American Democracy Project

ADP is Central to My Mission

A Twenty-Year Relationship

Since 2003 I have been involved in the American Democracy Project, the civic engagement initiative of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. ADP was founded in the early 2000s when provosts at twelve AASCU universities gathered at the Wingspread Conference to respond to a mounting body of evidence — most prominently Robert Putnam's work on declining social capital — that American civic life was eroding and that public higher education had both the responsibility and the capacity to do something about it. The initiative that emerged from that meeting became a network of more than 300 institutions committed to making civic learning a defining feature of the undergraduate experience at regional comprehensive universities.

I was a first-generation participant in that network, beginning as a campus coordinator at Fort Hays State University in 2004 at a moment when the infrastructure of campus civic engagement barely existed at most institutions. Over the two decades since, I have grown with ADP through every level of engagement the network offers — campus coordinator, caucus chair, civic fellow, national steering committee member — accumulating a depth of experience in civic education theory, program design, assessment, and institutional strategy that few faculty members at any institution can match.

That trajectory is worth understanding not as a résumé item but as a professional formation. ADP has been the intellectual and practical community within which I have developed my thinking about what civic education should look like, how to assess it honestly, how to build institutional infrastructure that outlasts any individual's involvement, and how to connect campus-level work to national networks of practice and research. It has shaped how I lead departments, how I design programs, and how I think about the purpose of regional public higher education.

Campus Leadership Across Three Institutions

At Fort Hays State University, I served as ADP Campus Coordinator from 2004 to 2008, chairing the ADP Vision Team, supervising all campus activities, and serving as institutional liaison with AASCU leadership. In that role I founded the Times Talk program, a weekly faculty- and student-led discussion series conducted in partnership with the New York Times that ran for fourteen years — long past my own departure from the institution — a measure of the durability of infrastructure built to last rather than to impress. I presented at the ADP Annual Meeting five times during my FHSU tenure, contributing to the national conversation on civic engagement practice at a time when the field was still developing its methodological foundations.

At the University of West Georgia, I served as ADP Campus Director from 2017 to 2021, chairing the Georgia statewide caucus of ADP institutions from 2018 through 2021 — coordinating civic engagement programming and strategy across multiple campuses simultaneously. I led campus voter engagement efforts during the 2020-2021 election cycle, one of the most consequential in Georgia history, managing voter registration, education, and mobilization activities that required real-time coordination with county election officials and rapid adaptation to a public health environment that was changing week by week.

At Radford University, I have led Highlanders Vote and the Campus Voter Team since 2021, building voting engagement infrastructure where none previously existed and earning Voter Friendly Campus designation across three consecutive election cycles. I also serve on the Radford Alliance for Civic Engagement and advise the Citizen Leader program, situating voter engagement within a broader institutional framework of civic learning rather than treating it as a standalone activity.

National Leadership

In 2019 I was selected as an ADP Civic Fellow — a competitive designation reserved for faculty and administrators who have demonstrated sustained leadership in campus civic engagement and are prepared to contribute to the national network in a more formal capacity. I served two consecutive terms as a Civic Fellow, from 2019 through 2024. The second term focused on an in-depth study of ADP institutionalization at participating campuses — examining how civic engagement programs survive leadership transitions, secure durable funding, and embed themselves in institutional governance structures rather than remaining dependent on individual champions. That research informs directly how I build programs at Radford and how I advise other institutions on civic engagement strategy.

In 2024 I joined the ADP National Steering Committee, the governing body that sets programmatic direction for the entire network of 300-plus institutions. That appointment reflects a level of trust and national standing in the civic engagement field that goes well beyond local or regional recognition. Steering Committee membership means active involvement in decisions about what ADP priorities, resources, and programmatic investments look like across hundreds of campuses and hundreds of thousands of students.

I have also served on the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge Action Plan Review Corps since 2024, evaluating civic engagement action plans submitted by institutions across the country — giving me a comparative perspective on what effective campus civic engagement looks like at scale and across institutional types.

From Coordinator to Co-Chair

In 2025, I was appointed Co-Chair of the Civic Engagement Section of the American Political Science Association, with responsibility for the section's programming at the 2026 APSA Annual Meeting. That appointment extends my civic engagement leadership from the practitioner network of ADP into the scholarly community of the discipline — a connection that matters because the best civic education is grounded in research, assessed rigorously, and contributed back to the field through publication and conference presentation.

That full arc — from campus coordinator to national steering committee member to section co-chair of the discipline's flagship professional association — is the arc of someone for whom civic engagement is not a programmatic add-on but a career-defining scholarly and administrative commitment. It is a commitment I would bring to any institution I lead, and a network I would activate on behalf of any college, university, or community it is my privilege to serve.

Subpages

For more detail on specific ADP initiatives, see:

• Civic Fellowship 2022–2024

• Civic Incomes Project

National Leadership

• ADP National Steering Committee Member, 2024-2025

• ADP National Civic Fellow, 2022-2024

  • Renewed for a second term to conduct an in-depth study of ADP institutionalization at participating campuses

• ADP National Civic Fellow, 2019-2021.

  • Liaised with national steering committee on behalf of Georgia Caucus

• Chair of Georgia Caucus of ADP Institutions, 2018-2021

  • Produced an ADP Coordinator's Guide for new and reviving ADP institutionsCampus Leadership

Radford University

• • Member, Radford Coalition for Civic Engagement.  Advises the Citizen Leader program and ADP campus coordinator.

  • Voter Registration, Education, and Mobilization campus leader, 2022-present

    • ALL IN Challenge 

      • Highly Engaged Action Plan 2024

      • Most Engaged Campus for 2022

    • Campus Vote Project 

      • Bronze Award, 2022

      • Silver Award, 2020

University of West Georgia

• • ADP Campus Director, (2017-2021)

  • Voter Registration, Education, and Mobilization campus leader, 2020-2021

  • Chair, Georgia (statewide) caucus of ADP institutions, 2018-2021

Fort Hays State University

• • Creator and Supervisor, Times Talk.  (2003-2017) As part of our ADP commitment while at FHSU, I founded the Times Talk program in conjunction with our partner the New York Times.  Weekly talks on topics in the NYT were conducted by faculty, students, and community members.  

  • ADP Campus Coordinator, (2004-2008).  Chaired the ADP Vision Team, supervised all campus activities, and served as liaison with the AASCU leadership.  

  • Five-time presenter at ADP annual meeting