Skip to main content.
OSUN
  • Education sub-menuEducation

    With a strong emphasis on student-centered learning, critical literacy, and liberal arts and sciences education, OSUN creates diverse global classrooms of students who learn from each other and collectively develop a culture of dialogue and debate.

    • Teaching
      • Birkbeck Summer School
      • Center for Liberal Arts and Sciences Pedagogy (CLASP)
      • Developing Teaching Professionals
      • Global History Lab
      • Global Teaching Fellowship Program
      • GLOBALED
      • Hannah Arendt Humanities Network
      • Network Collaborative Courses
      • OSUN Courses
    • Threatened Scholars
      Initiative

    • Mobility

    • Certificate Programs
    • Curricula
      • CORUSUS
      • Economic Democracy Initiative
      • Economic Policy Addressing Inequality and Poverty
      • Experimental Humanities Collaborative Network
      • Human Rights Program
      • Liberal Arts and Sciences Collaborative
      • Policy Labs
      • Professional Development Program for University Administrators
      • Public Health and Human Rights
      • Strengthening the Core
      • Transnational Politics
      • Transnational Feminism, Solidarity, and Social Justice
  • Research sub-menuResearch

    OSUN promotes collaboration across its partner institutions, including the codesign of research projects, to explore issues of global and local relevance through socially engaged research, interdisciplinary collaboration, or comparative research.

    • Research Projects
      • The Democracy Institute
      • Economic Democracy Initiative
      • Engaged Scholarship
      • GEOHUB
      • Global Institute of Advanced Study
      • Global Observatory on Academic Freedom
      • Interruptrr
      • Open Society Research Platform
      • Research Creation Initiative
      • Senior Projects
    • Fellowships
      • Chatham House Academy Fellowships
      • Global Scholars Academy
      • Modular Doctoral Program
  • Access sub-menuAccess

    OSUN expands access to higher education by creating new pathways for underserved communities. Academic integration and connected learning bring educational opportunities to students beyond OSUN’s brick-and-mortar campuses.

    • Teacher Education
      • Enhanced Network Teacher Education Capacity
      • Hubs for Connected Learning Initiatives
    • Education Pathways
      • Collaborative for Liberal Education for Adolescents
      • Consortium for the Liberal Arts in Prison
      • English Learner Success in Content Classrooms
      • Hubs for Connected Learning Initiatives
      • Microcollege for Just Community Leadership
      • OLIve
      • Roma Equity in Higher Education
      • The Socrates Project
  • Civic sub-menuCivic Engagement

    With a belief in the public purpose of higher education, civic engagement across OSUN promotes best practices and bold new initiatives to help students, faculty, and institutions realize their full potential as community actors and educators.

    • Student Engagement
      • Global Commons
      • Global Debate Network
      • Global Engagement Fellows
      • Get Engaged Conference
      • Online Arts Workshop
      • Student-Led Initiatives
      • Student Life Initiatives Project (SLIP)
    • Engaged Learning
      • Certificate in Civic Engagement
      • Community Engaged Liberal Arts and Sciences
      • Engaged Scholarship
      • Engaged Senior Projects
      • OSUN Science Shop
      • Solve Climate by 2030
  • News sub-menuNews + Opportunities

    OSUN offers myriad opportunities and events to undergraduate and graduate students, researchers and scholars, and faculty. News and features provide updates on project impacts and the people involved.

    • Newsroom
      • Current News         
      • News Archive
    • Events
      • Current Events
      • Events Archive
    • Opportunities
      • Current Opportunities
      • Student Opportunities
      • Faculty Opportunities
      • Opportunities Archive
  • Resources sub-menuResources

    OSUN faculty and institutions have worked collectively to assemble this dynamic collection of student-centered teaching methodologies and instructional strategies. Whether working online, in person, or in a blended context, establishing a clear and consistent communication plan with students is central to all of these practices.

