At the 2019 ALL IN Challenge Awards Ceremony held to recognize colleges and universities committed to increasing college student voting rates, Michigan Technological University received a bronze seal for achieving a student rate between 20% and 29%. A full list of seal awardees can be viewed here.
“Civic engagement is on the minds of faculty, staff and students at Michigan Tech,” said Bonnie Gorman, Dean of Students and Vice President of Student Affairs. “Our students are on the forefront of solving some of our nation’s most vexing problems and it is critical to have them engaged in the political process as well.”
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%. Michigan Tech’s data reveals a student voting rate in the 2018 midterm of 26.9 percent, a 17.5 point increase from 2014 (9.4% rate in that midterm).
The growth is encouraging, and student leaders are identifying ways to increase participation in coming years. “While working on Voter Registration Day, I realized that there are a lot of questions students have regarding voting that otherwise go unanswered,” said Anna Ellis (forestry ‘20), chair of the Undergraduate Student Government’s Political Affairs Committee. “Michigan Tech has made great strides in increasing political involvement, but if we want to continue this we will need to create resources that make the process less confusing for busy students.”
“We are excited to honor Michigan Tech with an ALL IN Challenge bronze 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 Michigan Tech are changing 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.
If you want to get involved in the Michigan Tech ALL IN Democracy Challenge and help with voter registration, contact Kari Henquinet at kbhenqui@mtu.edu.