Karen Castro’s passion for civic engagement started during her senior year of high school. Castro, a freshman from Houston, raised money for Fundación Mi Sangre, a non-governmental organization that funds prosthetics for children who have lost limbs to a Colombian military conflict that has been raging since the 1960s.

When Castro came to Syracuse University as a Latino-Latin American Studies major, she hoped to immerse herself in community outreach. Next year, Castro will have that opportunity as a part of the first class in the citizenship and civic engagement major at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.

“I’m really into raising awareness,” Castro said. “And I think a lot of people who are pursuing this double major are also trying to create something new.”

Maxwell faculty members conceived the program after Chancellor Nancy Cantor requested each college design a “signature major” three years ago, said Paul Hagenloh, the program’s chair. Cantor first proposed the idea of signature majors in April 2010 through a proposal called the White Paper, which aimed to give Maxwell a larger role in undergraduate programs. 

Maxwell admitted 16 freshmen to the program this year, all of whom will start in the fall of 2013 while also fulfilling a previously declared major, he said.

Maxwell is one of the nation’s premier public policy schools and has a variety of majors in the social sciences, which made providing the citizenship and civic engagement major possible, Hagenloh said.

“Usually, those are in separate schools,” he said. “The kind of faculty that come here to teach tend to be involved in both worlds, and it means there are a lot of resources available to students in the policy-NGO-civic engagement world.”

Most students enrolled in the program’s first class previously declared majors in the social sciences, he said. The program will allow students such as Castro to dually enroll outside of Maxwell if the major works cooperatively, he said.

Starting next year, students can either apply to the major out of high school or at the end of their freshman year, according to the program’s description on the Maxwell website. Faculty members aim to admit 15 students from the incoming freshman and current freshman classes every year, Hagenloh said.

Original academic major courses will be supplemented with classes in the social sciences their first two years in the program, then take upper-level courses specifically designed for the major in their sophomore, junior and senior years, according to the website. Students will research a topic in their junior year, then implement their hands-on “action plan” in their senior year, Hagenloh said.

Students will have the ability to write grants and create small non-governmental organizations by the time they graduate, Hagenloh said.

The strength of the program lies in the potential for student collaboration and flexibility, he said.

“My biggest hope is that these students will be able to work together as a group and end up really producing something of meaning with each other,” Hagenloh said. “This will become not just a major or requirements to fulfill.”

Benjamin Bashaw, a freshman history major who will be enrolled in the citizenship and civic engagement program next fall, said the potential for practical application of skills learned in class drew him to the major.

He sees the possibility for new projects in Syracuse as an asset to the program.

“It seems like it’s a hands-on thing,” Bashaw said. “You don’t just learn about things, you learn them and then figure out how to apply them.”

Castro, the other student accepted to the program, said she hopes it will increase her potential to create change in the Latin American community. Castro wants to work with immigration reform after graduation, and the flexibility to work with her own organization through the program will help her do so, she said.

“You can write your own proposal, create your own NGO,” Castro said. “It’s pretty great because you’re only 22 and creating something like that. I’m excited.”

Published on April 9, 2013 at 11:00 pm

Contact Jacob: jspramuk@syr.edu