MSUM receives gold seal for excellence in student voter engagement
At the 2019 ALL IN Challenge Awards Ceremony held to recognize colleges and universities committed to increasing college student voting rates, MSU Moorhead received a gold seal for achieving a student rate between 40% and 49%.
“The Minnesota State University Moorhead community is proud to receive this national recognition for our efforts. Our students, staff, faculty and administrators are committed to working together to increase engagement, provide meaningful connections and contributions to the community and graduate civic-minded students prepared to solve the country, and the world’s, most pressing challenges,” said Dr. Brenda Amenson-Hill, Vice President of Enrollment Management and Student Affairs.
Student participation in elections has increased from the 2014 midterm election to the recent 2018 midterm election. According to the National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement, an initiative of Tufts University’s Institute for Democracy & Higher Education, voter turnout at the more than 1,000 institutions participating in the study increased by 21 points from 19% to 40%.
“We are excited to honor MSUM with an ALL IN Challenge gold seal in recognition of their intentional efforts to increase democratic engagement and full voter participation,” said Jennifer Domagal-Goldman, executive director of the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge. “More institutions like MSUM are changing the culture on campus by institutionalizing nonpartisan democratic engagement efforts that are resulting in the incredible student voter turnout rates that we’ve seen across the country.”
The ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge is a nonpartisan, national initiative recognizing and supporting campuses as they work to increase nonpartisan democratic engagement and full student voter participation. The Challenge encourages higher education institutions to help students form the habits of active and informed citizenship, and make democratic participation a core value on their campus.
More than 560 campuses, enrolling more than 6.2 million students, have joined the Challenge since its launch in summer 2016.