Citizen Scholars Program History

The Citizen Scholars Program (CSP) was born in 1998 in a train station in Washington, D.C., where two UMass faculty members, Art Keene and Dave Schimmel, had a lengthy conversation about how they might work together across semesters to build students’ capacity for civic engagement.  After more thinking and planning, the new honors college, Commonwealth College, agreed to sponsor the program, and Art and Dave became its first co-directors.  The Corporation for National and Community Service provided additional support to the program with a substantial three-year grant.

In its initial form, the program offered two courses with community service learning components (the introduction and the capstone) and required students to choose three other community service learning courses.  It also brought students together for monthly dinners and discussions between the first and last course.  By 2002, four of the five required courses were offered by the program itself in a purposeful sequence that builds each semester.  That year, the program was selected by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching as one of 21 programs nationally to be studied as models for promoting political engagement among students.  In 2004, the third and fourth courses became Honors Capstone Experiences, combining individual or group public policy research and advocacy projects in the third course that lead into community organizing projects in the fourth course.  In 2005, the Program created new structures that substantially increased the role that students play in program governance.  Each year, the program evolves in a dynamic relationship with students, staff and community members.