Developing Civic Engagement in General Education Political Science

How can we promote student and civic engagement amongst our students? At Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi, the political science courses in the First Year Learning Communities Program have been using the New York Times as a supplemental reader to increase student engagement both inside and outside the classroom. The paper will examine the effectiveness of the New York Times in increasing student civic engagement inside the classroom by assessing the newspaper effectiveness in three ways: making the class material more relevant; helping the students to stay abreast with the news; and improving their attitude toward politics. The paper will also examine whether reading the New York Times has stimulated a desire to make a difference in their communities. The expectation is that students using the newspaper will demonstrate gains in all four attitudes about civic engagement in comparison to students not using the New York Times.