Katie Brungard ‘24 and Dr. Ricky Blissett, Associate Director, Center for Democracy and Civic Life Present at Annual AERA Conference

Katie Brungard ‘24, a former evaluation interim with the Center for Democracy and Civic Life and Dr. Ricky Blissett ‘11, associate director for the Center presented at the American Educational Research Association's annual conference (AERA) in April. 

AERA is the largest educational research association in the United States, and Brungard and Dr. Blissett presented work that Brungard began with the Center while she was an evaluation intern in the 2024-25 academic year. The project, titled "Can You Change the World? Development of a Civic Agency Measure for Democratic Education," was also presented by Brungard at Student Affairs’ 2024 Assessment 360. The research brings together perspectives from civic engagement literature, political science, and psychology to develop psychometric methods for assessing civic agency. 

Beyond introducing to the educational research field the concept of civic agency (which has been developed over time by scholars, including Harry Boyte, Peter Dahlgren, and Dr. David Hoffman, Ph.D. ’13, director of the Center) the work seeks to develop practical tools for being able to observe if students have developed said agency. The reception to this work was uniformly positive, with participants expressing excitement about alternative ideas for understanding the impacts of civic education that inspired them to think about the hopeful future of democratic society.