In courses developed and taught by members of the Center for Democracy and Civic Life staff, students reflect on their values and hopes, explore challenges to building and sustaining thriving civic cultures, and develop strategies for making meaningful civic contributions.
In Talking Democracy (a 200-level seminar offered through UMBC’s Honors College), students become critically aware of the interplay among communication styles and techniques, democratic values, and the civic health of communities. They reflect on their own values, hopes, experiences, and approaches to communication; build skills that can help them initiate and enact positive social change; and emerge with greater confidence and clarity about how to move forward as a contributor to collective problem-solving and community-building.
Be Your Best Self in Real Life (a 300-level seminar offered through UMBC’s Honors College) investigates how institutions regulate our lives, whether and when this kind of regulation is beneficial, and how people can escape/address/react to it and claim/enact our civic agency when it isn’t. The course focuses on how human beings can collectively and individually thrive within institutions, and how they must sometimes change institutions in order to do so.