Katies were ALL IN for Civic Engagement

By Ella Tracy

St. Kate’s was recognized as an ALL IN Most Engaged Campus for the second year in a row, honoring the university’s nonpartisan democratic engagement efforts during the 2024 election season. St. Kate’s is one of 471 universities to receive the award.

The ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge empowers universities to increase nonpartisan voter engagement and build a more educated and involved citizenry. St. Kate’s received the Most Engaged Campus recognition because student and staff leaders participated in the Democracy Challenge, submitted 2022 voting data to ALL IN, developed an engagement action plan and had an current presidential signature on ALL IN’s Higher Education Presidents’ Commitment to Full Student Voter Participation.

Josibeth Aguilera ‘25 (Political Science and International Studies) and Olivia Stevermer ‘26 (Economics, Political Science, Public Policy) are two students who lead the charge for engagement on St. Kate’s campus. They are fellows with the St. Kate’s Civic Engagement Fellowship (SCEF) and worked with their cohort to increase voter turnout.

“I visited a lot of classrooms to teach students about voting and civic engagement,” said Aguilera. She was often spotted tabling in the CdC with stickers and voter resources. Aguilera also supported the Voter Van on election day and participated in the TPT Civic Engagement Panel at the O'Shaughnessy covering women’s civic leadership.

Stevermer said she compared St. Kate’s civic engagement outcomes to other colleges in the area to brainstorm new engagement projects SCEF fellows could work on. She described her passion for encouraging students to be educated, saying that “it’s the mission of higher ed institutions to educate students how they should be able to function in their government as an advocate for themselves, their issues and the people they care about.”

Aguilera said, “we went above and beyond in our engagement with students. We were so intentional. We visited so many people on so many levels and had many conversations to make sure we were intentional with who and how we engaged with, and doing it on a deeper level than just Get Out The Vote rhetoric.”

The Office of Scholarly Engagement, in partnership with other departments, hosted Informed Voter events to create spaces to talk about broader policy issues. “We hoped to challenge misinformation and disinformation,” said Stevermer.

Aguilera said another goal of their outreach was to educate students about what civic engagement means. “One of the lessons I had to learn was that legislators work for me,” said Aguilera. “We come into [the legislative system] thinking we’re at the bottom of a hierarchy, but we have power within our world and system.”

“We worked to teach people to claim their space and power,” Stevermer added. “A big part of being educated in civic engagement is realizing that there aren’t rooms you should be kept out of. You don’t need to be intimidated! Fundamentally, you are supposed to be part of the decision making.”

Aguilera said that she is very proud of the work the SCEF team and other community members did to earn the ALL IN Most Engaged Campus award. “There was a lot of passion and it was really cool!” Aguilera said.