CERL Participates in Project Citizen Showcase in West Virginia
Posted in News
Morgantown, W. Va. – Representatives from the Civic Education Research Lab (CERL) served as judges at the University High School Project Citizen Showcase, held on November 19-20. Guided by civics teacher Lindsay Stepanek, small groups of University High seniors spent months collaborating to devise solutions for community challenges. CERL Director Dr. Diana Owen and CERL Research Specialist Jamie Joseph, along with Jeffrey Owen, a retired chief operating officer from the American Bankers’ Association, helped evaluate the students’ projects.
Teams of University High students addressed a range of issues in their school and community. For example, one team explored alternatives to a new school policy requiring cell phones to be secured in Yonder pouches. Another group advocated for repaving a dangerous, deteriorating high-traffic road. The group that won first place overall proposed delaying the high school’s start time by 30 minutes, citing research that shows teenagers need more sleep. A fourth group aimed to mitigate student stress by adding a universal study hall period, allowing students to work on assignments or seek help from teachers. Additional projects addressed high school drug use, foster care, and school lunch improvements. Each team researched a chosen issue, identified challenges, collaborated on solutions, and formally presented a public policy proposal. A panel of two judges questioned the teams and offered feedback.
“Project Citizen is a really good effort to engage the [students] in a dimension of life skills that they might not otherwise get in a traditional academic setting,” said Jeffrey Owen, who was impressed by the students’ engagement and enthusiasm. Owen said Project Citizen allowed these students to learn “… a little public speaking, a little bit of thinking outside the box, how to collaborate and wrestle through unknowns… where to go to get information and learn what others have done, and how to influence an outcome.”
The Center for Civic Education’s Project Citizen is a project-based learning (PBL) program that prepares teachers and students to identify and actively engage in real-world community projects. The Project Citizen showcase is the cumulative assessment of the PBL curriculum. CERL serves as the independent evaluator of the Project Citizen program. To enhance the evaluation’s quantitative findings, CERL researchers collect interview data and conduct site visits at participating schools. Research on Project Citizen is funded by the U.S. Department of Education.
Read about Stepanek’s tips for success with Project Citizen on CERL’s Substack. See also Dr. Owen’s Project Citizen Research Program Report (2024).
