“Higher Education Was Built For Moments Like This” - ENACT Faculty Fellows published in EDU Ledger
March 25, 2026
An article by ENACT Faculty Fellows Rob Glover (University of Maine) and Kathleen Cole (Metropolitan State University, Minnesota) was recently published by EDU Ledger, a publication for higher education faculty, staff and administrators. In it they share insights from ENACTing Change: A Handbook for Teaching Advocacy and Civic Engagement (Brandeis University Press) and from teaching ENACT.
From the article:
“Surveys of [ENACT] alumni show lasting patterns of engagement. They vote, volunteer, contact elected officials, and stay involved at far higher rates than peers who didn’t participate in such classrooms. But the real outcome is harder to measure. It’s the restoration of civic confidence—the feeling that democracy, while messy, belongs to them.
For educators, that’s the work ahead. We can’t control the national climate. But we can decide what civic habits our students see modeled every day and equip them with the tools to ward off political cynicism.
That means creating spaces where inquiry is protected, disagreement is accepted as part of a functioning democracy, and engagement is encouraged rather than feared. It means re-imagining “public engagement” not as a branding exercise or a compliance category, but as the beating heart of what higher education contributes to democracy. And it means doing this work with students, not merely for them—showing that participation and reflection are not opposites but partners.
Read the full article. [theeduledger.com]
Read more about ENACTing Change: A Handbook for Teaching Advocacy and Civic Engagement