Alabama A&M University
Campus Specs
🏫Campus Type: 4 Year, Public, Historically Black College or University (HBCU)
🧑🏾🎓 Enrollment: 5,977
🗺 Location: Normal, Alabama
Campus Resources
💰Received Funding? $35,000 Ask Every Student Implementation Grant in 2020.
👨🏽💼Leader of Effort? Service Learning Coordinator
🙋🏽♀️Student Power? 47 Residential Advisors
⏰ Development Time? Initiative began in 2020
Campus Created Resources
AAMU Campus Strategy
Integrating voter registration into existing processes with campus partners to reach every student.
With the support of the Vice President of Student Affairs, Alabama A&M was able to recruit Residential Advisors (RAs) to help register students. Through an Ask Every Student grant, RAs were able to receive stipends as compensation for their work, which was integrated into their day-to-day responsibilities of engaging with the students in their respective dorms. This approach was also especially effective amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, when access was limited and students were generally encouraged to avoid gathering.
Alabama A&M also successfully integrated voter registration and education through orientation classes and by working with campus clubs and organizations. As they return to campus in the fall of 2021, Alabama A&M will again be working with RAs and incorporating voter registration into orientation classes. Involving voter registration in orientation classes, they noted, was helpful in making voting and civic engagement part of the campus culture.
Through your chosen process, executing individualized voter registration and democratic engagement tactics.
Training was crucial for the effective execution of Alabama’s plan. The RAs had to have extensive training, not only to ensure they were able to successfully register students, but also so they felt comfortable and confident registering others. RAs also realized that, as a university with students from several different states, each with their own laws and regulations, the students they registered would benefit from having insight into different states. And so, they trained 12 “state experts,” specific students who were trained in voter registration processes in other states (e.g., “Georgia Expert”).
Institutionalizing these tactics to be a sustainable part of your campus culture.
Support from campus leadership, all the way from the very top with the University President and his wife, played an important role in Alabama A&M’s efforts of voter registration, education, and mobilization.
