![]() Students are also encouraged to explore civic tools like icitizen and BallotReady that provide information about issues of special concern and perspectives on candidates running for different offices.īut civic engagement also runs through the curriculum, especially the General Education Program, The Human Community, which is divided into five areas of learning outcomes called clusters. Two years ago, in tandem with a successful, student-led effort to establish an on-campus precinct, we launched Dukes Vote, a fall voter registration initiative that combines social media posts and mass emails with links to TurboVote, coordinated tabling at locations across campus, and visits to residence halls and general education classes. Photo courtesy JMU Marketing and Communications. More than 300 JMU students turned out for a Presidential Election Returns Watch Party on Nov. Smith Center for the Constitution, and a free trip to Montpelier, Madison’s home and estate in nearby Orange County. We annually mark Constitution Day, September 17, with cake, pocket Constitutions from our friends at the Robert H. As part of Orientation in August, all 4,500+ freshmen participate in a program called “1787,” which includes a 75-minute academic exploration of our ethical reasoning framework, the Madison Collaborative. We aren’t subtle! Madison statues, Madison quotes in public spaces, and Madison logos in university publications complement the classical architecture that defines our historic Quad, the symbolic heart of the institution. What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable than that of liberty and learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual and surest support?”įrom the moment they first step on campus, students are exposed to Madison’s political legacy. “Learned institutions,” he wrote in an 1822 letter, “throw that light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty & dangerous encroachments on the public liberty. ![]() Madison was one of the young republic’s most ardent advocates for higher education. Since then, the link to our nation’s fourth president, the Father of the Constitution, has become more intentional with every passing decade. President Samuel Page Duke proposed the name Madison College in 1938 in part to commemorate the legacy of the nation’s so-called “Forgotten Founder,” and President Ronald Carrier led the transformation of that institution into James Madison University in 1977. Originally founded as the State Normal and Industrial School for Women in 1908, this institution has been renamed and rebranded multiple times. We take civic engagement very seriously at James Madison University. The James Madison statue on East Campus (“Big Jimmy”) is a popular spot for photographs, especially on Constitution Day.
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