In August 2020, Piedmont Virginia Community College (PVCC), a small community college in Charlottesville, Virginia, launched a five-year Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP)Footnote ¹ titled “Civic Sense: Engaging Students in the Civic Life of Their Communities” (Piedmont Virginia Community College 2019). Our goal is to ensure that “because of their experiences at PVCC, graduates will be more likely to be civically engaged.” Choosing the QEP topic was a college-wide endeavor. We began by surveying students, faculty, and staff for topic suggestions. Shared-governance organizations were consulted and then the president’s staff reduced the list to 10 topics. Finally, when the college community voted, civic engagement emerged as the top vote-getter. This article introduces the QEP and focuses its highlight: civic engagement courses.

The QEP’s vision is that “PVCC’s civic engagement efforts [will] build student leaders who have a strong commitment to democracy and diversity, and who engage in the civic life of their communities through collaborative, creative, and critical problem-solving” (Piedmont Virginia Community College 2019).

Several new initiatives were introduced in the QEP, including a voter module in student-development courses, additional voter-registration and education efforts, a civic engagement conference, and increased emphasis on deliberative dialogue. The highlight of “Civic Sense” is the requirement that students must pass a civic engagement course to graduate.

Civic engagement courses are offered in every degree program, providing students a sustained engagement with a public problem or issue. Engaging with issues of public consequence in the context of their major or discipline provides both broader and more in-depth experiences for students. Additionally, teaching civic engagement across all disciplines offers powerful opportunities for students to become immersed in critical thinking while applying course curricula to a public issue (Stephenson Reference Stephenson2010). At PVCC, we chose to not create separate civic engagement courses but instead integrated it into existing class structures. Additional credits are not required for graduation.

Each civic engagement course must include a project that constitutes at least 25% of the course grade. Students research the causes of a public problem related to their discipline and consider how it affects their community. They use critical inquiry, analysis, multiple perspectives, and reasoning to understand the problem and identify solutions. By focusing on their major, students understand that they have a personal stake in the issue. Exposing students to current and important issues within their discipline helps them to perceive themselves as part of a broader community. By considering diverse ideas, they identify strengths and weaknesses in potential solutions. By considering a plan to solve the problem, they see themselves as part of the solution. As they reflect on the assignment, students discuss their thoughts about and analysis of their research and experience. A reflection should be a critical analysis of the problem that enables students to envision possible alternative solutions.

At PVCC, civic engagement is not service learning. The college once had a service-learning program, but it was not successful. Our students are mostly first generation and have jobs (often full-time) and families. Many do not have time for service-learning projects in addition to class time and homework. Faculty members are not prohibited from using this pedagogy, but it is not encouraged.

During the implementation process, some faculty members expressed concerns about integrating civic engagement into their courses. Issues ranged from “I don’t talk politics in my class” to “I have a very structured, content-heavy course and can’t add a thing” to “I don’t know how to teach civic engagement”—all valid issues.

In response, the college established a robust training program that faculty members are required to complete before teaching their first civic engagement class. The training begins with a discussion of the difference between politics and partisanship. Students engage in public issues that often are political but not partisan. Civic engagement classes provide an opportunity to debate different ideas, but the goal is not to indoctrinate students in one ideology. The faculty training clarifies program goals and civic engagement pedagogy and defines PVCC’s civic engagement course requirements, after which faculty members workshop ideas for their courses. Many realized that they already were doing civic engagement and did not need to include additional material; rewriting assignments was sufficient.

PVCC’s director of library services and the QEP director are available to faculty who need help, and the Betty Sue Jessup library creates LibGuides and research guides to help students with their projects. Faculty members also have the opportunity to embed a librarian in their course so that students have easy access to library assistance. In fact, PVCC’s library is a major reason for the success of our civic engagement courses.

Faculty members report that adding the civic engagement component to their courses enriches their teaching. For example, general biology is a highly standardized course across the Virginia Community College System and, more broadly, has similar content for the first semester of the college-level biology undergraduate curricula. Without compromising the required content, our faculty member structured the existing course around the public problem of antibiotic resistance and has since become one of our primary advocates.

Information technology students analyze conspiracy theories; political science students research and write a nonpartisan voter guide; introduction to psychology students research and write a paper on the psychology of race; and physics students use the principles of physics to evaluate automobile-safety issues.

At PVCC, math department faculty members are the main supporters of civic engagement courses. In fact, the department offers more civic engagement sections of math than any other discipline. Assignments include mathematical analysis of the electoral college and redistricting and hypothesis testing to analyze statistics on racial profiling, family and city budgets, and automobile financing.

The college has at least one civic engagement course in each major, and multiple courses are offered in some majors. PVCC faculty continue to express interest in teaching civic engagement, and we expect the number of courses offered to increase quickly. Student comments show a high level of satisfaction with the courses (Piedmont Virginia Community College 2020). The following representative comments indicate that after taking a civic engagement course, students see a more significant role for themselves in the world:

• • I wish everyone could take this class and understand it should not be a “me or you” world but a “we” world.

• • Biology means something to me now, in a way I can apply to my life and understand the world around me better.

• • The projects got us to use statistics to ask questions about our society and community. In doing so, issues of social justice inherently emerged. Participating in the projects left us better informed and, yes, potentially likely to take that learning into the community.

• • This project really got me considering how, as a responsible citizen, it is my duty to work toward finding solutions to issues and participating in a community organization.

• • It helped me to look at a large-scale, nationwide issue on a more local scale. This really put into perspective things I can do now to help in getting this issue solved locally. Fixing an issue locally is a beneficial way to help get the issue solved across the nation as well as bringing more awareness to the topic.

The first year of civic engagement courses at PVCC was more successful than we had hoped. Anecdotal evidence indicates that faculty and students are enthusiastic about the program. Civic engagement courses build civic skills, knowledge, and experience; encourage deep and substantial participation in a discipline-specific issue; and encourage critical thinking. Therefore, civic engagement courses will help PVCC to meet the QEP goal of “[building] student leaders who have a strong commitment to democracy and diversity, and who engage in the civic life of their communities through collaborative, creative, and critical problem-solving” (Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges 2020). The civic engagement course experience develops students’ confidence in their ability to make a difference in their community and to become more active citizens.