Cedar Crest College
Campus Specs
🏫Campus Type: 4 year, Private, All-Women (coed graduate programs)
🧑🏾🎓 Enrollment: 1,433
🗺 Location: Allentown, Pennsylvania
Campus Resources
💰Received Funding? In 2020: $9,894.95 from multiple SLSV programs (including $3,997.95 from Ask Every Student). In 2021: $2,700 from Ask Every Student
👨🏽💼Leader of Effort? Director of Community Service Programs
🙋🏽♀️Student Power? 4 student fellows
⏰ Development Time? Initiative began in 2016
Cedar Crest Campus Strategy
Integrating voter registration into existing processes with campus partners to reach every student.
Cedar Crest College is located in idyllic Allentown, Pennsylvania. The campus sits by the side of a lake and its 80+ acres are full of greenery and dotted with historic buildings. And everywhere: voting information!
In classrooms across campus, Voter Champions (students who are part of the civic learning and democratic engagement effort on campus) register other students and share important information. In the dorms, Residential Advisors (RAs) are briefed in voter registration and have worked towards other civic initiatives, like the 2020 Census. Places integral to student life, like the Center of Inclusion, also participate in the voter registration and mobilization efforts. Cedar Crest makes sure information for voting is truly integrated throughout campus.
Through your chosen process, executing individualized voter registration and democratic engagement tactics.
A key to successful execution, whether at Cedar Crest or on any other campus, is connections! Working with others who are already carrying out similar efforts, or even others who are simply interested in empowering students, is crucial for maximum efficiency. At Cedar Crest this work is led by the Lutz Center for Community Service, but they are mindful to include other departments that shape student life.
Athletics, for example, was a key partner in 2020 because, according to Tammy Bean, Director of Community Service Programs at Cedar Crest, “Athletics has a deep connection with their students, [a connection] that other campus stakeholders aren’t able to have. Having someone from athletics [on the civic engagement team] was really important.” Cedar Crest’s civic engagement team has also found collaborating with the library department to be highly beneficial. After all, librarians engage with many, many students, and they often have unique engagement resources that other offices do not have.
Institutionalizing these tactics to be a sustainable part of your campus culture.
Bean notes, “you have to do [voter registration] if you receive federal funds- it can be as simple as having forms in an office, or can be a deeply involved and engaged piece about what you want students to know from day one or even summer orientation! It can be everything in between.”
Indeed, while the Higher Education Act Section 487(a)(23)* literally requires institutions of higher education make a good-faith effort to distribute voter registration forms, where you go from there can really range. At Cedar Crest, the Lutz Center for Community Service has committed to institutionalizing student voter engagement, and that means registration opportunities every year (even odd years), outreach from the College’s President to mobilize the vote, and consistently connecting with other folks on campus to continue growing and increasing student civic participation.
* (20 U.S.C. 1094(a)(23))
