University of San Francisco
Campus Specs
🏫Campus Type: 4 Year, Private, Asian American Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institution (AANAPISI)
🧑🏾🎓 Enrollment: 10,068
🗺 Location: San Francisco, California
Campus Resources
💰Received Funding? $5000 Codesigner Grant
👨🏽💼Leader of Effort? Assistant Director, Public Service Programs
🙋🏽♀️Student Power? 12 main leaders with teams, 2 Andrew Goodman Foundation Fellows, 60 student leaders overall
⏰ Development Time? Initiative began in 2017
USFVotes Campus Created Resources
USFVotes Campus Strategy
Integrating voter registration into existing processes with campus partners to reach every student.
The USFVotes Team worked with departments in all USF schools, talked to department heads, and got buy-in using the Faculty Champion model to make a Faculty Toolkit. They provided other elements like curriculum guides, shareable videos, canvas page elements, reading materials, media tools, and syllabi elements, making it as easy as possible for faculty and administrators to integrate democratic engagement into their work.
Democratic and voter engagement is integrated into multiple processes that reach new students. When students get their acceptance package, they receive a pamphlet that educates them on how to vote and get civically engaged. USFVotes then works with the Orientation and Student Leadership and Engagement department to embed online curriculum models on civic engagement that every new student participates in and completes. USFVotes also prepares activities for the summer in their “communities” and has a table physically present where students receive their name badges right before they get their ID cards and move into on-campus housing.
USF has a cohort every year with first generation students where they talk in breakout groups about how they engaged with their community during high school, what community looks like to them, and what issues they care about related to their community. During this session, they connect the issues that students talk about to getting involved with their community at USF and public service. The session includes 45 minutes focused on voting during which former students from that cohort break the current cohort up into 5 groups and register every student to vote. This workshop is also replicated with other USF living-learning communities.
Through your chosen process, executing individualized voter registration and democratic engagement tactics.
USFVotes creates a student leadership pipeline from when students get accepted into USF and catches them early on through the Summer of Action, during which they give students tools to register voters and talk to fellow students. As a result, USFVotes has great retention with student leaders, from when they first step foot on campus to when they graduate. There is a trickle-down effect of communication from students who get the buzz and share with other folks. In 2020, USFVotes had 60-70 consistent student leaders engaged in this work (mostly first years!), including 12 main leaders with small teams and two Andrew Goodman Foundation Fellows. The teams include: Voter Engagement, Programming, Recruitment, Communications and Outreach, COVID-19, and International and Non-Citizen Student Outreach.
USFVotes had their 60+ student leaders add every class they had ever taken to a spreadsheet that allowed for strategic outreach from those students to their current or former faculty members. Through that strategy, trained student volunteers and staff hopped into the “zoom rooms” and hit over 200 classes where they walked students through the voting process and answered questions either directly or through follow up emails. This process helped register over 3000 students.
USFVotes also prepared a voter engagement toolkit for every student contingency group, including student organizations, housing, greek life, athletics and student leadership, being as visible and accessible as possible.
Institutionalizing these tactics to be a sustainable part of your campus culture.
The USFVotes Team is working to embed democratic and voter engagement in the building blocks of what students do when they come to campus, sign up for classes, and are in classes. Through conversations with senior leadership and careful analysis of their NSLVE results, they are strategically paving a way towards ensuring that their Ask Every Student strategy is institutionalized at the University of San Francisco.
