The Civics Corps

Through participation in the Civics Corps community-college students will be able to:

• Apply a variety of “uniquely human” and professional skill sets to community-related interactions and projects.
• Understand community organizations according to the Whole Self Civics Model
• Engage in intergenerational bridge-building using forms of historical memory dialog.
• Develop community-mined, non-partisan engagement, civic diplomacy skills in service to community, in order to demonstrate open-mindedness and respect toward views, positions, or ideologies with which they may disagree or be ambivalent toward.
• Explain to others the Civics Corps’ mission and work.

The work of the Civics Corps is grounded in Whole-Self Civics, which is organized around the well-vetted and known Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs” motivational theory. It recognized that individuals, groups, and communities have needs aligned with the hierarchy’s layers and that civic knowledge, awareness, and local service can positively affect outcomes tied to these needs. The Civics Corps students engage their communities using this organizational schema. Projects are determined locally and in a collaborative manner with the sectors of community being served, e.g. our current primary focus: intergenerational veterans’ dialogue opportunities.

Participating Community Colleges

• Bay College, Escanaba, MI (Host Branch)
• Starting in Fall 2023 we’re expanding our model nationally. The College of Southern Nevada, Las Vegas, NV and Hudson County Community College, Jersey City, NJ will join Bay College’s Branch as Aligned Branches. Students from those branches will be Guest Members, joining in virtual meetings to plan local-to-national intergenerational events.
  
  KEY PROJECTS:
  
• Winter Semester 2021: Students learned and practiced a dialogue model based on a style of intergenerational dialogue/historic memory, pairing with Dr. Bobby Austin of Neighborhood Associates and the Public Kinship Institute.
  
• Summer 2021: Students read Dr. Tonia Israel’s Beyond Your Bubble and recommended it to college’s diversity committee for a fall campus book read. Two discussion sessions were held, with Dr. Israel attending as a guest participant in the discussions.
  
• Fall 2021: Students partnered with Tri-County Safe Harbor to help further develop their historical narrative for organizational mission-related use. Students partnered with Great Lakes Peace Center and Bay’s Aspiring Educators chapter to host ” with a diverse panel of intergenerational educators and key note speaker: Dr. Alan Bain, “Our Civic Truths:  Weaving Our Stories Together” – Intergenerational Civics Dialog.”
  
• Winter 2022: Students partnered with Great Lakes Peace Center and Bay’s Aspiring Educators chapter to host “The Music of Our Lives: An Intergenerational Dialogue”, with Mr. Phil Lynch as musical guest, with his featured song as an anthem in our times: Here is the Love (have a listen).
  
• Fall 2022: Students partnered with the Great Lakes Peace Center, Bay College Library, and Escanaba Public Library to host “Veterans Speak! An Intergenerational Dialogue,” with 1940s period music provided by Mr. Phil Lynch.

• Winter 2023: Students partnered with Waging Dialogue, an organization founded by Dr. Alice Maher and co-run with Mr. Matt Bogaty. During the semester, students practiced job-ready, civic diplomacy skills and produced a podcast episode in which they analyzed and discussed the techniques they learned and the value of it in their lives. The students work will be featured in an article by Dr. Maher in Harvard University’s Social Impact Review and at an international psychiatrists meeting in July of 2023.
• View the entire Winter 2023 Program Here