What Counts As Success? Assessing The Impact Of Civics In Higher Ed

The Alliance for Civics in the Academy hosts "What Counts as Success? Assessing the Impact of Civics in Higher Ed" with Trygve Throntveit, Rachel Wahl, Joseph Kahne, and Peter Levine on February 18, 2026, from 9:00-10:00 a.m. PT.

As higher education renews its commitment to civic education, questions about how to define and measure success have become increasingly urgent. This webinar examines the strengths and limitations of common metrics and considers how different measures reflect competing visions of civic purpose in higher education. Participants explore emerging frameworks for assessing civic learning and engagement, and discuss how institutions can align assessment practices with their educational missions and democratic goals.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Rachel Wahl is an associate professor in the Social Foundations Program, Department of Educational Leadership, Foundations, and Policy at the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Virginia. She also serves as Director of the Good Life Political Project at the UVa Karsh Institute of Democracy. Her research focuses on learning through public dialogue between people on opposing sides of political divides. Her most recent book is Keeping Our Enemies Closer: Political Dialogue in Polarized Democracies (University of Pennsylvania Press, forthcoming October 2026). Her prior research focused on efforts by community activists to change police officers’ beliefs and behavior through activism and education, which is the subject of her first book, Just Violence: Torture and Human Rights in the Eyes of the Police (Stanford University Press, 2017). Her research has been funded by donors such as the Educating Character Initiative, the Spencer Foundation and National Academy of Education, the Carnegie Corporation, and the federal Institute of International Education. 

Joseph Kahne is the Ted and Jo Dutton Presidential Professor for Education Policy and Politics and Director of the Civic Engagement Research Group (CERG) at the University of California, Riverside. Professor Kahne's research focuses on the influence of school practices and digital media on youth civic and political development. For example, with funding from the Institute of Educational Sciences (IES), and in partnership with scholars from Ohio State, Brown, and UCR, CERG has launched and is studying the impact of Connecting Classrooms to Congress (CC2C). CC2C is a social studies curricular unit that enables students to learn and deliberate about a controversial societal issue and then participate in an online townhall with their Member of Congress. In addition, Kahne and CERG are currently studying the Educating for American Democracy Roadmap. This work takes place through a partnership with reformers and school districts in NM, OK, and LA. In addition to studying the impact of these curricular experiences on young people’s civic development, with John Rogers, we are currently devoting particular attention to the politics of democratic education. We are examining ways the political contexts of school districts shape possibilities for democratic education and the varied ways educators respond. 

Professor Kahne was Chair of the MacArthur Foundation’s Youth and Participatory Politics Research Network. Kahne was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship. He currently chairs the Educating for American Democracy Research Task Force. Professor Kahne is a member of the National Academy of Education and a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association. He can be reached at jkahne@ucr.edu and his work is available at https://www.civicsurvey.org/

Trygve Throntveit, PhD, was appointed Research Professor in Higher Education and Associate Director of the Center for Economic and Civic Learning (CECL) at Ball State University in August of 2025. During the previous five years, he served as Director of Strategic Partnership and Civic Renewal Programming at the Minnesota Humanities Center (MHC), and as Global Fellow for History and Public Policy at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. At MHC, Dr. Throntveit expanded the Third Way Civics (3WC) initiative for undergraduate civic learning--which he first developed with partners at Ball State and Southeastern Universities in 2019--into a multi-state program, training dozens of faculty in Minnesota, Indiana, Florida, Missouri, and Montana to infuse student-centered, active civic learning into their regular courses and helping several colleges and universities build the original, US history and politics version of 3WC into their general curricula. As a result of his work on Third Way Civics, was selected by Campus Compact and the Civic Learning and Democracy Engagement coalition to co-author an upcoming guide to designing and implementing rigorous civic learning opportunities across the undergraduate curriculum, and has delivered presentations and workshops on 3WC and civic learning more generally across the United States as well as Austria, Germany, Japan, and Korea. Trained as a historian, Dr. Throntveit is an active scholar in the fields of history and political theory as well as civic learning, having published articles and books examining past and present developments in US politics, foreign policy, and social thought and served for eight years as editor of The Good Society, the journal of the transdisciplinary Civic Studies field. He has taught at Harvard University, Dartmouth College, and Minnesota State University-Mankato, and has overseen public humanities programs bringing communities into productive conversation across their differences on issues as diverse as election integrity, US-Tribal relations, and water use. Dr. Throntveit lives and works in Minneapolis, where oversees the increasingly national 3WC initiative and also directs the Twin Cities-based Institute for Public Life and Work, which he co-founded with Harry C. Boyte and Marie-Louise Strom in 2021. 

Moderator

Peter Levine is a philosopher and political scientist who specializes on civic life and has helped to develop Civic Studies as an international intellectual movement. In the domain of civic education, Levine was a co-organizer and co-author of The Civic Mission of Schools (2003), The College, Career & Citizenship Framework for State Social Studies Standards (2013) and The Educating for American Democracy Roadmap (2021). He is also the author of eight books, including most recently We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: The Promise of Civic Renewal in America (Oxford University Press, 2013) and What Should We Do? A Theory of Civic Life (Oxford University Press, 2022).