Since the '90s, the main avenue for citizenship education at Maxwell has been the MAX Courses, which are team-taught by scholars and practitioners in many fields. To the committee developing the signature major, the MAX Courses were an ideal foundation for the interdisciplinary side of the program.

"We collectively saw the value in these citizenship courses that already existed and decided to incorporate them in the major," says Kristi Andersen, who as Chapple Family Professor of Citizenship and Democracy oversees the MAX Courses. Students in the citizenship and civic engagement major will take at least one of the existing MAX Courses — Critical Issues in the United States, and Global Communities — and then proceed to three new MAX Courses that engage more deeply with issues of citizenship, ethics, and justice, as well as research methods.

In keeping with the structure of the whole program, the MAX Courses apply the tools of the social science disciplines to public issues that are inherently interdisciplinary. The faculty who teach these courses, says Andersen, are "still individually political scientists or economists or anthropologists, but the intended perspective of the students is as educated citizens, which is what George Maxwell wanted to produce. So we're using social science habits of looking carefully at facts and drawing conclusions in a systematic way to think about important issues, globally or domestically or both."

Taking Action

The committee developing the new major felt that many Maxwell faculty members and students share a desire to go beyond just thinking about important social issues. They want to apply their knowledge and take action in a way that few academic programs allow. One of the reasons students come to SU, says Hagenloh, is that they see the University as a "socially and politically engaged school where they can find pathways to make a difference." To the faculty committee, an undergraduate major in citizenship could clear a powerful new path to civic action for these kinds of students.

In the citizenship and civic engagement major, that path takes the form of an Action Plan, a capstone project in the student's senior year. The Action Plan is where the new program differs most strikingly from other undergraduate majors. In contrast to a traditional academic research paper, the Action Plan seeks to "get something of importance done, not just explain something worth thinking about," as the committee's final proposal puts it.

"The Maxwell major is about exploring what it means to be a citizen and then taking action as a citizen," says Bill Coplin, director of the undergraduate Public Affairs program and one of the core faculty for the new citizenship major. The Action Plan, he says, "could range from writing a grant for an agency to proposing policy to a senator to starting your own nonprofit organization."

Peter Wilcoxen, a professor of economics and public administration and international affairs who will be one of the advisors for Action Plans, offers an example from his field of climate change. "In economics, somebody might write an honors thesis analyzing a tradeable permit program at the national or international level," he says. By contrast, in an Action Plan, students "will not be coming up with abstract analyses of potential policies. They're going to write a plan that an individual or a group of people could actually implement."

Though the Action Plan aims for real-world impact, the committee wanted to make sure that it would be based on thorough research and rigorous analysis — not simply well-intentioned activism. In this aspect of the program, too, the student's chosen social science major is the key. "The idea is to ground the intervention, whatever the student's project is, in the social sciences," says economist Mary Lovely, director of the undergraduate International Relations program. "So I think that's very distinctive, it's very Maxwellian, and it brings to fruition the promise that this place has for undergraduate education."

Engaging Students

Roll-out of the Citizenship and Civic Engagement program officially begins this spring. Students will apply to enter the program either as sophomores (starting in the fall of 2013) or as freshmen (starting in 2014). The rationale behind the sophomore-year entry point is to make the program accessible to those who discover an interest in the topic after arriving at SU. Plans call for 15 freshmen and 15 sophomores to enroll each year, so by the time the program is in full swing 120 undergraduates will be majoring in citizenship and civic engagement — making this one of Maxwell's larger majors, and a significant presence within the School.

Only when the first classes are enrolled will the precise nature of the program be known. The major is designed to allow students to define for themselves the nature of their civic engagement. The Action Plans, in particular, will derive from students' interests.

"We don't want to press our interests in citizenship upon the students," says Amy Lutz, a sociologist who, along with Paul Hagenloh, will be teaching the new MAX Course on research methods and civic engagement. "We want them to develop it themselves. We're there as mentors. So it shouldn't be that we give them the Action Plan and they fill it in. It should be initiated by the student's desire to engage with a particular social problem."

Lutz and her colleagues foresee no difficulties in finding students who are self-directed in this way. "Maybe because I've been teaching MAX 123 [Critical Issues for the United States], I'm amazed at some of the students in their first and second year who have done a lot of volunteer work in particular," says Lutz. "They are starting nonprofit organizations and doing things that I never considered when I was a college student."

Hagenloh, who has been teaching the Global Communities MAX Course, is equally struck by the students' diversity and breadth of experience. "They bring a tremendous amount to the table, in terms of what they already know about the world," he says. Many of them, he adds, are already deeply engaged in civic activism in the varied countries from which they hail.

As he anticipates some of these MAX students becoming citizenship and civic engagement majors, he sees the great potential in how they will help shape the program. "This will be a joint project of the faculty and the students as we move forward, which is exciting because our students have a lot to offer intellectually to the institution."

By Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers

This article appeared in the fall 2012 print edition of Maxwell Perspective; © 2012 Maxwell School of Syracuse University. To request a copy, email maxwellperspective@syr.edu.