New summer course to spark civic engagement in high schoolers

A grant from the Teagle Foundation will allow Cornell faculty and staff to launch a new civic education program for high school students, opening pathways to higher education.

A pilot of the program will be run this summer with students in the Cornell Upward Bound program. Students from six local high schools will visit campus for two weeks of classes in classic texts of political thought and have ongoing mentorship from Cornell students as part of the Knowledge for Freedom program, organized by Alexander Livingston, associate professor of government in the College of Arts & Sciences, and Liz Millhollen, associate director of pre-college opportunity programs in the David M. Einhorn Center for Community Engagement.

"We were thinking about what role the university could better serve in promoting civic education in this moment of democratic crisis and backsliding, which is both an American crisis and a global one," Livingston said. "We want to help equip a new generation of scholars to think about the meaning of democracy and how to more fully become engaged citizens in public life."

Read the full story on The College of Arts & Sciences website.