic on social studies or history syllabi.

Your role as a Civic Fellow will be integral to bringing this program to life. Accepted Fellows will receive a program calendar, expected commitments, and all other required materials. Civic Fellows will have the following responsibilities:
1. Attend a pre-program training and information session to prepare for the program.
2. Lead and facilitate a portion of the program according to a predetermined schedule.
3. Administer a post-program survey to participating students.
4. Complete a post-program survey and attend a review meeting with all fellows and the rest of CPU
to evaluate the success of the program.

The program will run on Wednesdays from 6-7:30 PM EST from March 3 to April 14. Training will be at a TBD time at the end of February.

A PDF of the full program proposal is available at https://www.cupolitics.com/civic-fellows.

Applications are due February 14, 2021.