Perri Leviss and Student Public Policy Fellows: 

Nethra Prasanna (International Studies and Spanish), Aly Crowley (Political Science and Criminal Justice), Angelina Gomes (Early Childhood Education and Human Development), and Sareena Shetti (Sociology and French). 

 

This is a research project that examines the experiences of recent URI college graduates from the December 2021 and May 2022 classes to explore their levels of civic engagement. The project addresses a series of research questions about the civic mindedness of URI students (and how this may differ by race + ethnicity, gender, class, major etc.), the types of civic-oriented activities students participated in during their time at URI (including academic experiences and co-curricular activities) and the relationship of these activities to students’ sense of community and belonging at URI as well as their post graduation plans. As an engaged research project in partnership with Generation Citizen/RI (https://generationcitizen.org/tag/rhode-island/), members of the URI student community were involved in the design of the research project, the data collection, and the analysis and reporting of both quantitative and qualitative data. The project builds upon a pilot study that was developed in spring 2022 through a student directed course to 1) identify validated measures of civic engagement and citizenship used at other institutions of higher education and 2) test the data collection instruments.