    • OSUN Resources
      • Academic Technology Guides
      • Blended Learning Toolkit
  • About sub-menuAbout

    OSUN aims to educate students for tomorrow’s global challenges, fostering critical thinking and open intellectual inquiry to strengthen the foundations of open society amid the current authoritarian resurgence.

    • About OSUN
      • Our Vision
      • Who We Are
      • What We Do
      • Member Institutions
      • Themes
      • Annual Report
  • Search
News & Events Menu
  • Newsroom
    • Current News
    • News Archive
  • Events
    • Current Events
    • Events Archive
  • Opportunities
    • Current Opportunities
    • Opportunities Archive

OSUN News

View all news

Get Engaged 2021: What Does It Mean To Be Civically Engaged?

By Maya Aga (Bard College ’21)
 
What does it mean to be civically engaged? At the beginning of the eighth annual Get Engaged: Student Action and Youth Leadership Conference last weekend, Jonathan Becker, Vice Chancellor of the Open Society University Network (OSUN) and Director of the Center for Civic Engagement (CCE) at Bard College, posed this simple yet powerful question to over 150 undergraduate students from sixteen institutions.
 
Over two days, student leaders explored the question by attending a jam-packed weekend of workshops, presentations, and activities sponsored by OSUN and CCE and offering a range of ideas and experiences to help develop their community leadership skills.  The large group of students in attendance drew on a wide variety of backgrounds, experiences and interests, representing OSUN’s broad global network of institutions that stretch from Berlin to Taiwan.
 
This year’s theme, “Learning Resiliency and Unity Beyond Borders,” was particularly apt, as the conference took place remotely for the second year, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Despite interactions being limited to Zoom sessions, student leaders and innovators still managed to strengthen connections among their colleagues, all who work with community partners to develop solutions to local and international challenges. 
 
Slide depicting activities from AUCA student Abdul Walid Azizi's project, Camp Afghanistan
Students in a leadership-building activity at Camp Afghanistan, a project designed by AUCA student Abdul Walid Azizi.
In the past, Get Engaged has been open to student leaders already immersed in their projects, but this year marked the first time the conference accepted attendees who were still developing ideas for their community- or socially-based engagements and who sought to enhance their leadership skills. 

Abdul Walid Azizi from American University of Central Asia in Kyrgyzstan spoke about his project, Camp Afghanistan, which enables students in Ghazni to engage in English language studies and leadership-building courses.
 
Nguyen Thanh Phuong from Fulbright University Vietnam presented on Mathlish, which promotes youth engagement in Bac Lieu Province, Vietnam, to support the education and mental wellness of over 100 formerly homeless children now living in orphanages. Phuong discussed the struggles of organizing during COVID-19 and taught students how to advocate for their project’s future.

Ahmad Denno from Bard College Berlin presented her work with "Go Vote: Mobilizing Refugees and New Germans for the German Elections 2021,” which provides an information and activation platform to support broader participation in federal elections.
 
Dariel Vasquez, co-founder of Brothers@, discussing building sustainable projects. 
Dariel Vasquez, co-founder of [email protected], leading a workshop on building sustainable projects.

Dariel Vasquez, a Bard College Annandale graduate and conference alum, led a workshop on making projects more sustainable.  The co-founder and executive director of [email protected], an organization that seeks to mentor young men of color, Vasquez shared details of developing a successful project, including the importance of keeping records and building long-lasting relationships. He challenged his students by asking “If you were to leave your project tomorrow, would your project succeed without you?”
 
At the conference’s conclusion, Becker displayed a “word cloud” made up of the diverse set of participant responses to his initial question, illustrating the variegated definitions of civic engagement that arise in a broad community network. While each student had a different interpretation of what it meant to be civically engaged, the graphic conveyed the fact that all benefited from coming together to learn from one another’s experiences.

Post Date: 04-13-2021
Open Society University Network
For more information contact: 
[email protected]