Democracy is shaped by the people who show up, ask questions and challenge the status quo. At Colorado State University’s fall Democracy Summit, students, scholars, judges, journalists and civic leaders came together to tackle the big questions facing democracy, from artificial intelligence and the courts to public deliberation and independent journalism. Over two days, they explored not just what democracy needs, but what each of us can do to strengthen it.
Backlogged grant reports. A 20,000-row data project. A dashboard that changed a meeting. This summer, 15 CSU interns did real work for Colorado communities.
A team of undergraduate students from Colorado State University recently took their farmworker health policy ideas to the national stage, representing CSU at the National Collegiate Policy Challenge hosted by the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago.
Tara Opsal, a professor and current chair of the Department of Sociology in the College of Liberal Arts, has been named the William E. Morgan Endowed Chair in the College. A nationally respected public sociologist, Opsal advances community-engaged reform in the criminal legal system, examining how it produces harm and inequality and developing pathways for change. She is also the director of the Criminal Justice and Victimization Institute at Colorado State University. As Morgan Chair, Opsal will use dedicated time and resources to expand CJVI as a hub for community-engaged, interdisciplinary justice research across Colorado.
Six CSU research projects designed to contribute to rural communities have received seed funding with the aim of enhancing interdisciplinary research and community engagement in Colorado.
Funding comes from the colleges of Agricultural Sciences, Liberal Arts and Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, along with the Office of the Vice President for Research.
Matt Hitt, associate professor of political science in the College of Liberal Arts and associate director of research at Colorado State University’s Institute for Research in the Social Sciences, has published a new exploration of the way that partisan political identity has come to affect our trust in the legitimacy of the Supreme Court of the United States.
To activate student leadership in democratic initiatives coming from the College of Liberal Arts (CLA) and across the broader campus community, the Straayer Center for Public Service Leadership launched a Democracy Fellows and Ambassadors program that brought 13 students an opportunity to get hands-on learning about event planning, promotion, recruitment, and facilitation all around the essential topic of democracy and civic engagement.
The university will hold its second Democracy Summit in March 2025, building on last spring’s successful event. Faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate students are invited to present their research, scholarship, and artistic work on the theme of Democratic Innovation.
CSU’s Democracy Summit hosted by the College of Liberal Arts was held April 8-12, 2024. It featured a variety of presentations, films, panels and workshops to help campus and community explore and improve the democratic health of our community and country.
