Building Community to Promote Civic Engagement: The Town Hall Meeting Program at California State University, Fullerton

Abstract

The Town Hall Meeting (THM) program at California State University, Fullerton has been annually incorporated into several Introduction to American Politics course sections since 2011, to improve academic performance and promote civic engagement among enrolled students. This article provides a detailed analysis of results from a 2017 quasi-experimental study of the program designed to overcome methodological challenges in earlier studies, using close-ended and open-ended surveys and institutional research data on student demographics and academic performance. The research finds that the THM program successfully increases students’ political knowledge, political efficacy, and interest in political engagement and that it does so through the critically important and mediating variable of students’ sense of a strong classroom community. This suggests that Introduction to American Government courses that build communal connections in the classroom can more successfully engage students politically.

Keywords:

• Civics education
• civic engagement
• classroom community

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge the support for the Town Hall Meeting program by the Associated Students Incorporated and the Division of Politics, Administration and Justice at California State University, Fullerton.

Ethical approval

This research was approved by the California State University, Fullerton Institutional Review Board (IRB) on February 22, 2017. Assurance Number: FWA00015384.

Disclosure statement

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Notes

1 According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES 2022), in 2020 there were approximately 15.9 million undergraduate students enrolled in degree-granting post-secondary institutions.

2 Chi Square analyses all revealed p > 0.05. A p ≤ 0.05 is needed for statistical significance. Since there is an absence of random assignment between participants and nonparticipants, we recognize the possibility of selection bias in the results. However, we are convinced that students were not able to pre-select themselves into a THM course, or not, and our comparison group did not vary significantly from the participant group.

Additional information

Funding

The authors wish to thank California State University, Fullerton’s Associated Students Incorporated (ASI) for their generous support for the Town Hall Meeting project, through the Instructional Related Accounts (IRA) grant program.

Notes on contributors

Scott J. Spitzer

Scott J. Spitzer earned his Ph.D. in Political Science at Columbia University and teaches a broad array of courses on American politics, including the U.S. Presidency, American Political Development, Media and Politics, Metropolitan Politics and Policymaking, and U.S. Social Welfare Policy and Politics. His research focuses on the role of the presidency in shaping American Political Development, and on the dynamics of racial politics and social welfare policymaking. Spitzer is also the Director of CSU Fullerton’s Town Hall Meeting Program, designed to encourage student civic and political engagement.

Lori M. Weber

Lori M. Weber earned her doctorate in Political Science from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her research and teaching interests include political methodology, civic engagement, public opinion, food politics, and deliberative democratic theory. She has studied abroad in Turkey, England, and Germany and taught for a semester in a study abroad program in Turin, Italy. In addition to her academic work, she also serves on several nonprofit boards Northern California. She has over thirty years survey research experience, including large-scale survey research funded by the National Science Foundation, the Kettering Foundation, the American Association of Colleges and Universities, and the Gates Foundation.