The University of Nebraska, the state’s flagship university, has used multiple grants from Bringing Theory to Practice to deepen its commitment to both civic engagement and equity and inclusion.  In 2008, it launched a Center for Civic Engagement, building on UNL’s earlier support for service-learning.  Over the next several years, administrative and faculty leaders came together to design a Certificate of Civic Engagement, a sequence of courses and practica taking a minimum of two years and aimed at students from every major.  Since 2014, hundreds of UNL graduates have attained the credential.

The administrators and faculty who helped to build these civic-engagement programs went on to develop a second BT2P-supported program, designed to deepen racial equity and inclusion on campus.  Working with the Center for Civic Engagement, they launched “Dine, Dialogue, and Pass It On” (DDPIO), a program that supported healthy and challenging discussions around race-related issues and trained students as peer educators on issues of privilege and inclusion.  In addition to these co-curricular initiatives, UNL faculty have integrated its programming and used DDPIO resources in first-year classes.

Learn more:

• Nebraska Center for Civic Engagement, Nebraska Center for Civic Engagement website
• BTtoP Case Study: The University of Nebraska-Lincoln