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Click here to view the PowerPoint slides that accompanied Dr. Mehaffy’s Keynote Speech, “Developing Informed and Engaged Citizens: The Imperative for Higher Education” |
Dr. George Mehaffy
Vice President, American Association of State Colleges and Universities
Founder, American Democracy Project
George Mehaffy serves as the Vice President for Academic Leadership and Change at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU). His division is responsible for a number of special programs and projects for AASCU presidents and chief academic officers in the areas of leadership and organizational change in higher education, focusing on issues such as technology, teacher education, international education, and civic engagement. He organizes and directs two national conferences annually for AASCU chief academic officers and manages a variety of leadership programs and special projects. Some of his recent projects have included a comprehensive partnership program that paired AASCU institutions with Chinese universities; an articulation and transfer initiative with the American Association of Community Colleges, a multi-state project on evidence in teacher education, a collaborative effort with two other national organizations on graduation rates, and a series of technology conferences involving university teams at the University of Central Florida.
Much of his current work focuses on civic engagement in higher education. In 2003 he launched a civic engagement initiative, the American Democracy Project (ADP), in partnership with The New York Times, involving 214 AASCU institutions representing 1.8 million students. That project has generated a broad range of national and campus-based activities, including 10 regional and 4 national meetings, a Wingspread Conference that created a monograph for senior university leaders, a partnership with the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) to develop an instrument to assess civic engagement, and a trip to eastern Europe to develop university partnerships to promote civic engagement. Recently the project created a series of new initiatives, entitled Civic Engagement in Action. Three current initiatives in that series include the Political Engagement Initiative, an effort to create opportunities for political engagement throughout the curriculum, a partnership with Tom Ehrlich and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching; the 7 Revolutions initiative, a global studies project, a partnership with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS); and Politics and the Yellowstone Ecosystem, a study of political management of scarce resources, a partnership with the Yellowstone Association.
