The Daily Bulletin Archive

The Civic and Community Engagement Office is pleased to present a Vote by Design Training Workshop today, September 29, from 3:00 to 4:30 p.m. This event is presented by Campus Compact as part of the Education for Democracy: Election 2020 Series and is free to members of the Buffalo State College community.

In an age of hyper-partisanship and divisive public discourse, how can we help our students engage in the upcoming elections with a posture of inquiry, empathy, and generative conversation?  

With the low youth turnout in the last presidential election, a lot of effort is being spent getting young voters to vote. But are we doing enough to help students become capable and confident voters, helping them approach their voting decisions as independent and critical thinkers? What if what shows up as “voter apathy” is really lack of clarity? 

Vote by Design is an award-winning voter literacy project incubated at Stanford University’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (d.school) that teaches voters how to view the job of the U.S. president through leadership qualities and qualifications (as opposed to sound bites or parental and peer influence). It blends critical thinking, civics literacy, and conversation across different perspectives to help voters create a more robust and personal understanding of what we’re voting for. It helps students identify potential biases in themselves and creates productive spaces for them to learn from others.

To date, Vote by Design has been offered to more than 1,000 students across the United States, from the deep red state of Montana to the deep South of Georgia and across California.

Hosted by Andrew Seligsohn, president of Campus Compact, and facilitated by Lisa Kay Solomon, designer in residence at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design and bestselling author of Moments of Impact: How to Design Strategic Conversations That Accelerate Change. 

Please register online for this webinar and for as many other presentations in the Education for Democracy: Election 2020 Series as you would like.