9.2.25 – Bryan Eagle
“Texas A&M Regents OK Start of Citizenship Initiative for Students”
By Stephen Whitaker
Excerpts from this article:
Texas A&M President Mark A. Welsh III announced the launch of a new citizenship and service initiative in his newsletter a year ago.
Around the same time, Brig. Gen. (Ret.) Kim Field, director of strategic initiatives, was named to lead the citizenship initiative.
After a year of work, including a presentation to the A&M System Board of Regents in February for more input from the regents, Field and Welsh presented an update to the plan at the board’s meeting of the Committee on Academic and Student Affairs.
The updated plan is made up of four pillars: character, knowledge, skills, and service.
These four pillars were decided on after feedback from students, faculty and staff.
“A&M has been producing great citizens for a long, long time,” Welsh told The Eagle after the regents’ regular meeting Thursday.
“We have so many great young men and women growing up and a lot of them don’t know what’s expected of them when they show up in their communities.
This program is designed to make sure everybody has the opportunity to learn that.”
Character development [the first pillar] will reflect Aggie core values and the personal purpose of each student, the plan states.
…The second pillar, knowledge, provides an understanding of the workings of all three levels of government — local, state and national — as well as an education on the Constitution and rights and responsibilities of a citizen.
…The third pillar, skills, would include media literacy and civil discourse. Other aspects of the third pillar would have the option for students to pursue learning more about civic leadership and public policy.
…Service is the fourth pillar and it is already part of most Aggies’ experience.
In the citizenship initiative, students will be encouraged to find recognized student organizations, service-learning courses, public policy internships and volunteer activities to practice their knowledge and skills.
Field said:
“We’re going to do some reflection on character.
We’re going to study the Constitution and our founding documents and knowledge.
We’re going to focus on two critical building blocks of skills which are media literacy and civil discourse; and we’re going to elevate service and get students recognition, awards, and credit.”
…The summit came up with four recommendations on how to implement the plan.
The first was to establish a strong foundation.
…The second recommendation was to create tools to connect citizenship and service efforts that could facilitate the integration of citizenship-related content across the campus and raise awareness by creating communities of interest around things like local engagement.
The third recommendation of the summit was to increase engagement with citizenship and service opportunities.
The fourth recommendation is to eventually expand the four pillars plan across the A&M System and then around the country.
“It’s great for Texas A&M because we already have so many students who are heavily engaged in everything from public service work to community engagement to student government and leadership,” Welsh said.
“Our students already do a lot of this so how can we be a little more intentional about connecting the dots to give them credit for it and also to [inform] the rest of them who haven’t been involved because they don’t know how to connect to it.”
“It’s a phenomenal environment here to learn how to participate, to communicate with each other in a way that is constructive and positive.”
The Office of Strategic Initiatives will spend the coming months working on implementing the plan with the help of colleges and departments across the university.
It is hoped to have the review of the University Learning Outcomes completed by end of December [2025] with other aspects of the plan to be completed over the coming months and into the spring semester.